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Dangerous Aphrodisiac, Restless Sexuality: Venereal disease, biomedicine, and protectionism in colonial Lagos, Nigeria

This article introduces two new approaches, namely "protectionism" and "censorship," into the present scholarship on venereal disease (VD) and sexuality. It uncovers how the British colonial government in Nigeria, in order to enhance the fortunes of Western biomedical therapeutic options, censored advertisements for African and non-British remedies for VD and aphrodisiacs. Although historians of Africa have traced the root of some of the continent's development crises to colonial policies which killed domestic industries and initiatives in order to promote metropolitan capitalists' penetration, they have largely under-researched how VD and sexuality dovetails with this aspect of Africa's encounter with alien rule. Drawing from a wide range of literature including gender and sexuality, race, biomedicine and political economy, this article details the responses and adaptation of a diverse group of Nigerians (traditional healers, pharmacists, apothecaries and nationalists) to this policy. It demonstrates how medico-moral legislation couched in the imperial vocabulary of sin and sexual immorality produced far-reaching implications. My overall objective is to stimulate new dialogue about the interrelatedness of VD, sexuality, and political economy of colonialism, using protectionism and censorship as focal points.