2026-06-27 –, Room 304 PC Desk (Seats 36)
Following the successes of the elaborate anti-rinderpest campaign and the consequent growth in cattle production in colonial Nigeria, British administrators, animal welfare advocates, and imperialist companies became keenly interested in reforming the colony’s slaughter system. They sought to replace the orthodox bleed-out system, which they disparaged as ‘barbarous’ and ‘gruesome’, with a “more humane” slaughter method in line with the ideals of colonial humanitarianism and modernity. This campaign was not unconnected with the “humane movement” which was gaining currency in imperial Britain and the US around that time. To the colonizers, the problem would be fixed simply by introducing and mainstreaming throughout the colony’s abattoirs a technology known as the “humane killer”—a captive bolt pistol to be used in cattle slaughter, and an electric stunner for goats and sheep. Interestingly however, the initiative pitched the colonial agents against the Islamic political leadership of Northern Nigeria. The affair spurned elaborate ideological debates that complicate ideas of animal welfare and ontology, colonial humaneness, Islamic jurisprudence, as well as colonial politics and resistance. The imbroglio reverberated beyond colonial Nigeria, involving not just the Colonial Office in London, but also several transimperial jurisdictions across British Africa and Asia. On the strength of rich archival sources, this paper critically examines the humane killer question in late-colonial Nigeria. The account demonstrates how dying cattle and small ruminants came to occupy the front burner of imperial politics pitting British colonial modernity with Islamic ethos.
Animal slaughter, Humane killer, animal welfare, colonial Nigeria
Oluwaṣeun Otọsedẹ Williams is a historian of veterinary public health, pastoral ecology, livestock economy and food systems in Nigeria and West Africa. He is an Ad Astra Fellow/Assistant Professor in One Health at the University College Dublin’s School of History. Williams recently completed his PhD in International History and Politics (minor in Anthropology and Sociology) at the Geneva Graduate Institute, Switzerland. His doctoral dissertation has been earned him the 2024 Early Career Scholar Award of the World Association for the History of Veterinary Medicine, the 2025 Pierre du Bois Prize for the best doctoral thesis in contemporary history, and the 2025 Henry Sigerist Prize for early career scholars in the history of medicine and science.