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The Amalgamation Of Nigeria Was A Fraud
By Smart
Lagos - I Was in the first cabinet that was overthrown by
the military in this country. I entered parliament in December 12, 1959. And
I remained in Parliament until January 15, 1966 when the Government was
overthrown. I was the Federal Minister of Education in that cabinet.
I woke up in the
morning in my official house in Ikoyi to discover that my telephone was not
working. I had never experienced coup before nor did I know that it was a
coup, thinking it was just a telephone fault; until a colleague of mine in
the cabinet Chief Abiodun Akerele, came in and told me there had been a
military coup. So I had the fortune or the misfortune of being a victim of
the first coup ever in this country.
Many people may not know that I spent 18 months in detention in
prisons across the country. I've spent the time in Kirikiri prison, Ilesha
prison, Ibadan prison and the Abeokuta prison Two of us who were in Balewa's
government emerged when the military handed over to civilians in 1979 as part
of the civilian Government. In Balewa's government, Alhaji Shehu Shagari was
the Minister of Works while I was the Minister of Education. When the
Military handed over to us after about 14 years, Shagari emerged as the
President, while I became the Attorney - General and Minister of Justice.
Again, Shagari's government was overthrown just a few months after I left the
cabinet. Of course, we suspected it was coming.
A lot of things
that happened between that period and now would never see the light of the
day. When you are in government, you know a lot of things; you see a lot of
things. A lot of things you know or did or saw will die with you. This is the
practice the whole world. People have asked me to write my memoirs, I just
laugh because there are certain things I can never reveal. When I was in
Tafawa Balewa's Cabinet, all Cabinet ministers had access to written
intelligence report every month. That was the practice at that time. But when
Shagari came in, for reasons, which I cannot explain, that practice was no
longer followed. But by virtue of my duties as the Attorney - General and as
a member of the National Security Council, I continued to have access to some
sensitive matters.
Nigeria is a very complex country. Our problems did not
start yesterday. It started about 1884. Lord Lugard came here about 1894 and
many people did not know that Major Lugard was not originally employed by the
British Government. He was employed by companies. He was first employed by
East Indian Company, by the Royal East African Company and then by the Royal
Niger Company. It was from the Royal Niger Company that he transferred to the
British government. Unless you know this background, you will not know the
root causes of our problems. The interest of the Europeans in Africa and
indeed Nigeria
was economic and it's still economic. They have no permanent friends and no
permanent interests. Neither their interests nor their friends are permanent.
Nigeria
was created as British sphere of interests for business. In 1898, Lugard
formed the West African Frontier Force initially with 2,000 soldiers and that
was the beginning of our problems.
Anybody who
wants to know the root cause of all the coups and our present problems, and who
does not know the evolution Nigeria
would just be looking at the matter superficially. Our problems started from
that time. And Lugard was what they called at that time imperialist. A number
of British soldiers, businessmen, politicians were very patriotic. But I must
warn you; they were operating in the interest of their country. Lugard became
a Lord. Nigerians, too, should operate
in the interest of their country. When Lugard formed the West African
Frontier Force with 2,000 troops, about 90 percent of them were from the
North mainly from the Middle belt. And his dispatches to London between that time and January 1914
are extremely interesting. Lugard came here for a purpose ant that purpose
was British interest. Between 1898 and 1914, he sent a number of dispatches
to London
which led to the Amalgamation of 1914.
The Order - in -
Council was drawn up in November 1913 signed and came into force in January
1914. In those dispatches, Lugard said a number of things, which are at the
root causes of yesterday and today's problems.
The British
needed the Railway from the North to the Coast in the interest of British
business. Amalgamation of the South (not of the people) became of crucial
importance to British business interest. He said the North and the South
should be amalgamated. Southern Nigeria came into existence on January 1900
... At the Centenary of the fall of Benin, I wrote a piece in a
number of papers but before I published the piece, I sent a copy to the Oba
of Benin. So when Benin
was conquered in 1896, it made the creation of the Southern Nigerian
protectorate possible on January 1, 1900. If you remember, Sokoto was not
conquered until 1903. So, there was no question of Nigeria at that time. After the
conquest of Sokoto, they were able to create the northern Nigerian
protectorate. Lugard went full blast and created what was to be known as the
protectorate of Northern Nigeria. What is
critical and important are the reasons Lugard gave in his dispatches. They
are as follows: He said the North is poor and they have no resources to run
the protectorate of the North. That they have no access to the sea; that the
South has resources and have educated people.
The first Yoruba
lawyer was called to the Bar in 1861. Therefore, because it was not the
policy of the British Government to bring the taxpayers money to run the
protectorate, it was in the interest of the British business and the British
taxpayer that there should be Amalgamation. But what the British amalgamated
was the Administration of the North and South and not the people of the North
and the South, that is one of the root causes of the problems of Nigeria
and the Nigerians.
When the
amalgamation took effect, the British government sealed off the South from
the North. And between 1914 andl960, that's a period of 46 years, the British
allowed minimum contact between the North and South because it was not in the
British interest that the North be allowed to be polluted by the educated
South. That was the basis on which we got our independence in 1960 when I was
in the parliament. I entered Parliament on December 12, 1959. When the North
formed a political party, the northern leaders called it Northern Peoples
Congress (NPC). They didn't call it Nigeria Peoples Congress. That was in
accordance with the dictum and policies of Lugard. When Aminu Kano formed his
own party, it was called Northern Elements Progressive Union (NEPU) not
Nigerian Progressive Union.
It was only
Awolowo and Zik who were mistaken that there was anything called Nigeria.
Infact, the so-cared Nigeria
created in 1914 was a complete fraud. It was created not in the interest of Nigeria or
Nigerians but in the interest of the British. And what were the structures
created? The structures created were as follows: Northern Nigeria was to represent
England; Western Nigeria
like Wales; Eastern
Nigeria was to be like Scotland.
In the British structure, England
has permanent majority in the House of Commons. There was no way Wales can ever dominate England, neither can Scotland dominate Britain. But they are very
shrewd. They would allow a Scottish man to become Prime Minister. They would
allow a Welsh man to become Prime Minister in London
but the fact remains that the actual power rested in England.
That was what
Lugard created in Nigeria,
a permanent majority for the North. The population figure of the North is
also a fraud. Infact, a British Colonial Civil Servant who was involved in
the fraud was trying to expose it but he was never allowed to publish it. The
analysis is as follows: If you look at the map of West Africa, starting from Mauritania to Cameroun
and take a population of each country as you move from the coast to the Savannah, the
population decreases. Or conversely, as you come from the Desert to the
Coast, right from Mauritania
to the Cameroun,
the population increases. The only exception throughout that zone is Nigeria. Nigeria is
the only zone whereby you go from coast to the North, the population
increases and you come from the North to the Coast, the population decreases.
Well, geographers, anthropologists and population experts, draw your
conclusions, Someone has told me the last population census was done by
computer, what a nonsense.
A computer is as
good as its programmer. A computer will produce what you ask it to produce. I
have read this book from cover to cover. This is a fantastic book. I want us
to find a way to ensure that as many Nigerians read this book. It is a raw
material for future authors. There is one thing which is missing in the book
and that is the first broadcast of General Ibrahim Babangida when he assumed
power in 1985. That broadcast is very crucial to the economic problems we
have today. ... Talking on the first coup, when Balewa got missing, we knew
Okotie- Eboh had been Hied, we knew Akintola had been killed. We, the members
of the Balewa cabinet started meeting. But how can you have a cabinet meeting
without the Prime Minister acting or Prime Minister presiding. So,
unanimously, we nominated acting Prime Minister amongst us. Then we continued
holding our meetings. Then we got a message that we should all assemble at
the Cabinet office. All the Ministers were requested by the G.O.C. of the
Nigerian Army, General Ironsi to assemble.
What was amazing
at that time was that Ironsi was going all over Lagos unarmed. We assembled there. Having
nominated ZANA Diphcharima as our acting Prime Minister in the absence of the
Prime Minister, whose where about we didn't know, we approached the acting
President, Nwafor Orizu to swear him in because he cannot legitimately act as
the Prime Minister except he is sworn- in. Nwafor Orizu refused. He said he
needed t contact Zik who was then in West Indies.
Under the law,
that is, the Interpretation Act, as acting President, Nwazor Orizu had all
the powers of the President. The GOC said he wanted to see all the cabinet
ministers. And so we assembled at the cabinet office. Well, I have read in
many books saying that we handed over to the military. We did not hand-over.
Ironsi told us that "you either hand over as gentlemen or you hand-over
by force". These were his words. Is that voluntary hand-over? So we did
not hand-over. We wanted an Acting Prime Minister to be in place but Ironsi
forced us, and I use the word force advisedly, to handover to him. He was
controlling the soldiers.
The acting
President, Nwafor Orizu, who did not cooperate with us, cooperated with the
GOC. Dr. Orizu and the GOC prepared speeches which Nwafor Orizu broadcast
handing over the government of the country to the army. I here state again
categorically as a member of that cabinet that we did not hand-over
voluntarily. It was a coup. This is a very good book, which everybody must
read. It is raw material for future authors. Anybody, who wants to know some
of the causes of our problems, military instability should read this book. I
even recommend this book to all universities and secondary schools, so that
they can know how we get to where we are now. What this book shows is that if
anybody stages a coup and if people don't accept it, it would not succeed. What
puzzles me is how the author got all these materials. He must have
connections in high places to be able to get a lot of these materials.
These materials
should not be in the archives, they should be in the public domain so that we
know the causes of our problems. I pray that all Nigerians should rise up and
say no if anybody seizes a radio station and says "fellow
countrymen". I hope that this book will find its way into all university
libraries throughout this country, to all secondary school library and
abroad. I appeal to the media to give this book a comprehensive and desired
review.
The more I open
the book, the more I see something to talk about. This book is going to
represent one of those chapters in the tragedy of Nigeria. This book is just like
horror film because the instability which was started in I966 ... because
many of the coups are what I'll call commercial coups. If anything at all, we
have to learn a great lesson from this book and also learn a lesson on what
happened, who failed or succeed in their coups. When it succeeds. They call
it glorious revolution. But when it fails, it is called treason. It is my
honour and privilege to present this great and historic book. One of the
things I like about the book is the language of the author. He's someone who
speaks Englishman's English. He writes Queen's English. Very lucid, very
flowing.
Brief Notes On Nigeria ( http://www.onlinenigeria.com/history.asp)
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This original article, titled “Lugard And Colonial Nigeria – Towards
An Identity?” was written by the great historian, Michael Crowder – History
Today, February 1986, Vol. 36, pp 23 – 29. I am again merely reproducing
this fine piece that throws more light on the feud and rivalry between our
colonial administrators and which seem to have been passed down to us, and is
the causative of most of the ethnic distrust and problems that still exist in
Nigeria today. I am sure many Nigerians, especially historians, have read
this article, but then, most of us who are not students of history might not
have come across it. Certainly, I had not, until quite recently, and it was a
fascinating read and knowledge. It is a long article, but I hope you will
take your time to read through and enjoy this part of our history....Akintokunbo
Adejumo
Here we go:
(“More like
sovereign heads of state than servants of the same British Crown” – the
rivalry and ‘diplomacy’ of imperial proconsuls hampered the creation of Nigeria
between 1900 and 1914)
Lugard’s
arrival at Calabar on a tour of the Central and Eastern Provinces, Dec. 1912
DIPLOMACY IS NOT
AN ACTIVITY usually associated with colonies or colonial officials. By
definition colonies were not sovereign states and where relations with other
countries were concerned, these were conducted for them by their imperial
governments. Likewise, the colonial official did not ‘represent’ his country
in his colony, even when he bore a diplomatic title like that of ‘Resident’
in Northern Nigeria, but rather exercised power on its behalf over people who
had lost their sovereignty.
Given this, a
special problem arose as to how to conduct relations between colonies
occupied by the same metropolitan power that were territorially contiguous
but administered as separate entities. To take Africa as an example, Britain after the First World war had nine
contiguous colonies in East, Central and Southern Africa, while France had
seventeen in Northern, Western and Equatorial Africa. How were conflicts of
interest between neighbouring countries administered by the same colonial
power to be solved, or projects of mutual economic interest to be advanced?
The French partially solved this problem by placing their West African
colonies under a Governor-General in Dakar, and their Equatorial African
colonies under a Governor-General in Brazzaville, thus reducing the potential
areas of inter-colonial conflict to those between the French Equatorial
Federation and the French West African Federation, and between the latter and
the French North African possessions of Morocco and Algeria, with which it
had common borders. The British, who delegated more power to their proconsuls
in Africa than did the French, expected them
to settle any disputes that might arise between them on the spot, keeping the
overworked and understaffed Colonial Office informed of results, but only in
the last resort referring to it for arbitration.
The three
contiguous British territories of the Niger – the Lagos Colony and
Protectorate, and the Protectorates of Northern and Southern Nigeria –
provide a fascinating case study of the way in which these contiguous British
administrations conducted relations with each other very much as would
friendly (and sometimes not so friendly) sovereign states with particular
concerns, boundaries and ways of life to defend. Before the Protectorate of
Northern Nigeria was formally proclaimed in 1900, it was declared British
policy to amalgamate it with its southern neighbours. The fact it took
fourteen years to amalgamate them, was in large part due to often bitter
‘diplomatic’ wrangles between their respective officials, and the way these
officials perceived their colonies as ‘countries’ with special interests
which it was their business to protect. Sir Frederick Lugard, as High
Commissioner of the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria, highlighted the
anomalies of this situation when he wrote to Sir William MacGregor, Governor
of the Lagos Colony and Protectorate, over the boundary between the two
British territories in March, 1902:
"I venture
to remind Your Excellency that though, in my opinion, it matters little where
the exact frontier is placed, since both Protectorates are British, since
before long it is your hope and mine that they will become still more closely
connected, and since I have the good fortune to have succeeded in working in
co-operation and harmony with Your Excellency, still I have an obligation no
less than that which you so strongly feel yourself to safeguard the
traditional and just rights of the chiefs within my administration".
The three
British colonial possessions of the Niger that were amalgamated between 1906
and 1914 each had a different origin which helped determine the specific
character they quickly developed under their British administrators. The
oldest of the three was the Lagos Colony and Protectorate, dating back to
1861 when the British occupied the island-port of Lagos to put an end to its involvement in
the slave trade and to protect British commercial and evangelical interests
in the hinterland. The subsequent occupation of its hinterland was
accomplished in the last decade of the nineteenth century, mainly peacefully
through treaties with the kings of the Yoruba states who made up this largely
ethnically homogenous, though politically fragmented, territory. A
substantial group of Yoruba-speaking people were, however, included in the
Northern Protectorate since in the early nineteenth century they had
incorporated into Ilorin,
one of the constituent emirates of the great Sokoto Caliphate, whose lands
comprised nearly two-thirds of that Protectorate. A small group of Yoruba
were to be found in the extreme western areas of the Southern Nigerian
Protectorate. Lagos island itself and a small part of the mainland had the
status of a Crown Colony with its own Executive and Legislative Council
established at the time of the British occupation in 1861, while the larger
hinterland was a British Protectorate.
Top
Left: Sir William MacGregor, Governor of the Lagos Colony and Protectorate
Right:
Sir Frederick Lugard, High Commissioner for the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria
Bottom
Left: Sir Percy Girouard, Lugard’s successor in the North.
To the east of
the Lagos Colony and Protectorate lay the Protectorate of Southern Nigeria,
much of which in 1900 still had to be conquered or, in British colonial
parlance, ‘pacified’. This Protectorate, formed from the old Niger Coast
Protectorate and part of the lands of the Royal Niger Company, whose status
as a Charter Company with the right to administer territory on behalf of the
Crown had been withdrawn the year before, comprised a multitude of different
ethnic groups. Its origins went back to the mid-nineteenth century when
British consular officials began to exercise authority over certain coastal
states in an attempt to suppress the slave trade and protect the interests of
British palm-oil merchants. It was ruled from Old Calabar in the far south-eastern
corner of the territory by Sir Ralph Moor.
The Protectorate
of Northern Nigeria, proclaimed on January 1st, 1900, when the British flag
was hoisted at Lokoja at the confluence of the Benue and the Niger, was formed from lands claimed, and to a
much lesser extent administered, by the Royal Niger Company along the Niger and Benue
river valleys and to the north of them. Sir Frederick Lugard, who had earlier
secured some of these territories for the Company, now became the
Protectorate’s founding High Commissioner. As Margery Perham, his biographer
wrote:
"A colonial
governor can seldom have been appointed to a territory so much of which had
never even been viewed by himself or any other European".
It may seem
curious that so soon after their conquest, and given the arbitrary nature of
their boundaries and the heterogeneity of the peoples and polities enclosed
within them, these British-created colonies could even be thought of in terms
of countries. Yet, within a short space of time, their respective colonial
administrations had imposed on them a separate, albeit British-derived
identity, in terms of differing legal systems, administrative organisation
and patterns of economic development. The administrators of these three
territories saw them as having the attributes of countries and, if they were
to be amalgamated, as all were agreed they eventually should, this should be
done on terms that were in no way disadvantageous to their individual
interests.
The actual
decision to amalgamate the British territories on the Niger had
been taken as early as 1898 by a six member Niger Committee. The Colonial
Office was represented by the Earl of Selbourne and Mr Reginald Antrobus; the
Foreign Office, which was still responsible for the Niger Coast Protectorate,
by Sir Clement Hill; while the Niger Territories themselves were represented
by Sir Henry McCallum, Governor of Lagos, Sir Ralph Moor, Consul-General of
the Niger Coast Protectorate, and Sir George Goldie, head of the Royal Niger
Company, part of whose territories were to make up the future Protectorate of
Northern Nigeria.
All were agreed
that the long term goal should be the amalgamation of the three territories.
For the present this was impractical because of lack of communications and
the problem of the climate which dictated the appointment of younger men as
senior administrators and would make it difficult to find a man with
sufficient seniority to oversee all three territories. At this early stage,
differences of opinion began to emerge between the British officials on the
spot as to what form the organisation should take. Moor favoured the
immediate amalgamation of Lagos and the Niger
Coast Protectorate under one administration as the Maritime Province.
McCallum, who had initially favoured the idea, subsequently formed the
‘decided opinion’ that it would be impossible under the present conditions
for one man to rule effectively over the whole of the suggested Maritime Province. Antrobus agreed with
McCallum that it would be difficult to put the two southern administrations
under one government, ‘although if communications were easier there would no
doubt be advantages in doing so’.
Chamberlain, as
Secretary of State for Colonies, accepted that for the time being there
should be three territories, so in 1900, with the declaration of the British
protectorate of Northern Nigeria, the renaming of the Niger Coast
Protectorate as the Protectorate of Southern Nigeria and the retention of the
Lagos Colony and Protectorate as a separate administrative entity, there were
established three British administrations on the Niger whose long-term goal
was amalgamation. But as the Nigerian historian and administrator, Isaac N
Okonjo, so shrewdly observed:
"Not for
the last time were British political officers to identify themselves too
closely with the interests of the region of Nigeria in which they served and
which they had grown to love at the expense of the wider interest of the
country as a whole".
The principle
source of friction between the three territories on the Niger was the
demarcation of their boundaries with each other. Indeed sometimes
negotiations over these were more difficult of settlement than those over
their frontiers with their French and German neighbours. Certainly the latter
sets of boundaries were more speedily determined. Indeed some stretches of
boundary between the northern and southern protectorates had not been fixed
by the time of their amalgamation in 1914.
The principal
source of friction lay on the boundary between Northern Nigeria on the one
hand and the Lagos
and Southern Protectorate on the other. The acrimony that developed between
MacGregor of Lagos and Lugard of the North over the towns of Kishi and Saki
underlines the fact that these British officials acted as though they were
representing separate states, not colonies belonging to the same colonial
power. Kishi and Saki were Yoruba towns with which Lugard, when an official
of the Royal Niger Company, had made treaties. Now, as High Commissioner of
Northern Nigeria, which had inherited the northern territories of the RNC, he
considered these two towns properly belonged to him. Furthermore, he
considered these relatively populous towns essential as bases for the
opening-up of the less populous non-Yoruba country to their north, known as
Borgu, which was clearly part of his domain. MacGregor argued that both Saki
and Kishi traditionally paid allegiance to the Yoruba ruler of Oyo, which
clearly lay in his domain, and therefore, they should come under his
jurisdiction.
As early as
April 1900, with Lugard’s agreement, Macgregor set off on journeys into parts
of Yorubaland claimed by the North. Not only did MacGregor pass on to the
Colonial Office complaints made by Yoruba towns he claimed for Lagos about
‘forcible and harmful interference by officers of Northern Nigeria, of whom
our boundary natives stand in unreasonable and unreasoning dread’, but he
alleged that these border towns had also a ‘great dread of being transferred
to Northern Nigeria’. MacGregor also wrote that he considered that he had
already ‘shown that it is impossible for Lagos to cede Kishi’ (The author’s
italics).
Lugard, who
considered MacGregor over-solicitous of, and deferential to, his ‘native
chiefs’. Was particularly annoyed at the charges laid against his officers. Indeed
he wrote to MacGregor that apart from not feeling it necessary to represent
to the Secretary of state complaints against or adverse reports upon Lagos officials: ‘….I
deprecate allowing natives to practice their traditional policy of playing
off the officials of one Administration against that of the other’. Even so,
Lugard has MacGregor’s charges investigated and one of the border officials,
Pierce M Dwyer, Assistant Resident in Ilorin, assured him ‘that during my
period of service in Illorin [sic] I have been most careful to refrain from
any act that might be considered by the Lagos Government as interference’.
The boundary
disputes between Moor and Lugard were no less acrimonious. The basic
differences between the t were summed up by Captain Woodruffe, one of the
Southern Boundary Commissioners, who held that they:
"Arose from
the fact that from the Northern Nigerian point of view, geographical
considerations were of little or no importance….further….the Political
Officer, Northern Nigeria, stated that he did not see what race, Native
Custom and tradition had to do with the question as he, personally, did not
consider the natives had any feelings of sentiment or cling to customs and
laws they and the people before them were used to, and further, in his
opinion that if any natives were ordered by one Government or the other to go
either North of South they would do so".
The Southern
Boundary Commissioner, by contrast, considered that ‘natives were very much
in the habit of maintaining their old allegiance, however slight’.
Although Moor
and Lugard signed an agreement with regard to their boundary west of the Niger, they were unable to settle that east of
the Niger.
They did, however, come to an understanding as to what was for the time-being
workable, and agreed joint patrols along their undefined borders because the
‘natives’ in the area were not yet ‘pacified’. But the divisions between them
were too deep. In the event Lugard appealed to the Secretary of State for a
ruling, talking about the question of transfer of lands in terms of
‘cession’. Meanwhile he assured Moor that he had not been ‘activated by
hunger for land’.
Matters were
easier on the Lagos-Southern Nigerian Protectorate frontier. But even though
disputes concerned matters of much less moment, such as the position of a
marker point in a river, they were sometimes referred home. As Bull minuted
to Antrobus on Moor’s despatch about the markers:
"It is
merely a question of words, and it is a little surprising that a man of Sir R
Moor’s capacity should have referred home on such a point, when he has been
told that Mr Chamberlain is prepared to agree to anything he may settle with
OAG (Officer Administering the Government) Lagos in this matter. But these internal
boundary questions, though trivial, have a knack of bringing out the most
businesslike characteristics of all three administrators of Nigeria".
While the
objective of amalgamating the three Nigerian territories had been established
by the Niger Committee from the outset, no time limit had been set for its
achievement. The Committee did, however, recommend that the three territories
form a Customs Union pending amalgamation, and Lugard, before assuming duties
in the North, had proposed in 1899 that he would adopt the same ‘customs,
regulations and management’ as Southern Nigeria and Lagos ‘in so far as they
are applicable to an inland territory’. But once out in Northern Nigeria, Lugard established a customs policy
of his own. Tolls were imposed on goods entering the Northern Protectorate by
road from the Southern Protectorate, though goods shipped along the rivers Niger and Benue
went free. The African merchants of Lagos were
particularly resentful of these tolls and of their status as ‘aliens’ in Northern Nigeria. Indeed by the terms of the Land
Proclamation of 1900, no-one who was not a native of the Northern
Protectorate could directly or indirectly acquire interest in and rights over
land within the Protectorate from a ‘native’ without the consent, in writing,
of the High Commissioner.
But this did not
mean that Lugard was against amalgamation, indeed, for Lugard, ruling over
the newest and largest of the three territories, amalgamation was, curiously,
the most urgent. In the first place, Northern Nigeria
was landlocked and could therefore; earn no direct revenue from duties on
imports or exports. Instead the Southern Nigeria Protectorate made an annual
grant of £34,000 in respect of the duties it was estimated it would be able
to raise if it had its own port; but the Southern administration protested
that effectively only £12,000 would in reality have been raised on the volume
of external trade emanating from the North. In the second place much of the
North was still outside administrative control and Lugard required an
Imperial Grant-in-Aide to complete its conquest and establish his
administration. This subjected him to a degree of metropolitan control that
the two Southern Protectorates did not suffer. If he could amalgamate with a
southern territory with sufficient a surplus in its revenue to cover his
deficit, he would be relieved of irksome control by an Imperial Treasury that
held that all colonial dependencies should pay their own way. MacGregor and
Moor were equally anxious to amalgamate with the North so the railway that
they both planned to extend from their seaboard to the interior could thus
penetrate and open up their natural hinterlands without hindrance.
Map of
Nigeria before amalgamation showing the three Protectorates and Provinces
(Akintokunbo
Adejumo: Please note the Cameroon
border and relate to Bakassi
Province today)
As far as the
Colonial Office was concerned, the main stumbling block on the road to
amalgamation was ‘the personalities of the administrators of the three
provinces’. Nevertheless in 1903 a major step towards amalgamation of the two
coastal protectorates was taken when Sir Ralph Moor was replaced by Sir
Walter Egerton, who was appointed simultaneously Governor of the Lagos Colony
and Protectorate and of the Protectorate of Southern Nigeria. Even so it took
some three years to bring the two territories together because Egerton seemed
to take the sides of both parties to the proposed union and wrote in 1905 to
Lyttleton at the Colonial Office that the future amalgamation of Northern
Nigeria and Southern Nigeria would be:
"Much
simpler than that between Lagos and Southern Nigeria, for the different
systems of government, laws, and methods adopted in the latter two
administrations forbid a complete union for some time to come".
Thus he proposed
to the Colonial Office a form of amalgamation of Lagos
and Southern Nigeria that approximated to a
confederation with separate institutions.
The two Southern
protectorates were finally and, at Colonial Office insistence, fully
amalgamated on February 26th, 1906, to become the Colony and Protectorate of
Southern Nigeria with its capital at Lagos.
Meanwhile disputes between the Northern and Southern Protectorates continued
unabated particularly in matters of railway policy and boundaries. Indeed
these two areas of potential conflict became inextricably bound up as the Lagos line began to cross the frontier into Northern Nigeria.
Lugard’s
successor, Sir Percy Girouard, was first and foremost a railway engineer and
administrator, with experience in the Sudan,
Egypt and South Africa.
His appointment was a temporary one and had been made with a view to bringing
some rationale into plans to join up the Lagos line with the Northern line.
By the time he
took up his appointment Girouard found that the two Nigerias had
rival railway projects. From the port
of Lagos the Southern Nigerian
administration was building a 3’ 6” gauge line northwards to the Niger at Jebba in Northern territory. Meanwhile Lugard had
been planning a 2’ 6” line from Kano to Baro
on the Niger which would
enable him to ship produce without passing through Southern Nigerian
territory since under the terms of the Berlin Convention of 1885 the Niger was an
international waterway.
The Southern
Nigerian Government did not want its railway to be subject to Northern
control even when it passed through the latter’s territory. Egerton therefore
urged that the area of Northern Nigeria southwest of the Niger be
transferred to his administration. But Girouard would have none of this,
being as protective of Northern interests as his predecessor (Lugard). Almost
as if to add insult to injury, the Colonial Office ruled that the rich
Southern Protectorate should provide the deficit-ridden Northern Protectorate
with the funds to finance its Baro line, since in any case the two
protectorates were destined shortly to be amalgamated. But he did gain two
major concessions: there was to be no hold-up in the construction of his own
line to meet up with the Northern line near Zungeru, the northern capital,
and more important still, the Northern line should be of similar gauge to his
own so there would be no difficulty in transferring good from one line to the
other. Otherwise had the Northern line remained at 2’ 6” gauge, it would have
favoured onward carriage of northern goods from Zungeru to Baro rather than Lagos even at the time of the year when only shallow
draft steamers could operate on the Niger. But Egerton was to lose
his other argument that at least he should have control of the land on either
side of his railway as it passed through Northern territory.
Right up to the
eve of amalgamation of the Northern and Southern Protectorates wrangles
between their respective administrations over control of the northern sector
of the Lagos line continued with the North accusing the South of refusing to
book goods bound for Jebba and shipment down the Niger and the South accusing
the North of giving preferential treatment to those who chose to export goods
via Baro and the Niger rather than through Lagos.
Construction
of the Kano-Lagos railway in progress near Kaduna in 1910
Apart from the
major territorial claim made by Egerton to the Kabba and Ilorin provinces, disputes over the
demarcation of the existing boundary between the North and the South
continued. However, they never reached the acrimony that had existed between
Lugard and MacGregor, and then his successor Egerton, which culminated in
Lugard writing to the Under Secretary of State for Colonies when he was on
leave in Abinger before taking up his post in Hong Kong:
If Sir Walter
Egerton intends forthwith to carry out his own view [with regard to the
frontier] and will send his own officer to lay out a line in accordance with
them [it will compel] the Government of Northern Nigeria to oppose such a
course of action by force or refer the matter to the Secretary of State for a
decision.
The most bitter
dispute was along the boundary eastward from the Niger to the border with German
Kamerun. Once again we see that the administrations of the two Protectorates
had come to regard themselves as representing separate countries with
distinct identities. One sector of the boundary divided the Tiv people, one
of Nigeria’s
largest ‘minority’ groups. Girouard urged that the whole of Tiv country
should be brought under his administration. To this Egerton replied that,
since they were a ‘pagan’ people, ‘very similar to other pagan races in Southern Nigeria’, the reverse should be the case.
‘Southern Nigeria Officers have infinitely greater experience in the
treatment of the Pagan peoples, in their habits and methods of government
than Northern Nigeria officials …’ In urging the Colonial Office to transfer
Tiv country to Southern Nigeria he added a number of other claims, notably
Ilorin:
"Sir Percy
Girouard and myself, however, hold very opposite views regarding the
development of Northern Nigeria. Sir Percy
is content to develop the country without assistance from outside and demurs
to the entry of Southern Nigeria natives. I,
on the other hand, think that equilibrium between revenue and expenditure can
be best effected by encouraging intercourse between the North and
South….."
At this time,
the Tiv were still resisting the imposition of British rule. Since they were
divided between the two administrations both were engaged in ‘punitive
expeditions’ against them. Here Egerton stipulated that he did not wish
Southern Nigeria troops to be involved in operations in Northern
Tivland. Tiredly, Bull in the Colonial Office minuted to a
colleague: ‘As one expected, he (Egerton) is very jealous of the boundary
between Southern and Northern Nigeria.’
Particularly
galling to Egerton and his Southern Nigerian subjects were the taxes that
continued to be imposed on them when trading in the Northern Protectorate.
They resented being treated as though they were foreigners there. Their alien
status in that territory was re-emphasised in 1910 by the Land and Native
Rights Proclamation which gave the Northern administration control over
immigration from the south by with-holding the grant of a certificate of
occupancy or by attaching restrictive conditions to a grant, or by
threatening to revoke it.
In the Colonial
Office the principle of eventual amalgamation had never been in question: the
real problem was to find the man capable of undertaking it. The matter had
achieved an urgency in recent years because of what Okonjo has called,
somewhat melodramatically, the collapse of the Southern Nigerian
Administration in the face of activities of lawyers. Egerton put the position
as seen by his administration succinctly in a letter to Lord Crewe, the
Colonial Secretary. Although the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court extended
throughout the Southern Protectorate he considered that its most backward
parts were:
"Quite
unfitted for so highly organised jurisdiction, little inconvenience and
liaison resulted from its introduction until the advent within the last few
years of native barristers from Sierra Leone and the Gold Coast who have
adopted the habit of sending their agents through the country touting for
cases and inducing towns, which before the advent of civil control, would
have fought over matters, to pay them extortionate fees to bring suits in the
Supreme Court…..Naked savages are now, through the agency of lawyers,
bringing cases before the Supreme Court."
These lawyers,
Okonjo convincingly argues, succeeded in hamstringing the administration to
such an extent that in places it came to a standstill. The Northern Nigerian
Government had taken powers from the beginning to exclude barristers from the
Provincial Courts of the Protectorate. Thus, when Lugard, coming to the end
of his term as Governor of Hong Kong in 1911, indicated that he would be
willing to undertake the task of amalgamating the two Nigerias, he
seemed the ideal choice. Matured by years, and with direct experience of
administering Northern Nigeria, which he had
done so much to build and which ran so smoothly compared with the disarray in
which its southern counterpart found itself, he appeared to be as likely as
anyone to be able to join the two parts into an effective whole.
The consequences
for Nigeria’s
long-term political development of the formula Lugard chose need not concern
us here except in two respects. The first is that not surprisingly Lugard’s
amalgamation largely involved imposing on Southern
Nigeria the administrative and judicial systems of the North.
The second was that the amalgamation was only a partial one. Whereas the
Colonial Office has overruled Egerton’s scheme for partial amalgamation of
the two southern territories in 1906, they allowed Lugard’s scheme to go
ahead. He received a number of suggestions as to how the huge Northern
Protectorate might be broken up to give the constituent units of the new Nigeria
greater balance. But Lugard had created Northern Nigeria
and he was clearly not prepared to see his ‘country’ lose its identity. The
farthest he was prepared to go was to suggest a return to the pre-1906
situation by re-establishing the former Lagos Colony and Protectorate as a
separate constituent unit of amalgamated Nigeria.
As it was,
Lugard’s amalgamation was more like a loose federation of two countries, each
of which retained its own administration, headed by a Lieutenant-Governor
with his own Secretariat, budget and departments. Only Posts and Telegraphs,
Survey, Audit, Judiciary and Military were centralised under Lugard as
Governor-General. Southerners continued to be treated as aliens in the north.
The consequences of this partial amalgamation were to haunt Nigeria for
the next fifty years and many would argue that the Nigerian civil war had its
roots in the form of amalgamation Lugard imposed on the country.
The amalgamation
of the three British territories on the Niger, agreed in principle in
1898, took nearly sixteen years to achieve because the administrators of
these territories often behaved more like sovereign heads of state than
servants of the same British Crown. They and their subordinate officials
conducted relations with each other as though they were dealing with foreign
governments rather than neighbouring British administrations whose frontiers
had been largely arbitrarily delimited and were soon to be joined together as
one unit.
From a rational
point of view these frontiers should have been of as little consequences as
those between British counties. As it was the most disputes between the three
administrators on the Niger
were over borders, the very stuff of diplomacy. Rational economic
co-operation between them was bedevilled not by irredentism on the part of
the inhabitants who had been unwillingly enclosed by the colonial frontiers,
but of their colonial overloads. British officials identified fiercely with
the colonies they had been sent out to govern and serve in, as fiercely as
they had with their public schools or universities. Thus Sylvia Leith-Ross,
sailing out to Nigeria
for the first time in 1907 with her husband who was the Chief Transport
Officer in the Northern Protectorate, was surprised to find that the Purser
would never dream of placing Northern and Southern officials at the same
table. The ‘Northerners’ looked down on the ‘Southerners’ who they considered
flabby and who began drinking at 6pm, whereas they did not start until
6.30pm.
What is so
remarkable about these ‘national identities’ is that they took root so
quickly, feeding of course on existing ethnic and religious differences, and
were used as we have seen to defend one British territory against encroachment
– territorial or economic – by the other, even though they were soon to be
joined together. By giving so much autonomy to their proconsuls, the British
Colonial Office made amalgamation most difficult of realisation and brought
about a situation in which in their conduct of relations with each other,
they were bound to act more like heads of state than civil servants of the
same government department – which of course, they were.
The
doctor starting his morning rounds by railroad, Ilorin, October 1912
FOR
FURTHER READING: This article is based primarily on the relevant papers of the
Colonial Office held in the Public Records Office at Kew.
Margery Perham, Lugard: The Years of Authority 1899-1945 (Collins, 1960);
Isaac M Okonjo, Administration in Nigeria 1900-1950 (New York, 1974); T K
Tamuno, The Evolution of the Nigerian State: The Southern Phase, 1898-1914
(Longman, 1972); Robert Heussler, The British in Northern Nigeria (Oxford
University Press, 1968); A.H.M. Kirk-Greene ed., Lugard and the Amalgamation
of Nigeria: a documentary record, London, 1968.
This article is reproduced from Lugard And Colonial Nigeria
– Towards An Identity?
By Michael Crowder – History Today, February 1986,
Vol. 36, pp 23 – 29
Michael
Crowder was born in London on 9 June 1934 and educated at Mill Hill
School. During his
national service he was seconded to the Nigeria Regiment (1953-1954). He
gained a 1st class honours degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE)
at Hertford College,
Oxford University in 1957. He returned to Lagos to become first Editor of Nigeria Magazine,
1959-1962, and then Secretary at the Institute
of African Studies at the University of Ibadan. In 1964-1965 he was Visiting
Lecturer in African History at the University
of California, Berkeley,
and in 1965-1967 was Director of the Institute
of African Studies at Fourah Bay
College, University of Sierra
Leone.
From 1968 to
1978 he was based in Nigeria again, first as Research Professor and Director
of the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ife, then from 1971
as Professor of History at the Ahmadu Bello University (also becoming
Director of its Centre for Nigerian Cultural Studies, 1972-1975) and finally
as Research Professor in History at the Centre for Cultural Studies at the
University of Lagos, 1975-1978. He returned to London in 1979 to become editor of the
British magazine History Today and is credited with making a significant
contribution to the survival and then success of the magazine as it now is.
He remained a Consultant Editor up to his death.
He returned to
the academic world as Visiting Fellow at the Centre for International Studies
at the LSE, 1981-82, and then as Professor of History at the University of
Botswana, 1982-85. From 1985 until his death he was Joint Editor of the
Journal of African History. In 1986 he became Visiting Professor in Black
Studies at Amherst College,
Massachusetts, USA
and Honorary Professorial Fellow and General Editor of the British Documents
on the End of Empire Project at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies (ICS).
His death on 14 August 1988 was marked by obituaries in the four major daily London newspapers and
in many academic journals.
For a
bibliography [incomplete] of Crowder's works, see J.F. Ade Ajayi & John
D.Y. Peel (eds.), People and Empires in African History: Essays in Memory of
Michael Crowder (London, Longman 1992) pp.x-xiv. His major publications
include: The Story of Nigeria (1962, 4ed. 1977); West Africa under Colonial
Rule (London, Hutchinson 1968); jt.ed., The History of West Africa (London,
Longman 2 vols 1971-74, 2 ed. 1985-87); West African Resistance (London,
Hutchinson 1971); Nigeria: an Introduction to its History (London, Longman
1979); ed. Cambridge History of Africa, vol. VIII (CUP 1984);'I want to be
taught how to govern, not to be taught how to be governed': Tshekedi Khama
and the opposition to the British administration in the Bechuanaland
Protectorate, 1926-30 (University of Malawi 1984); The Flogging of Phinehas
McIntosh: a tale of colonial folly and injustice - Bechuanaland, 1933 (New
Haven, Yale University Press 1988); with N. Parsons, eds., Monarch of All I
Survey: Bechuanaland Diaries, 1929-37 by Sir Charles Rey (Gaborone and New
York 1988).
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Tuesday, 13 August 2013
The Amalgamation Of Nigeria Was A Fraud
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