When the Compound Was the Classroom: Parenthood Without a Template in Nigeria’s Middle Belt

Presenter: Adetola Oyenubi (PhD Candidate, African Centre for Migration & Society, Wits University)

Date: Wednesday, 07 October 2026
Time: 12:30 – 13:30 (GMT+2)
Venue: ACMS Seminar Room (2163), Solomon Mahlangu House (2nd floor), East Campus, Wits University (directions) and Online (Meeting ID: 96263184553. Password: *4ovg2LyFs)

Abstract:
In December 2023, coordinated attacks across Bokkos, Plateau State, killed hundreds and displaced thousands, leaving many caregivers to rebuild family life without the people who once taught them how. This presentation introduces the concept of “transmission breach” to highlight how displacement severs the everyday apprenticeship through which caregiving knowledge passes between generations. Drawing on fieldwork with twenty-five caregivers in Bokkos and one father’s account of losing his wife and returning alone to an unrecognisable village, the study uses situated learning theory and feminist care theory to examine this rupture, alongside the anthropology of African childhood to consider what is lost when the relationships through which children learn to care are broken.

Bio:
Adetola Oyenubi is a PhD candidate at the African Centre for Migration & Society (ACMS), University of the Witwatersrand. Her doctoral research examines how caregiving is reconfigured and how well-being shifts among internally displaced families in Bokkos Local Government Area, Plateau State, Nigeria. Her scholarship bridges African studies and forced migration, with a particular grounding in care ethics.