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The Nigerian town hall is clearly a colonial innovation. The first such forum for communal meetings in western Nigeria was erected at Oyo in 1906. It was built in direct response to the colonial masters' desire to be protected from the vagaries of weather-the scorching sun and drenching rain-as well as to have an appropriate point of reference for interactions with the townspeople. From the British point of view, "...to be open and free is to be exposed and vulnerable ....Enclosed and humanized space is place" (Tuan 1977:54).
The second town hall in western Nigeria was built in the Yoruba town of Ile-Ife in 1922. At the time there was no colonial administrator in residence a district officer did not come to Ile-Ife until the 1940s-and the British governed the town from Lagos, and later from Ibadan.1 It was, in fact, Ooni Ademiluyi Ajagun and his Iwarefa Council of Chiefs who prevailed upon the British to construct a hall similar to the one in Oyo, to facilitate interaction between them.
Traditional government in Ile-Ife and other Yoruba towns is headed by the ooni (the local term for oba), who is the spiritual as well as political leader. In his capacity as spiritual leader, the ooni works in conjunction with the local priests. In his political capacity he works with a council of chiefs, each a lineage head responsible for the administration of a ward of the town. Subordinate to the chiefs are baales-family heads, the oldest men in their descent groups (Lloyd 1974:36)who oversee family affairs. This political hierarchy is reflected spatially. At the family (or house) level, deliberations are conducted in the courtyard, the agbala or odede. Meetings of the lineage (or compound/ward) take place at the akodi, a strategically positioned covered meeting area (usually a deeper portion of the veranda encircling the courtyard, or a front porch) within the baale's house. At the level of the ooni and the council of chiefs (which corresponds to the town), the place of assembly is either the enormous main courtyard within the palace complex or the town square just before the main entrance to it.
At the time Ile-Ife's town hall was built (and as had been the case since 1896), all construction projects were handled...