In the context of economic colonization migration has played a considerable role in order to get the necessary man-power for the realization of a most profitable exploitation of natural and human resources in the country. Thereby, the colonial administration initiated and secured this part first of all by imposing taxes systematically and universally in standard coin and currency, on a population before than living in the essentially subsistence economies of traditional communities. Given such quite heavy economic pressure imposed by the new masters and to a certain extent seconded by the growing attractivity of urban fife, motivating especially younger people to flee from the rural milieu, by the thousand crowded the extremely fast growing towns which became commercial and administrative, educational and cultural centres in the various regions of the country. The internal structure and dynamics inherent in labour in late-colonial Nigeria are noticeably manifold and diverse, for instance respecting the number of people involved and the duration of staying away from home of the migrants, the diverse directions of major intra-territorial flows and the proportion between land-to-town migration and land-to-land migration, last not least its composition with regard to age, gender and professional level of the people concerned and the kind of wage employment they were engaged in the different fields of production, services, administration and the like. The migrants had been confronted with the crucial problem of socialization in the new world of urban life. Thereby, the so called ethnic unions/voluntary associations (better to use the term associations d’originaires) functioned as a highly useful institution. Originally conceived as cultural and social self-help organizations they provided for a network of basic social security and regular cultural communication. But later on they became a stronghold of ethnicism as well because they were intensively used by rival political forces in their struggle for state power in an independent Nigeria.
