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Nigeria, its
leoples and Its problems
3 1924 028 648 974
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NIGERIA
ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
(Copyi'iglU.'
A BORGU CANOE-MAN.
(Photii by All'. H. Finuiii.
b'rvntispicce.
NIGERIA
ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
BY
E. D. MOREL
EDITOR OF '*THE AFRICAN MAIL*'
AUTHOR OF "affairs OF WEST AFRICA," "tHE BRITISH CASE IN FRENCH CONGO,'
'*KiNG Leopold's rule in Africa," "red rubber," •* great Britain
AND the CONGO," "tHE FUTURE OF THE CONGO," ETC.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS
LONDON
SMITH, ELDER & CO., 15, WATERLOO PLACE
1911
All rights reserved
TO THE MEMORY
OF
MARY KINGSLEY
WHO POINTED THE WAY
PREFACE
I HAVE to express, in the first place, my indebtedness to
the Editor and Management of the Times and of the
Manchester Guardian for permission to reproduce the
articles and maps which appeared in the columns of those
newspapers, and to all those who have so generously
helped me to overcome an accident to my camera by
placing their own admirable photographic work at my
disposal.
In the second place, I desire to record my sincere
appreciation for the courtesy I received from the Colonial
Ofiice in connection with a recent visit to Nigeria ; and
to Sir Walter and Lady Egerton, Sir Henry Hesketh Bell,
Mr. Charles Temple (Acting-Governor of Northern Nigeria)
and their Staffs for the kindness and hospitality extended
to me while there.
Also to the Management and Staff of the Southern and
Northern Nigeria railways ; in particular to the Director
of the Public Works Department of the Northern Pro-
tectorate, Mr. John Eaglesome and to Mrs. Eaglesome,
and to Mr. Firmin, the Resident Engineer of the Southern
Nigeria line at Jebba.
My travels in the country were facilitated in every
way possible, and the kindness everywhere shown me in
both Protectorates far transcended any claim which
ordinary courtesy to a stranger might have suggested.
To the British merchants established in Nigeria I am
.under similar obligations, more particularly to Messrs.
John Holt & Co., Ltd., who were good enough to place
their steamers at my disposal. To Messrs. Elder Dempster
& Co. I am similarly indebted.
My special thanks are due to my friends Mr. and
Mrs. William A. Cadbury and Mr. John Holt and bis
vii A 2
PREFACE
sons, for much personal kindness in connection with my
journey. I am indebted to Mr. Trigge, of the Niger
Company, Mr. W. H. Himbury, of the British Cotton
Growing Association, and many others who have
responded with unwearied patience to my importunate
questionings.
I have also to express my sense of obligation to the
Native Community of Lagos — Christian, Mohammedan
and Pagan — for the cordial public reception they accorded
to me in that place ; and for the address with which they
were good enough to present me. Also to the leading
Native gentlemen of Freetown for the kind hospitality
they extended to me during my short stay at the capital of
Sierra Leone, and to the Mohammedan Chiefs representing
many different tribes of the hinterland, who there fore-
gathered, under Dr. Blyden's roof, to bid me welcome,
and for the addresses they presented to me.
West Africa is a land of controversy. There is not, I
think, any question of public interest concerned with it
that does not give rise to acute differences of opinion into
which some influence — the climate, perhaps — and the fact
that the country is going through a difficult transition
stage, seems not infrequently to infuse a measure of
bitterness. I fear it is unavoidable that some of the
opinions expressed in this volume, if they give pleasure in
certain quarters, will give displeasure in others. I can
only ask those who may be affected in the latter sense to
believe that the writer has really had no other object in
view than that of setting forth the facts as he saw them,
and to draw from those facts the inferences which com-
mended themselves to a judgment no doubt full of im-
perfections, but able, at any rate, to claim sincerity as its
guiding motive.
E. D, Morel.
August, 1911.
VUl
INTRODUCTION
My chief object in presenting to the public in book form a
collection of articles recently published in the Times * as
revised, together with additional matter, has been that of
increasing — if haply this should be the effect — ^public
interest in the greatest and most interesting of our tropical
African Protectorates. It has been my endeavour through-
out not to overload the story with detail, but to paint, or
try to paint, a picture of Nigeria as it is to-day ; to portray
the life of its people, the difficulties and tasks of its British
governors, and the Imperial responsibilities the nation has
contracted in assuming control over this vast region.
Parts II., III., and IV. consist of an attempt at a
serious study of these things.
Part I. consists of a mere series of pen and ink sketches,
so to speak ; impressions jotted down in varying moods.
The value, if, indeed, they have any value at all, of these
disjointed ramblings lies in the glimpse they may afford
of native character and the nature of the country, thus
helping, perhaps, to bring Nigeria a little nearer to us.
I ought, perhaps, to apologize for not having incorpo-
rated a history of the British occupation of Nigeria. But,
apart from the circumstance that Captain Orr, now
Colonial Secretary for Cyprus, and for many years Resident
in Northern Nigeria, is, I understand, about to publish a
volume on that subject written with the inside knowledge
* With the exception of the articles on Cotton, which appeared in the
Manchester Guardian.
ix
INTRODUCTION
which he so peculiarly possesses : the thing has already
been done by others.
It seemed to me that if any public utility at all were
to be attached to my own modest effort, it could more
fittingly be sought in the direction of handling, from an
independent outsider's point of view, problems of actuality
in their setting of existing circumstances and conditions ;
and in emphasizing a fact sometimes apt to be forgotten,
I mean that in these Dependencies the Native is the im-
portant person to be considered, quite as much from the
Imperial as from any other standpoint, interpreting
Imperialism as personally I interpret it, to signify a good
deal more than painting the map red and indulging in
tall talk about " possessions " and about " inferior races."
In Nigeria, the Nigerian is not, as some persons appear to
regard him, merely an incidental factor but the paramount
factor. Nigeria is not a Colony ; it is a Dependency.
The West African native has two classes of enemies, one
positive, the other unconscious. The ranks of both are
not only recruited from members of the white race : they
are to be found among members of the West African's own
household. The first class corresponds to the school of
European thought concerning tropical Africa, whose
adherents object to the West African being a land-owner,
and whose doctrine it is that in the economic development
of the country the profits should be the exclusive appanage
of the white race, the native's role being that of labourer
and wage-earner for all time.
In the fulfilment of the role thus assigned to him, some
of the adherents of this school, those with the longest
sight, would be quite prepared to treat the individual
native well ; others would cheerfully impose their will by
brutal violence. That is a temperamental affair which
does not touch the essence of the deeper issue.
To this class of enemies belong some of the educated or
half-educated Europeanized natives whom our educational
X
INTRODUCTION
and religious system divorces from their race, and
who, having no outlet and bereft of national or racial
pride, betray the interests of their country into the hands
of its foes.
The second class is to be met with among the ranks of
those who, by striking at slavery and abuse, have rendered
enormous benefit to the West African, but who were also
unwittingly responsible for fastening upon his neck a heavy
yoke, and who, not only with no motive of self-interest,
but, on the contrary, with the most generous desire to
minister to his welfare, are to-day in danger of ministering
to his undoing. It is not easy to affix any particular label
to those influences which, in the political field, contributed
so powerfully in handing over the Congo to Leopold II.
(afterwards strenuously co-operating in freeing its peoples
from his grasp) and in placing two million West Africans
in Liberia under the pettily tyrannous incompetence of a
handful of American Blacks. They are partly educational,
partly philanthropic, partly religious. The basis of senti-
ment animating them appears to be that a kindness is
being done to the West African by the bestowal upon him
of European culture, law, religion and dress, and that,
having thus unmade him as an African, those responsible
are in duty bound to support the product of their own
creation in its automatic and inevitable revolt against
authority, whether represented by the Native Ruler or by
the European Administrator. In the form it at present
takes, and in the circumstances too often accompanjdng
it, this is not a kindness but a cruel wrong.
Let me try to make my meaning perfectly clear in
regard to this latter case. I make no attack upon any
organization or body. I criticize the trend of certain
influences, and I willingly admit, as all must do, even those
who most dread their effects, that these influences have
their origin in centres imbued with genuine altruism.
Also that of one side of them nothing but good can be
xi
INTRODUCTION
said — the destructive side, the side which is ever prepared
to respond to the call of human suffering. Neither do I
suggest that education can, or should be, arrested. I
simply lay down this double proposition. First, that
educational and allied influences, whose combined effect
is to cause the West African to lose his racial identity,
must produce unhappiness and unrest of a kind which is
not susceptible of evolving a compensating constructive
side. Secondly, that in no period of time which can be
forecast, will the condition of West African society
permit of the supreme governing power being shared
by both races, although short of the casting vote, so to
speak, policy should everywhere be directed towards
consolidating and strengthening Native authority.
Still less do I make any reflection upon the educated
West African as such. Among these Westernized Natives
are men to be regarded with the utmost respect, for they
have achieved the well-nigh insuperable. They have
succeeded, despite all, in remaining African in heart and
sentiment ; and in retaining their dignity in the midst of
difficulties which only the most sympathetic alien mind
can appreciate, and, even so, not wholly. To Mary
Kingsley alone, perhaps, was it given to probe right down
to the painful complexities of their position as only a
woman, and a gifted woman, specially endowed, could do.
Of such men the great Fanti lawyer, John Mensah Sarbah,
whose recent and premature death is a calamity for West
Africa, was one of the best types. The venerable Dr. E.
Wilmot Blyden, whose race will regard him some day as
its misunderstood prophet, is another. One could name
others. Perchance their numbers are greater than is
usually supposed, and are not confined to men of social
distinction and learning. And these men wring their
hands. They see, and they feel, the pernicious results
of a well-meaning but mistaken policy. They appreciate
the depth of the abyss. But they lack the power of
xii
INTRODUCTION
combination, and their position is delicate to a degree
which Europeans, who do not reahze the innumerable
undercurrents and intrigues of denationalized West
African society are unable to grasp.
Between these two schools of thought, the " damned
nigger " school and the denationalizing school (that,
without appreciating it, plays into the hands of the first),
which threaten the West African in his freedom, his pro-
perty and his manhood, there is room for a third. One
which, taking note to-day that the West African is a land-
owner, desires that he shall continue to be one under
British rule, not with decreasing but with increasing
security of tenure ; taking note that to-day the West
African is an agriculturist, a farmer, a herdsman, and,
above all, to the marrow of his bones, a trader, declines to
admit that he should be degraded, whether by direct or
indirect means, to the position of a hireling ; taking note
that customary law it is which holds native society
together, calls for its increased study and demands that
time shall be allowed for its gradual improvement from
within, deprecating its supersession by European formulee
of law in the name of " reform," for which the country is
not ripe and whose application can only dislocate, not
raise. West African social life. A school of thought which,
while prepcired to fight with every available weapon
against attempts to impose conditions of helotism upon
the West African, earnestly pleads that those controlling
the various influences moulding his destinies from without,
shall be inspired to direct their energies towards making
him a better African, not a hybrid. A school of thought
which sees in the preservation of the West African's land for
him and his descendants ; in a system of education which
shall not anglicize ; in technical instruction ; in assisting
and encouraging agriculture, local industries and scientific
forestry ; in introducing labour-saving appliances, and in
strengthening all that is best, materially and spiritually,
xiii
INTRODUCTION
in aboriginal institutions, the highest duties of our Imperial
rule. A school of thought whose aim it is to see Nigeria,
at least, become in time the home of highly-trained African
peoples, protected in their property and in their rights by
the paramount Power, proud of their institutions, proud
of their race, proud of their own fertile and beautiful
land.
E. D. Morel.
August, igii.
XIV
CONTENTS
PART I
THOUGHTS ON TREK
CHAPTEH PAGE
I. On what Has been and May be 3
II. On the Great White Road 8
III. On the Carrier 14
IV. On African Modesty and African Courtesy . . -19
V. On the meaning of " Religious " 24
VI. A Ragout of Things Seen and Felt 29
VII. The Sallah at Zaria 35
PART II
SOUTHERN NIGERIA
I. Nigeria's Claim upon Public Attention .... 45
II. The Niger Delta 49
III. The Forest Belt 56
IV. The Central and Eastern Provinces 62
V. Lagos and its Port — The Future Bombay of West Africa 71
VI. The Yorubas and their Country 76
VII. British Policy in Yorubaland 82
PART III
NORTHERN NIGERIA
I. The Natural Highway to the Uplands of the North . 91
II. Northern Nigeria prior to the British Occupation . 98
III. The Indigenous Civilization of the North . . .103
XV
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
IV. The Life of the People— The Long-distance Trader 107
V. The Life of the People — The Agriculturist . .111
VL The Life of the People— The Herdsman and the
Artisan 118
VH. The City of Kano and its Market 123
VIIL A Visit to the Emir of Kano 130
IX. Governing on Native Lines 136
X. The Foundations of Native Society — The Tenure of
Land 140
XI. The Foundations of Native Society — The Administra-
tive Machinery 145
XII. The Preservation of the National Life . . .151
XIII. A Page of History and its Moral 155
XIV. A Scheme of National Education 160
XV. Commercial Development 166
XVI. Mining Development and the Bauchi Plateau . . 175
XVII. The necessity of Amalgamating the Two Pro-
tectorates 187
XVIII. Railway Policy and Amalgamation 194
XIX. An Unauthorized Scheme of Amalgamation . . .201
PART IV
ISLAM, COTTON GROWING, AND THE LIQUOR
TRAFFIC
I. Christianity and Islam in Southern Nigeria . . 213
II. The Cotton Industry 222
III. The Cotton Industry — continued 232
IV. The Liquor Traffic in Southern Nigeria . . .245
Index 263
XVI
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
A BORGU Canoe-Man Frontispiece
Photo by Mr. E. Firmin {Copyright)
FACING PAGE
Through Plain and Valley and Mountain Side "... 6
" We have trekked together " ....... 6
A Group of Tuaregs 8
A Bornu Ox 8
" Magnificent Specimens of the Vegetable Kingdom " . . lo
Dug-out on the Kaduna manned by Nupes 30
" Silhouetting perchance a Group of Palms " . . . -30
The Hoe-dancers (the Hoe-dance is a Hausa Agricultural
Dance of Great Antiquity) 34
The "Jaffi" or Mounted Salute 36
Photo by Captain Mance.
The Emir of Zaria 38
The Emir of Katsina 38
Ju-ju Island near Jebba 46
Photo by Mr. E, Firmin {Copyright)
Shipping Palm Oil on the Niger at High Water ... 46
The Tropical Bush 56
One of the Communal Rubber Plantations (Funtumia
elastica) Benin City 66
Photo by Mr. A H. Unviin,
A Scene in Yorubaland 66
Photo by Mr, A. H. Unwin.
Benin City To-day. Bini Chiefs sitting outside their New
Court House 68
Photo by Sir Walter Egerton.
One of the Sacred Stone Images at Ife, the Spiritual
Centre of Yorubaland 78
Photo by Mr. A. H. Unwin.
One of the Sons of the Shehu of Bornu 78
Entrance to the "Afin" or Residence of the Alafin of
Oyo, showing Typical Yoruba Thatching .... 82
Photo by Mr, A. H. Unwin.
View of Lokoja and Native Town from Mount Pattey look-
ing S.E., the Benue in the Distance 96
A Nigerian Hunter stalking Game with the Head of the
Ground Hornbill affixed to his Forehead . . . .108
Photo by Mr. E. Firman {Cofyrighf)
xvii
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING PAGE
A Trading Caravan no
Photo by Mr. Charles Temple.
Fruit Sellers 112
Water Carriers 112
A GwARRi Girl 116
A Hausa Trading Woman 116
A FuLANi Girl 118
Photo by Mr. Charles Temple.
Panning for Iron 120
Photo by Mr. A. H. Unwin.
Dye-Pits 120
A View of a Part of Kano City (Inside the Wall) . . .124
One of the Gateways to Kano City, showing Outer Wall . 128
Another of the Entrances to the City 128
Inside Kano City 132
The Emir of Kano on the March 134
Corner of a Native Market 148
Photo by Mr. Freer-Hill.
Another Corner 148
Photo by Mr. Freer-Hill.
Iron Smelters 164
FuLANi Cattle 164
Photo by Mr. Charles Temple
Scene in the Bauchi Highlands 184
Photo by Mr. Charles Temple.
Scene on the Southern Nigeria (Extension) Railway . . 194
Photo by Mr. Freer-Hill.
Plate-laying on the Northern Nigeria Railway . . -194
Photo by Captain Mance.
Landing Place at Baro 196
Group of Railway Labourers — Baro 196
Village Head-men 198
Women Cotton Spinners 232
Men Weaving 232
MAPS
Map of Southern Nigeria 46
„ Northern Nigeria 92
„ Illustrating an Unauthorized Scheme of Amalgamation 204
xviii
PARTI
THOUGHTS ON TREK
CHAPTER I
ON WHAT HAS BEEN AND MAY BE
After trekking on horseback five hundred miles or so,
you acquire the philosophy of this kind of locomotion.
For it has a philosophy of its own, and with each day
that passes you become an apter pupil. You learn many
things, or you hope you do, things internally evolved.
But when you come to the point of giving external shape
to them by those inefficient means the human species is
as yet virtually confined to — speech and writing — ^you
become painfully conscious of inadequate powers. Every
day brings its own panorama of nature unfolding before
your advance ; its own special series of human incidents —
serious, humorous, irritating, soothing — its own thought
waves. And it is not my experience that these long silent
hours — for conversation with one's African companions is
necessarily limited and sporadic — induce, by what one
would imagine natural re-action, descriptive expansiveness
when, pen in hand, one seeks to give substance to one's
impressions. Rather the reverse, alack ! Silent com-
muning doth seem to cut off communication between
brain and pen. You are driven in upon yourself, and the
channel of outward expression dries up. For a scribbler,
against whom much has been imputed, well-nigh all the
crimes, indeed, save paucity of output, the phenomenon
is not without its alarming side, at least to one's self. In
one's friends it may well inspire a sense of blessed relief.
One day holds much — so much of time, so much of
3
NIGERIA: ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
space, so much of change. The pahng stars or the waning
moon greet your first swing into the saddle, and the air
strikes crisp and chill. You are still there as the orange
globe mounts the skies, silhouetting, perchance, a group
of palms, flooding the crumbling walls of some African
village, to whose inhabitants peace has ceased to make
walls necessary — a sacrifice of the picturesque which,
artistically, saddens — or lighting some fantastic peak of
granite boulders piled up as though by Titan's hand. You
are still there when the rays pour downwards from on high,
strike upwards from dusty track and burning rock, and
all the countryside quivers and simmers in the glow.
Sometimes you may still be there — it has happened to me
— when the shadows fall swiftly, and the cry of the crown-
birds, seeking shelter for the night on some marshy spot
to their liking, heralds the dying of the day. From cold,
cold great enough to numb hands and feet, to gentle
warmth, as on a June morning at home ; from fierce and
stunning heat, wherein, rocked by the " triple " of your
mount, you drowse and nod, to cooling evening breeze.
You pass, in the twenty-four hours, through-all the gamut
of climatic moods, which, at this time of the year, makes
this country at once invigorating and, to my thinking,
singularly treacherous, especially on the Bauchi plateau,
over which a cold wind often seems to sweep, even in the
intensity of the noontide sun, and where often a heavy
overcoat seems insufficient to foster warmth when dark-
ness falls upon the land.
So much of time and change — each day seems com-
posed of many days. Ushered in on level plain, furrowed
"by the agriculturist's hoe, dotted with colossal trees,
smiling with farm and hamlet ; it carries you onward
through many miles of thick young forest, where saplings
of but a few years' growth dispute their life with rank and
yellow grasses, and thence in gradual ascent through rock-
strewn paths until your eye sees naught but a network of
4
ON WHAT HAS BEEN AND MAY BE
hills ; to leave you at its close skirting a valley thickly
overgrown with bamboo and semi-tropical vegetation,
where the flies do congregate, and seek, unwelcomed, a
resting-place inside your helmet. Dawning amid a sleep-
ing town, heralded by the sonorous call of the Muslim
priest, which lets loose the vocal chords of human, quad-
ruped and fowl, swelling into a murmur of countless sounds
and increasing bustle ; it will take you for many hours
through desolate stretches, whence human life, if life there
ever was, has been extirpated by long years of such law-
lessness and ignorance as once laid the blight of grisly ruin
over many a fair stretch of English homestead. Yes, you
may, in this land of many memories, and mysteries still
unravelled, pass, within the same twenty-four hours, the
flourishing settlement With every sign of plenty and of
promise, and the blackened wreck of communities once
prosperous before this or that marauding band of free-
booters brought fire and slaughter, death to the man,
slavery to the woman and the infant — much as our
truculent barons, whose doughty deeds we are taught in
childhood to admire, acted in their little day. The motive
and the immediate results differed not at all. What the
ultimate end may be here lies in the womb of the future,
for at this point the roads diverge. With us those dark
hours vanished through the slow growth of indigenous
evolution. Here the strong hand of the alien has inter-
posed, and, stretching at present the unbridged chasm of a
thousand years, has enforced reform from without.
And what a weird thing it is when you come to worry
it out, that this alien hand should have descended and
compelled peace ! Viewed in the abstract, one feels it may
be discussed as a problem of theory, for a second. One
feels it permissible to ask, will the people, or rather will
the Governors of the people which has brought peace to
this land, which has enabled the peasant to till the soil
and reap his harvest in quietness, which has allowed the
5
NIGERIA: ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
weaver to pursue and profit by his industry in safety,
which has estabhshed such security throughout the land,
that you may see a woman and her child travelling alone
and unprotected in the highways, carrying all their
worldly possessions between them ; will this people's
ultimate action be as equally beneficial as the early stages
have been, or will its interference be the medium through
which evils, not of violence, but economic, and as great as
the old, will slowly, but certainly and subtly, eat into the
hearts of these Nigerian homes and destroy their happiness,
not of set purpose, but automatically, inevitably so ? I
say that, approached as an abstract problem, it seems
permissible to ask one's self that question as one wanders
here and there over the face of the land, and one hears the
necessity of commercially developing the country to save
the British taxpayers' pockets, of the gentlemen who want
to exploit the rubber forests of the Bauchi plateau, of the
Chambers of Commerce that require the reservation of
lands for British capitalists, and of those who argue that
a native, who learned how to smelt tin before we knew
there was tin in the country, should no longer be permitted
to do so, now that we wish to smelt it ourselves, and of the
railways and the roads which have to be built — ^yes, it
seems permissible, though quite useless. But I confess
that when one studies what is being done out here in the
concrete, from the point of view of the men who are doing
it, then it is no longer permissible to doubt. When one
sees this man managing, almost single-handed, a country
as large as Scotland ; when one sees that man, living in a
leaky mud hut, holding, by the sway of his personality,
the balance even between fiercely antagonistic races, in
a land which would cover half a dozen of the large
English counties ; when one sees the marvels accomplished
by tact, passionate interest and self-control, with utterly
inadequate means, in continuous personal discomfort,
short-handed, on poor pay, out here in Northern Nigeria —
6
f ~■.'^^
"THROUGH PLAIN' AND \'ALLF.Y AND MOl^NTAIN SIDE.
'^ ''t' '■- -1 -.
H^' '!(.. I/; .■-■•■
;4
:^'^"^
"WE HAVE TREKKED TOGETHER."
S,c f. U.
ON WHAT HAS BEEN AND MAY BE
then one feels that permanent evil cannot ultimately
evolve from so much admirable work accomplished, and
that the end must make for good.
And, thinking over this personal side of the matter as
one jogs along up hill and down dale, through plain and
valley and mountain side, through lands of plenty and
lands of desolation, past carefully fenced-in fields of cotton
and cassava, past the crumbling ruins of deserted habita-
tions, along the great white dusty road through the heart
of Hausaland, along the tortuous mountain track to the
pagan stronghold, there keeps on murmuring in one's
brain the refrain : " How is it done ? How is it done ? "
Ten years ago, nay, but six, neither property nor life were
safe. The peasant fled to the hills, or hurried at nightfall
within the sheltering walls of the town. Now he is
descending from the hills and abandoning the towns.
And the answer forced upon one, by one's own observa-
tions, is that the incredible has been wrought, primarily
and fundamentally, not by this or that brilliant feat of
arms, not by Britain's might or Britain's wealth, but by a
handful of quiet men, enthusiastic in their appreciation of
the opportunity, strong in their sense of duty, keen in their
sense of right, firm in their sense of justice, who, working
in an independence, and with a personal responsibility in
respect to which, probably, no country now under the
British flag can offer a parallel, whose deeds are unsung,
and whose very names are unknown to their countrymen,
have shown, and are every day showing, that, with all her
faults, Britain does still breed sons worthy of the highest
traditions of the race.
CHAPTER II
ON THE GREAT WHITE ROAD
You may fairly call it the Great White Road to Hausaland,
although it does degenerate in places into a mere track
where it pierces some belt of shea-wood or mixed trees,
and you are reduced to Indian file. But elsewhere it
merits its appellation, and it glimmers ghostly in the moon-
light as it cuts the plain, cultivated to its very edge with
guinea-corn and millet, cassava and cotton, beans and
pepper. And you might add the adjective, dusty, to it.
For dusty at this season of the year it certainly is. Dusty
beyond imagination. Surely there is no dust like this
dust as it sweeps up at you, impelled by the harmattan
blowing from the north, into your eyes and mouth and
nose and hair ? Dust composed of unutterable things.
Dust which countless bare human feet have tramped for
months. Dust mingled with the manure of thousands of
oxen, horses, sheep and goats. Dust which converts the
glossy skin of the African into an unattractive drab, but
which cannot impair his cheerfulness withal. Dust which
eats its way into your boxes, and defies the brush applied
to your clothes, and finds its way into your soup and all
things edible and non-edible. Dust which gets between
you and the sun, and spoils your view of the country,
wrapping everything in a milky haze which distorts dis-
tances and lies thick upon the foliage. The morning up
to nine, say, will be glorious and clear and crisp, and then,
sure enough, as you halt for breakfast and with sharpened
8
A GROUP CiF TfAKEGS.
iJ0i^ir
A BORNU OX.
ON THE GREAT WHITE ROAD
appetite await the looked-for " chop," a puff of wind will
spring up from nowhere and in its train will come the dust.
The haze descends and for the rest of the day King Dust
will reign supreme. It is responsible for much sickness,
this Sahara dust, of that my African friends and myself
are equally convinced. You may see the turbaned
members of the party draw the lower end of that useful
article of apparel right across the face up to the eyes when
the wind begins to blow. The characteristic litham of the
Tuareg, the men of the desert, may have had its origin in
the necessity, taught by experience, of keeping the dust
out of nose and mouth. I have been told by an officer of
much Northern Nigerian experience, that that terrible
disease, known as cerebo-spinal meningitis, whose charac-
teristic feature is inflammation of the membranes of the
brain, and which appears in epidemic form out here, is
aggravated, if not induced, in his opinion — and he assures
me in the opinion of many natives he has consulted — by
this disease-carrying dust. In every town and village in
the Northern Hausa States, you will see various diseases
of the eye lamentably rife, and here, I am incUned to
think. King Dust also plays an active and discreditable
part.
The Great White Road. It thoroughly deserves that
title from the point where one enters the Kano Province
coming from Zaria. It is there not only a great white
road but a very fine one, bordered on either side by a
species of eucalyptus, and easily capable, so far as breadth
is concerned, of allowing the passage of two large auto-
mobiles abreast. I, personally, should not care to own
the automobile which undertook the journey, because the
road is ■ not exactly what we would call up-to-date.
Thank Heaven that there is one part of the world, at least,
to be found where neither roads, nor ladies' costumes are
" up-to-date." If the Native Administration of the Kano
Emirate had nothing else to be commended for, and under
9
NIGERIA: ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
the tactful guidance of successive Residents it has an
increasing account to its credit, the traveller would bear
it in grateful recollection for its preservation of the trees
in the immediate vicinity of, and sometimes actually on
the Great White Road itself. It is difficult to over-estimate
the value to man and beast, to the hot and dusty European,
to the weary-footed carrier, to the patient pack-ox, and
cruelly-bitted native horse, of the occasional shady tree
at the edge of or on the road. And what magnificent
specimens of the vegetable kingdom the fertile soil of
Kano Province does carry — our New Forest giants, though
holding their own for beauty and shape and, of course,
clinging about our hearts with all their wealth of historical
memories and inherited familiarity, would look puny in
comparison . With one exception I do not think anything
on the adverse side of trivialities has struck me more
forcibly out here than the insane passion for destroying
trees which seems to animate humanity. White and Black.
In many parts of the country I have passed through the
African does appear to appreciate his trees, both as shade
for his ordinary crops and special crops (such as pepper,
for instance, which you generally find planted under a
great tree) and cattle. In Kano Province, for instance,
this is very noticeable. But in other parts he will burn
down his trees, or rather let them burn down, with absolute
equanimity, making no effort to protect them (which on
many occasions he could easily do) when he fires the
grasses (which, pace many learned persons, it seems to me,
he is compelled by his agricultural needs to do — I speak
now of the regions I have seen) . I have noticed quantities
of splendid and valuable timber ruined in this way. The
European — I should say some Europeans — appears to
suffer from the same complaint. It is the fashion — if the
word be not disrespectful, and Heaven forfend that the
doctors should be spoken of disrespectfully in this part of
the world, of all places — among the new school of tropical
10
^T.l
ON THE GREAT WHITE ROAD
medicine out here to condemn all growing things in a
wholesale manner. In the eyes of some, trees or plants
of any kind in the vicinity of a European station are
ruthlessly condemned. Others are specially incensed
against low shrubs. Some are even known to pronounce
the death-warrant of the pine-apple, and I met an official
at a place, which shall be nameless, who went near weeping
tears of distress over a fine row of this fruit which he had
himself planted, and which were threatened, as he put it,
by the ferocity of the local medical man. In another
place destruction hangs over a magnificent row of mango
trees — and for beauty and luxuriousness of foliage the
mango tree is hard to beat — planted many years ago by
the Roman Catholic Fathers near one of their mission
stations ; and in still another, an official, recently returned
on leave, found to his disgust that a group of trees he
especially valued had been cut down during his absence by
a zealous reformer of the medical world.
In the southern portions of Southern Nigeria, where
Sir Walter Egerton is a resolute foe of medical vandalism,
I am inclined to think that the doctors will find it about
as easy to cope with plant growth as King Canute is
reputed to have found the waves of the seashore. But in
Northern Nigeria and in the northern regions of Southern
Nigeria it is a different matter, and one is tempted to
query whether the sacrifice of all umbrageous plants in
the neighbourhood of official and other residences because
they are supposed to harbour — and no doubt do harbour —
the larvcB of all sorts of objectionable winged insects, may
not constitute a remedy worse even than the disease. I
can imagine few things more distressing for a European in
Northern Nigeria, gasping in the mid-day heat of the
harmattan season, to have nothing between his eyes,
as he gazes out beyond his verandah, but the glare of
the red laterite soil and the parched-up grasses and little
pink flowers springing up amidst it ; and one feels disposed
II
NIGERIA: ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
to say to the devoted medicos, " De grace, Messieurs, pas
de trop zele."
In the particular part of the country of which I am
now writing, another aspect of the case strikes you. In
very many rest-camps, and mining camps one comes
across, the ground is cleared of every particle of shade-
giving tree — cleared as fiat as a billiard table. There is no
shade for man or beast. Now a grass-house is not the
coolest place in the world with an African noon-day sun
beating down upon it — I mean an all-grass-house, not the
cool native house with clay walls and thatched roof, be it
noted — and . . . well, I content myself with the remark
that it would be much cooler than it is with the shade of a
tree falling athwart it. Then they — the Public Works
Department — have built a road from Riga-Chikum to
Narraguta. I will say nothing about it except that it is,
without exception, the hottest road and the one more
abounding in flies that I have struck in this part of the
world. And I assign a proper proportion of both pheno-
mena to the — to me — ^inexplicable mania of the builders
thereof to hew down the trees on the side of the road.
To come back to our Great White Road. What a
history it might not tell ! For how many centuries have
not Black and Brown men pursued upon it the goal of
their trade and their ambitions ; have not fled in frantic
terror from the pursuer, ankle deep in dust. What
tragedies have not been hurried along its dusty whiteness.
To-day you will meet upon it objects of interest almost
every hour. Now, a herd of oxen on their way to doom,
to feed the Southern Nigerian markets ; now, a convoy of
donkeys going south, in charge, maybe, of Tuareg slaves
from far-distant Sokoto, or the Asben oases. These will
be loaded with potash and tobacco. And even as you
pass this one going south, another convoy of donkeys,
going north, loaded with salt and kolas, will be trudging
along behind you. Anon, some picturesquely-clothed and
12
ON THE GREAT WHITE ROAD
turbaned horseman will be seen approaching, who, with
ceremonious politeness, will either dismount and salute,
or throw up his right hand — doing the " jaffi," as it is
termed.
The African is credited with utter callousness to
human suffering. Like most generalities concerning him,
it is exaggerated. Life in primitive communities (and
to get a proper mental grasp of this country, and its people,
you must turn up your Old Testament and read Exodus
and Leviticus) is much cheaper and of less account than
in more highly civilized ones. That is a commonplace
too often forgotten by people who accuse the African of
ingrained callousness. As a matter of fact, I have noticed
many sights on the Great White Road which show* how
rash such generalities can be. I have seen water handed
from one party to another under circumstances which
spoke of kindly appreciation of a want. I have frequently
seen fathers, or elder brothers, carrying small children on
their backs. The Residents have known cases of men
found injured on the road who have been tended and taken
home by utter strangers ; the Good Samaritan over again,
and in his old-world setting.
13
CHAPTER III
ON THE CARRIER
" Some Africans I have met " — the words conjure up a
series of powerful chiefs, or fantastic " witch doctors," or
faultlessly-attired barristers from some centre of light and
learning on the Coast. I shall be content — ^if only by
recording my gratitude for much amusement and no little
instruction — with jotting down a brief line or two which
shall be wholly concerned with a type of African to whom
not the greatest Negrophile that ever lived would dream
of applying the epithet distinguished. I refer to the
carrier.
To-morrow I part with my carriers. We have trekked
together for exactly four weeks — one little man, indeed,
with a goatee beard and a comical grin, has been with me
six weeks, having rejoined from my original lot. And at
the end of four weeks one gets to know something of one's
carriers. Presumably, by that time they have their own
opinions of you.
Whence do they come, and whither do they go, these
vagrants of the road, flotsam and jetsam that we create ?
Runaway slaves, ne'er-do-weels, criminals, driven from
their respective folds, unsuccessful farmers, or restless
spirits animated by a love of travel and adventure — la
vie des grands chemins. Reckless, improvident, gamblers,
wastrels ; they are altogether delightful people. As an
ecclesiastical friend invariably winds up with a description
of the man (or woman) he is interested in, who has broken
most of the commandments, and would have broken the
14
ON THE CARRIER
others had circumstances allowed : . " X is the very
best of creatures really, and I love him (or her) " — so it is
impossible not to like the carrier. For with all his faults,
he attracts. His spirit of independence appeals somehow.
Here to-day, gone to-morrow. And, like the sailor, with
a sweetheart at every port, somebody else's sweetheart
will do quite as well at a pinch. Then consider his cheeri-
ness. Be the load heavy or light, be the march long or
short, he has always a smile and a salute for you as you
pass along the line. I speak as I have found, and many
men will bear me out. Some men may have a different
tale to tell, sometimes with justification, sometimes, I
think, without. For if there is the bad type of carrier —
and there is : I have found two in my crowd, but their
" little games " have fallen foul of the views of the majority
— there is also the type of European who, shall we say,
forgets. He gets into camp a long way ahead of his men,
tired and hungry maybe, and curses them for a pack of
lazy scoundrels. He forgets, or long custom has blunted
perception, the potency of that sixty-pound load. Think
of it ! Sixty pounds — the regulation load. Sixty pounds
on your head for anything from fifteen to thirty miles.
I say consider that under these conditions the man is
cheerful. Nay, he is more. He is full of quips and jokes
... at the expense of his companions, and quite as much
at the expense of himself. If you have a special peculi-
arity about you, ten to one he crystallises it into a name,
and henceforth you are spoken of not as the " Baturi"
the White man, but as " the man with a back like a
camel," or " white hair," or the " hump-backed man of
war," or " red pepper," or " hot water," or as the " man
with a face like a woman," and so on. It is this extra-
ordinary cheeriness which appeals to the average white
human. That a creature of flesh and blood hke yourself,
carrying sixty pounds on his head for hours and hours in
the blazing sun, dripping with perspiration, pestered by
15
NIGERIA: ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
flies, and earning sixpence a day — threepence of which is
supposed to be spent in " chop " — and doing this not for
one day, but for day after day, sometimes for over a week
without a sit-down, can remain cheerful — that is the
incredible thing. One hopes that it is a lesson. Assuredly
it ought to be an inspiration. These votaries of Mark
Tapley are severely tried at times. Yesterday, after a
tramp from six-thirty to half-past twelve, the camp aimed
for was found to be tenanted by other white men and their
carriers. There was nothing for it but to push on another
eleven miles to the nearest village and stream. Just as
dusk began to sweep down upon the land, the first carrier
straggled in — smiling. " No. i," a long-limbed man with
the stride of an ostrich, who always goes by that name
because he is always the first to arrive, delighted at having
kept up his reputation ; " Nos. 2 " and " 3 " equally
pleased with themselves for being close at his heels, and
coming in for their share of the prize money in consequence.
And then, in twos and threes, dribbling up, some un-
utterably weary, others less so, all galvanised into new
life by a chance joke, generally at their own expense ;
joining in the acclamation which invariably greets the
strong man of the party — the mighty Maiduguli, to wit —
who, because of his muscles, carries the heaviest load, and
whom Fate decrees, owing to that load's contents, shall
be the last to start, both at the opening of the day and
after the breakfast halt, but who manages to forge ahead,
and to turn up among the first six, chaffing the tired ones
on their way, and stimulating them to fresh exertions.
And when all had reached their destination they had to
stick up a tent by the light of the moon.
I have asked you to consider the carrier's cheeriness
and powers of endurance — and my lot at least are not,
with the exception of the mighty man of valour already
mentioned, big men physically. I ask you now to consider
his honesty — ^honesty in the Uteral sense and honesty in
16
ON THE CARRIER
the fulfilment of a bargain. For hours this man is alone
— so far as you are concerned — ^with your goods. You
may, you probably are, either miles ahead of him, or miles
behind him. The headman—" Helleman," as he is
termed by the rank and file — ^is at the rear of the column.
Between the first man and the " Helleman " several miles
may intervene, and so on, proportionately. During these
hours of total lack of supervision, your property is abso-
lutely at the carrier's mercy. Your effects. The uniform
case in which, he knows, you keep your money. The
uniform case, of which he knows the lock is broken. The
" chop-box," of which he knows the padlock is missing.
But at the end of every day your things are intact. I
have not lost a matchbox, except a few dozen or so that
white men have stolen (I may say it is the local fashion —
I have caught it myself, and steal matches regularly when-
ever I get the chance). The only thing I have lost is
something I lost myself. You may say " Yes, but think
of the risk and the difficulty of breaking open a uniform
case on the road." As for the difiiculty, there is little or
none. A vigorous fling upon one of these granitic boulders,
and there would be precious little left of your uniform case.
As for the risk, well, in many parts of the country I have
traversed, a carrier could get clear away with his loot, and
not all the Sarikuna and dogari in the country would set
hands on him. Faithfulness to the bargain struck. Well,
I have passed through the mining country. Some of the
mines declare they are short of labour — those that do not
suffer from that complaint declare that those that do have
themselves to thank for it — and the mines pay ninepence
a day for work which is much lighter than that of a carrier,
who gets sixpence. The few shillings a carrier would
sacrifice by deserting, he would recoup at the mines in ten
days, or less. I have not had a desertion. The only man
of the crowd who has absconded, did so openly. On a
certain spot on the line of march he suddenly got a fit of
17 c
NIGERIA: ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
fanaticism, or something unhealthy of that kind, and de-
clared himself to be proof against sword cuts. Whereupon,
being laughed at, he " gat unto himself " a sword and
smote himself with much vigour upon the head, with the
natural result of inflicting a deep scalp wound nearly
seven inches long. The next morning, finding his load
incommoded him in consequence, he returned homewards,
a sadder, and, presumably, a wiser man.
If I were a poet I would write an ode to the African
carrier. I cannot do justice to him in prose. But I place
on record this inadequate tribute to the reckless, cheery,
loyal rascal, who seems to me a mixture of the knight of
the road and the poacher — for both of whom I have ever
conceived a warm affection ... in books — and with
whom I shall part to-morrow with regret, remembering
oft in days to come that cheery " Sanu zakl " as I passed
him, footsore, weary and perspiring, on the road.
i8
CHAPTER IV
ON AFRICAN MODESTY AND AFRICAN COURTESY
Each twenty-four hours brings its own series of events
and its own train of thoughts following upon them, A
new incident, it may be of the most trivial kind, sets the
mind working like an alarum ; a petty act, a passing
word, have in them revealing depths of character. Nature
seems such an open book here. She does not hide her
secrets. She displays them ; which means that she has
none ; and, in consequence, that she is as she was meant
to be, moral. The trappings of hide-bound convention
do not trammel her every stride like the hobble skirts of
the foolish women who parade their shapes along the
fashionable thoroughfares of London. What quagmires
of error we sink into when we weigh out our ideas of
morality to the African standard — such a very low one
it is said.
Well, I have covered a good deal of ground in this
country — although I have not been in it very long,
measured in time — and I have seen many thousands of
human beings. I have seen the Hausa woman and the
bush Fulani woman in their classical robes. I have seen
the Yoruba woman bathing in the Ogun, clad only in the
natural clothing of her own dusky skin. I have seen
the scantily-attired Gwarri and Ibo woman, and the
woman of the Bauchi highlands with her bunch of broad
green leaves " behind and before," and nothing else,
save a bundle of wood or load of sorts on her head, or a
hoe in her hand. I have visited many African homes,
19
NIGERIA: ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
sometimes announced, sometimes not, at all hours of
the day, and sometimes of the night. I have passed
the people on the beaten track, and sought and found
them off the beaten track. I have yet to see outside
our cantonments — where the wastrels drift — a single
immodest gesture on the part of man or woman.
Humanity which is of Nature is, as Nature herself, moral.
There is no immodesty in nakedness which " knows
not that it is naked." The Kukuruku girl, whose only
garment is a single string of beads round neck and waist,
is more modest than your Bond Street dame clad in the
prevailing fashion, suggesting nakedness. Break up the
family life of Africa, undermine the home, weaken social
ties> subvert African authority over Africans, and you dig
the grave of African morality. It is easy, nothing is easier,
and it may be accomplished with the best intentions, the
worthiest motives, the most abysmal ignorance of doing
harm. Preserve these things, strengthen them, and you
safeguard the decencies and refinements of African life.
Here is a homily ! Its origin one of those trivialities
of which I have spoken. One had pushed on ahead,
desiring to be alone. With that curious intuition which
the African seems to possess, one's mounted escort had,
somehow, gathered that, and a good half-mile separated
one from one's followers. The sun was at its zenith,
and danced over the dusky track. But there were broad
grateful trees on either side, and low bushes with white
sweet-scented flowers. A bend in the road brought into
view a little cameo of natural life. By a tree, straight-
backed and grave-faced, an elderly Fulani woman,
supporting on her lap the head and shoulders of a younger
woman, who lay outstretched. At her feet a small child
trying to stand upright, with but indifferent success.
For a moment one was not perceived, both women's
eyes being fixed on the infant's resolute eferts, and one's
approach being quietened by the deadening dust under
20
AFRICAN MODESTY AND AFRICAN COURTESY
foot. For a moment only. Then all three looked up.
From her position the younger woman's limbs were more
uncovered than a Hausa or Fulani woman considers
compatible with modesty before a stranger, and, with
a sight of that stranger, the instinctive movement came
— ^the position was slightly shifted, the robe drawn down,
with no fuss or precipitancy, but calmly, with dignity
and decision.
We strayed yesterday. Starting off early we struck
across country, leaving the road, the red-and-green
dressed gentleman and I ; having arranged to meet the
rest . . . somewhere. It does not matter where, because,
as a matter of fact, we didn't. An imposing person the
aforesaid dogari, with a full black beard and fierce sword.
It was good to get away from the road, despite its varied
interests, and for a couple of hours one gave one's self
wholly up to the charms of the crispness of the morning,
the timid but sweet song of the birds, the whiffs of scent
from the mimosa bushes, the glimpse of some homestead
farm in the distance, the sight of a group of blue-robed
women with biblical earthenware pitchers on their heads
issuing from a neatly thatched village, or congregated
in a circle round one of the wells whose inner rim is lined
and rendered solid by thick branches to prevent earth
from falling in and fouling the water. Their laughing
voices were wafted across the cultivated fields towards
us, as cheery as the antics of the little brown goats skip-
ping over the ground. What a world of simple happiness
in this agricultural life of the talakawa — the common
people — of Hausaland. And then, well we were clearly
at fault. No signs of any of the men. No signs of
breakfast, I mean of the person by whom breakfast is
supposed to be produced — and nearly eight o'clock. The
gentleman in red and green twisted his turbaned and
bearded visage to right and left. He looked at me ex-
pressively, which look I returned — with equal gravity,
21
NIGERIA: ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
the substance of our power of communicativeness. Then
he turned his broad back and his white horse's head, and
ambled on, and I followed. It is queer how you accom-
modate yourself to philosophy, or how philosophy
accommodates itself to you. After all, every road leads
to Rome ; and there is a certain amount of exhilaration
in not knowing what particular Rome it may be, or
through what twists and turns the track may lead you
on the way thither. No homesteads now, and the risen
sun had warmed the birds into silence. One notices that,
by the way. In the early mornings the timid notes are
heard, and as the sun's rays pierce through the mists
and burn them up, they cease. It is a melodious little
ode to the great Life-giver, and when it has served its
purpose it quavers, quivers, and is no more.
On a sudden the thunder of hoofs behind us, and an
elderly, aristocratic-looking horseman with an aquiline
nose, short grey beard and piercing eyes, gallops up over
the deep furrows, followed by three attendants also on
horseback. An imposing figure of a man he is, splendidly
mounted on a chestnut stallion, with a heavy cloak of
dark blue cloth flung across his shoulders, the red crest
of a fez just showing through the top of his dark blue
turban. An animated conversation ensues between him
and the gentleman in red and green. The Chief — for
one knows he must be such from his bearing and the
sharp ring of his tones — waves a long, thin hand
to right and left. The dogan listens respectfully, some-
what crestfallen in appearance (perhaps he was hungry
too !). The mounted attendants career away in different
directions, one, I learn afterwards, to trace the main
body of carriers, the other to find the cook, the third
to call for milk and firewood from some neighbouring
village. Then the Chief bows low over his horse's neck,
places himself between the dogari and myself, and we pro-
ceed once more along the narrow pathway, cut at frequent
22
AFRICAN MODESTY AND AFRICAN COURTESY
intervals by small streams, now mostly dry, with pre-
cipitous banks that need some negotiating. The courtesy
of that grey-bearded old aristocrat — every inch a ruler
of men — the Fulani who has become the statesman and
the lord over many ! He is the Governor, I learn later^
of one of the principal districts of Kano province, and
he looks it from head to foot. At the approach of every
stream, half hidden with tangled creepers, wherever the
path is broken or impeded by some natural obstacle, he
half turns his horse towards one in warning, then waits
on the other side until he is satisfied that the difficulty is
overcome. Does the over-hanging branch of some tree
threaten a blow to the careless rider ? He either breaks
it off short in its passage, or, if it be too formidable for
that, points with uplifted finger. And when, at last, in
an open space a small group under a tree proclaims the
much perturbed — his usual condition — cook, busy
boiling milk and cocoa, another low bow, and the old
gentleman retires at an appropriate distance, turning his
back with the politeness required of tradition and custom,
but not before another rapid order has been given, and
the quite unnecessary attention of clearing a piece of
ground where you may conveniently partake of your
meal is in process of accomplishment.
And soon from out of nowhere come shouts and
laughter, and the jangle of bits and the confused hum
of approaching men and horses. The bush and the
grasses cave outwards and your people appear, a little
wondering whether the white man is grumpy or not ;
very pleased to know they have pitched on the right road
at last ; rather enjoying the adventure and thoroughly
happy with themselves and the world in general. Off-
saddle and hobble the beasts ! Down with the loads !
Out with the " chop ! " And all as merry as a marriage
bell. So another morn has dawned and gone, bringing
with it its lessons and its thoughts.
23
CHAPTER V
ON THE MEANING OF " RELIGIOUS "
It was dusk, dark almost. The road glimmered dimly
in the distance. Over the deep furrows the shadows
■crept, and the little path between them mingled with
the gathering gloom.
I became aware of a vague white figure standing out
from the sombre background some little distance off.
Presently it seemed to sink downwards and assume
formlessness. My route back to the camp took me within
perhaps a dozen yards of it. A nearer view disclosed a
man, whose bent back was turned to me, making his
solitary evening prayer to God. Alone. Yet not alone,
perhaps.
That night I passed through my sleeping camp at the
foot of the giant bombax, bathed in the silvery beams of
a full moon shining out of a velvet sky ; and trod the
road again, trying to puzzle it out.
What does the word " religious " mean, I wonder ?
This white-robed figure of a man was religious as one
generally interprets the word. Yet we are to suppose
that he really wasn't, because his religion is not the
religion we, in Europe, practise. But is that what
" religious " infers ? One kind of religion ?
What a queer mixture the Anglo-Saxon is. Pro-
bably it would be impossible to convince the average
Englishman that the African is a more religious being
than himself ; or that there is anything incongruous
in himself, the Englishman, being at one and the same
24
ON THE MEANING OF "RELIGIOUS"
time the Imperialist ruler of these dark races and their
spiritual uplifter. And yet, to what vital extent do
spiritual influences mould the society or the policy of
Europe ? Has not religion — official religion — ^there taken
upon itself very largely the character of a social force,
and lost its spiritual significance ? Is not its whole trend
social rather than spiritual ? Has Europe, in any racial
sense, an inner spiritual life, as has the East ? The " law
of Christ," says the Church, in the matter of relations
between the sexes everywhere, commands monogamy.
But the law of Christ commands, in a far more definite
manner than any words that may be culled from His
sayings in regard to this, many other things which the
religion of Europe absolutely, entirely, and wholly ignores,
because the customs of Europe and the laws of Europe,
and the social life of Europe do not square with it.
I was told the other day that a great Emir in these
parts was informed of the intended visit — this happened
some years ago — of a great White Mallam who was
coming to uplift the spiritual life of the people. The
Emir and his councillors looked over the wide plain.
" Surely," they said to one another, " as the White man
is so strong in war, so cunning in invention, so mighty in
knowledge, then the White man's Mallam must be very,
very near to Allah." Soon they saw a cloud of dust.
Marvelling somewhat, the Emir, nevertheless, sent out
messengers. The messengers sped swiftly onwards. They
looked for a solitary figure, the figure of an ascetic, bearing
stamped upon features, lined and worn with thought,
and in gaunt form, the imprint of hohness ; in whose eye,
illumined with the fire of inspiration, they would read inti-
mate communing with God. What they saw was a long
file of weary carriers, conveying boxes full of food, drink,
apparel, and camp furniture. Behind them, quite an
ordinary looking White man on horseback. " Is this
the great White preacher ? " they asked the interpreter,
25
NIGERIA: ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
who headed the caravan. " Is this the Mallam who is
to uphft our souls ? " " Even so," repUed the inter-
preter. So two of the Emir's messengers off-saddled,
and when the preacher came along they bowed low, as is
the custom of the country. But the third messenger had
turned back. He prostrated himself before the Emir,
and he told what he had seen.
The Emir drew his flowing cloak a little closer round
him, for the sun was about to set, and the air grew chill.
Then he turned himself towards Mecca, and lowered his
forehead in the dust, followed by his councillors.
It is difficult to write plainly of Christian missionary
effort in West Africa. The individual missionary may
be an influence for good in the best sense. He may not
be. He does not go into the country to make money.
He is, as a rule, singularly selfless. His life is often,
perhaps generally, a work of essential self-sacrifice. In
the category of human motives gravitating towards West
Africa, his, it must be conceded, takes front rank. Than
the apostolic missionary there is no grander figure,
whether in West Africa or elsewhere. But it is the
genesis of the effort, not the man, that most counts
fundamentally. If the effort itself is out of perspective
the work of the individual must feel the effect. I say
it is difficult to write about missionary effort. It seems
to be regarded as taboo. You must not touch it lest
you hurt people's feelings. But nowadays, one sphere
of human activity cannot be ruled out of discussion.
Christian effort out here seems to me to have forgotten
in many cases that Christ was the servant of the people,
not their master. It is intolerant of native customs;
native religions irritate it ; native law it regards with
contempt. I walked one evening along the Niger banks
with a missionary. We passed some native huts. In
one was a fetish with a votive offering at its feet. My
companion jerked his stick disdainfully towards the
26
ON THE MEANING OF "RELIGIOUS"
object, and with scorn in his voice declaimed against
the " idol." Yet he knew, or ought to have known! that
it was not the thing of wood that was worshipped, but
its indwelling spirit. That gesture was so characteristic
of much one sees and hears out here. I exclude the
Roman Cathohcs from that remark. Amongst them
I have met the broad, tolerant spirit of generosity and
true kindliness of heart. I can hear now the cheery,
warm-hearted, jovial laughter of the Onitsha priests, their
sunniness, their infecting optimism.
There is so much that is dark and dismal about this
missionary effort, inwardly I mean. All the African
world is black to it, black with sin, black with lust, black
with cruelty. And there is its besetting misfortune —
it is alien. It preaches an alien God ; a White God,
not a Black God. The God that is imported here has
nothing African about Him. How can He appeal to
Africa ?
I saw a week ago in an English paper (about two
months old) that there is to be a crusade against Islam
in Nigeria. Emissaries are to come out and check this
poisonous growth. That, too, is very strange to read . . .
out here, as one listens to the call to God in the evening,
and in the morning, pealing out to the stars. These
people are worshipping the God of Africa. It seems they
ought to worship the God of Europe ; and yet there is
more evidence of spiritual influence out here, than in our
great congested cities. With the cry of the African
priest, the faithful bows his body to the earth — out here.
The day before I left England, I heard the bells ringing
out in an old cathedral city. Their note was both beau-
tiful and sad. It was a spacious building, arched and
vaulted, noble in proportions. It might easily have held
seven hundred worshippers. There were many people
in the streets. Yet, when the bells had ceased to ring,
there were less than a dozen worshippers within.
27
NIGERIA: ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
Yes, it is a great puzzle.
All is silent in the camp. The fires have gone out.
Over the thatched roofs the bombax towers upwards to
the majestic heavens. The whole countryside is flooded
with a soft, dehcate effulgence, and the Great White
Road appears as a broad ribbon of intenser light, winding
away, away into the infinite beyond.
It is eleven o'clock. One wonders if London is looking
quite so spiritual just now, with its flaming lights, its
emptying theatres, its streets thronged with jostling,
restless crowds.
28
CHAPTER VI
A RAGOUT OF THINGS SEEN AND FELT
Some things detach themselves, as it were, from the
general background, rooting themselves in memory.
Such, the rise in the road beyond which the first of the
great Mohammedan towns of the north lay concealed.
Bida, the capital of the Nupes, the centre of an
active trade, known for its handsomely embossed, if
unsubstantial, brassware ; known, too, for its rough
glass bangles of black or dull blue, made out of nothing
more romantic than old bottles melted in native
furnaces kept going by the blowers who, when the
stuff is sufficiently liquid, twirl it round a stick
until the desired shape is attained ; known, too, for its
special species of ~ kola — ^the lahozhi, highly esteemed
throughout Nigeria, requiring shade and a rich, deep
loamy soil to bring, it to perfection. Until the British
occupation the cultivation and sale of the lahozhi kola
were the prerogative of the ruler, the Emir, who must
now be content with a tenth of the crop, and let his
subjects have a chance. Past a Fulani cattle encamp-
ment ; past flat country covered with rice fields ; past
rustling fields of guinea corn ready for the cutter, with
heads towering eleven feet in height ; past clumps and
dotted specimens of shea butter trees, in the branches of
many of which are fixed calabashes for the bees ; past the
weird red clay monuments of the white ants dotting the
plain ; along the rough pitted, red dusty road, and so on
until the rise. And then, between us and the rambling
29
NIGERIA: ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
city, with its decaying walls, its wide central avenue,
and its umbrageous trees, its masses of blue robed men
and women with their henna-dyed teeth and picturesque
head-dress, a cloud of dust, and borne down the wind
blowing towards us the blare of trumpets and the rattle
of drums.
The great Mamodu himself, once a notorious slave
raider and the perpetrator of innumerable infamies, has
elected to ride out and meet us. Surrounded by two
or three dozen notables and officers of his household, by
a scarlet and green robed bodyguard, by four mounted
drummers and two mounted trumpeters ; ambling gently
beneath a large umbrella of many colours held over his
head by an attendant, and clad from head to foot in
green-grey robes, with a turban of the same colour,
Mamodu's tall, powerful figure and olive complexion —
a Nupe with Fulani blood — emerges from the crowd.
Trumpets — ^long thin trumpets blown lustily and not
inharmoniously — ^blare, drums beat, horses curvet and
try to bite one another's necks. Mamodu and his escort
dismount and do their gaisua (salutation). We dismount
also, advance, shake hands, and become the target for
a hundred pairs of dark pupils in bloodshot, whitish-
yellow balls, which glare at us over the lower part of dark
blue turbans swathed across chin and mouth and nose,
while the introduction formally proceeds to the accom-
paniment of many a guttural "Ah! Um, Um, Um ! "
At a word from the stalwart gentleman in grey we could
be cut down in a couple of minutes with these long,
fierce, leather-sheathed swords which hang at every hip.
In point of fact, we are a great deal safer on this African
road than we should be crossing Trafalgar Square. Pre-
sently we shall see the process, here conducted by one
Englishman — trusted, and even liked for his own sake, by
the people — aided by an assistant, of turning ci-devant
slavers and warriors into administrators. In his work
30
DUG-OUT ON THE KADI_!NA MANNED 1;V NLIPES.
'SILHOUETTING i-'EKCUANCE A OkOUl" OF TAEMS.
Sec p. 4.
A RAGOUT OF THINGS SEEN AND FELT
this Englishman relies for the pomp and panoply of power
upon three policemen, one of whom is old and decrepit.
The Bida division covers 5,000 square miles, and Bida
itself counts 35,000 souls. The facts suggest a thought
or two.
A long, broad stretch of golden sands. Winding
through them the clear green water of the reduced
Kaduna. Several dug-outs, manned by Nupes, magni-
ficent specimens of muscular development, cross back-
wards and forwards with men, women, and children con-
veying wares to market. Small mites, naked and tubby,
splash and rollick about on the water's edge. Lower
down stream fishermen are getting out their nets, and,
at a shallow ford, shepherds are piloting a flock of sheep
across, from whose scattered ranks a chorus of loud
bleating arises. A file of pack donkeys stream across
the sands to the village on the opposite bank. We watch
the sight from the foot of a great tree, from which hang
sundry charms, and as we sit there — it is a rendezvous,
it seems, and a small market-place in its way — several
young women stroll towards us bearing wares in grass
platters which they spread close to us on the ground,
conversing in low tones broken now and again by the
jolly African laughter — the mirth of the child of nature
with few cares and fewer responsibilities. The winding
river, the golden sands, the blue sky, the two villages —
one on either side of the crossing — with their conical
thatched roofs, the green of the trees and of the water,
the peaceful, quiet human life, combine to make as pretty
and as harmonious a picture as you would wish to see.
Tramp, tramp, tramp ! The stamping of innumer-
able feet. The murmur of innumerable voices. The
waving of arms, the jangle of iron anklets, and the rising
cloud of dust beneath the trampling of bare toes. The
31
NIGERIA: ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
dancers range themselves in a wide circle, which slowly
revolves in the light of the moon, now lighting up this
part, anon the other part, giving a grey and ghostly look
to the naked shoulders and close-cropped heads. Aah !
A ah ! Aah ! The chant rises and falls, monotonous,
barbaric. Bracelets and anklets, amulets and charms
clash and clang again as the wearers thereof bend this
way and that, crouching, stooping, flinging the upper
part of their bodies backwards, raising high the knee
and bringing down the leg with thunderous stamp,
shaking themselves from head to foot like a dog emerging
from his bath. Naked bodies, but for a strip of jagged
leather falling athwart the hips ; naked, lithe bodies on
which the moon sheds her beams. Aah ! Aah ! Aah !
And with it the sound of the drum, the everlasting
drum ; stimulus to labour, spirit of the dance, dirge at
the death-bed, call to the feast, frenzy-lasher at the
religious ceremonial, medium of converse, warner of peril,
bearer of news, telephone and telegraph in one. Go
where you will, you cannot escape the drum — where
human life is. The everlasting drum which heralds the
setting sun, which ushers in the morn, which troubles
your sleep and haunts your dreams. Borne across the
silent waters, booming through the sombre forest, rising
from the murmuring town, cheering on the railway
cutters — ^the fascinating, tedious, mysterious, maddening,
attractive, symbolic, inevitable, everlasting African drum.
I suppose they must be thirsty like every other living
thing in the glare of the sun and the heat of the sky and
the dust of the track, for they crowd thick and fast about
the kurimi, the narrow belt of vegetation (a blessed sight
in the " dries ") where the stream cuts the road. Pieridce
with white and yellow wings ; Lycaence shot with amethyst
and azure ; Theklas, too, or what I take for such, with
long, fragile, waving extremities, infinitely beautiful.
32
A RAGCSUT OF THINGS SEEN AND FELT
Now and then a black and green Papilio, flashing silver
from his under wing, harbinger of spring. Or some
majestic, swift-flying Charaxes with broad and white
band on a centre of russet brown — not the castor, alas !
nor yet the pollux — I have yet to hve to see them afloat
'neath the African sun. Narrow veins of muddy ooze
trickle from the well-nigh dried-up bed. And here they
congregate in swarms, proboscis thrust into the nectar,
pumping, pumping up the liquid, fluttering and jostling
one another for preferential places even as you may see
the moths do on the " treacles" at home. The butterfly
world is much like the human world after all in its egotism.
But if you want to see it at its best, plunge into the
cool forest glades before the sun has attained his maximum
(when even the butterflies rest) and watch the green and
gold Euphcedra dodging in and about the broad green
leaves or tangled creepers. See him spread his glorious
panoply where that fitful sunbeam has somehow managed
to pierce the vault. A sight for the dear gods, I tell you —
is the Euphcedra sunning himself on a Niger forest path.
Men and politics become as small fry. The right per-
spective asserts itself. You almost forget the beastly,
clogging, mentally muddling helmet (how the Almighty
has blessed the African by granting him a thick skull
which he can carry on his neck, shaved — shaved, mind
you (the bliss of it even in thought !), — and as clean as a
billiard ball at that) as you watch the Euphcedra, and
absorb the countless other delights the forest contains,
foremost amongst them silence, silence from humans at
least. " These are the best days of my life. These are
my golden days."
The floods have fallen and a thousand dark forms are
building up the muddy, slippery banks against the next
invasion, with saplings rough hewn in the forest ; the
men chopping and adjusting these defences, the women
33 D
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
carrying up earth from below in baskets. Beneath, the
fishermen are making fast their canoes and spreading
out their nets to dry — all kinds of nets, ordinary cast
nets, nets resembling gigantic hoops, stiff nets encased
in wood somewhat after the pattern of the coracle. The
broad river fades away into the evening haze. For the
swift wings of night are already felt, and the sun has just
dropped behind the curtain of implacable forest.
One by one, in twos and threes, in struggling groups,
the workers scramble up the slope on to the path — or
what remains of it from the floods — ^which skirts the village.
It grows dark. One is vaguely aware of many naked,
shadowy, mostly silent figures on every side of one ;
wending their way along the path, or flitting in and out
among the houses. Eyes flash out of the semi-obscurity
which is replete with the heavy, dank odour of African
humanity when African humanity has been busily at
work. In the open doorways a multitude of little fires
spring into life, and with them the smell of aromatic wood.
The evening meal is in preparation, and presently tired
and naked limbs will stretch themselves to the warmth
with a sense of comfort. The lament of a child serves
to remind you how seldom these Niger babies cry.
And now it is the turn of the fireflies to glow forth.
Thick as bees, they carpet the ground on every marshy
spot where the reeds grow — vivid, sentient gems. Patches
of emeralds : but emeralds endowed with life ; emeralds
with an ambient flame lighting them from within. They
hover above the ground like delicate will-o'-the-wisps.
They float impalpable, illusive, unearthly beautiful in
the still night air, as some rare and fleeting dream of
immortality, some incarnation of transcendent joy to-
wards which dull clay stretches forth arms everlastingly
impotent.
34
CHAPTER VII
THE SALLAH AT ZARIA
All Zaria is astir, for this is December, the sacred month,
the month when the pilgrims to Mecca are offering sacri-
fices, and to-day the Sallah celebrations begin. At an
early hour masses of men began to swarm out of the
great Hausa city, dressed in their best gowns, driving
before them bullocks, sheep, and goats to be sacrificed
on the hill — even Kofena, the hill of many legends, the
old centre of Hausa " rock worship," beyond the city
walls — to the sound of invocations to Almighty God.
For days beforehand people have been pouring in from
the villages in the surrounding plain. Long files of oxen,
sheep, and goats have been passing through the gates.
Every household has been busy getting together presents
for friends, making provision for poor relations, bringing
forth the finest contents of their wardrobes, preparing
succulent dishes for entertainment. Every class of the
population has been filled with eager anticipation, agri-
culturists and weavers, blacksmiths and tanners, dyers
and shoemakers. The barbers have- plied an active
trade, and the butchers likewise. Every face has worn
a smile, and the hum of human life has been more insis-
tent than usual. A city of great antiquity this, boasting
a long line of fifty-eight Hausa kings before the Fulani
dynasty arose, and thirteen since that event early in last
century. It rises out of an enormous plain, cultivated
for many miles around, dotted here and there with
35
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
fantastic piles of granite, resembling mediaeval castles.
Its reddish clay walls, crumbling in parts, twenty to
thirty feet high in others, and many feet in thickness at the
base, enclose a sea of compounds and tortuous picturesque
streets, above which wave the fan-palms, the paw-paw,
the beautiful locust-bean tree, and the graceful tamarind.
In the plain itself the gigantic Hmi, or cotton tree, is a
conspicuous landmark, and its rugged staunchness is the
subject of a legend uncomplimentary to the ladies of
Zaria : Rimayin Zaria sun fi matan Zaria alkawali,
meaning that the old rimi trees are more dependable
than the fickle beauties of the town.
But the outstanding feature of the day approaches.
It is ten o'clock, and the procession from Kofena hill is
winding its way back again to the city. Here the Emir
will arrive in state after the performance of his religious
devoirs, and will address his people. Here, in the great
open square flanking the mosque, the district chiefs and
notables will charge down upon him in the traditional
" jafi&," or mounted salute. As we enter the gates of
the city, after a two miles canter from the Residency
down a long and dusty road, we find almost deserted
streets. Every one is congregating in the square. Soon
we enter into it, to see a vast concourse of people clothed
in white and blue. They form a living foreground to
the walls on either side of the Emir's residence, which
stands at one extremity of the square. Around the
mosque, on the left, they are as thick as bees, and,
opposite the mosque, some broken hillocky ground is
covered with a multitude. At its further extremity the
square narrows into the road leading through the city
to Kofena, and towards the opening of this road as it
debouches into the square all eyes are directed. The
brilliant sun of tropical Africa smites downwards, giving
a hard line to lights and shadows, and throwing every-
thing into bold relief. With the exception of a few
36
THE SALLAH AT ZARIA
denationalised Hausa wives of our own soldiers, the
crowd is exclusively one of men and youths, for, according
to custom, the women will not put in an appearance
until later in the day. We three White men,— the Resi-
dent, much respected, and wise with the wisdom which
comes of long years of experience of this fascinating
country, and with a knowledge of Mohammedan law
which fills the wisest mallams with astonishment — his
assistant, and the writer take our stand on the right of
the Emir's residence. Behind us a few mounted men
in gallant array, and immediately on our left a charming
group of the Emir's sons, or some of them, in costly
robes of satin. One little fellow, eight years old, perhaps,
with a hght olive complexion, glances rather bored looks
from under a snow-white turban. Another rather bigger
boy, clad in dark yellow satin, is an imposing figure.
A deep " Ah " comes from the throats of the assembled
thousands as the blare of trumpets resounds faintly in
the distance, and a cloud of dust rises from the road.
From out of it there emerge a dozen horsemen charging
down the square at break-neck speed, their right arms
raised, their multi-coloured robes flying out behind them.
With a shout they rein up their steeds in front of the
Emir's residence, then wheel swiftly, and are off again
whence they came — the avant-garde of the procession.
The sound of drums and trumpets gets louder. The head
of the procession comes in sight, or, to be more accurate,
the dust solidifies itself into a compact mass, flashing
and glittering with a thousand shades. First, many
hundreds walking on foot, who, as they enter the square,
deploy right and left and mingle with the waiting crowd.
Behind them more horsemen detach themselves and
gallop towards us, backwards and forwards. Each man
is dressed according to his own particular fancy. Some
in red, some in blue, some in white, some in green, others
in vivid yellows, but most of them, it would seem, wearing
37
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
half a dozen different colours at the same time, both as
to robes and turbans. Their leather boots, thrust into
shovel-headed stirrups, are embroidered with red and
green ; their saddle-cloths and bridles are also richly
embroidered and tasselled. The majority, we observe,
wear long cross-handled swords in leather scabbards.
Some carry thin spears in their hands ; one fierce-looking
warrior a battle-axe. He seems to have stepped out of
the Middle Ages does this particular chief, his horse
wearing a metalled protection as in the old days of the
Crusaders. But the heart of the procession, moving up
slowly, puts an end to these evolutions, and the horsemen
range themselves up on either side of the Emir's residence,
their gallant beasts, curvetting and prancing as the " Ah "
of the crowd changes into a great roar of sound. As a trial
of patience I commend the effort to take a photograph
over the ears of a horse who is making strenuous efforts to
stand up on its hind legs, while a fine and smarting white
dust rises in clouds, entering eyes and mouth, and all
round you are people in a fine frenzy of excitement,
mingled with apprehension, lest your mount takes it into
his head to ride amuck in the midst of them, which he has
every appearance of wishing to do.
Rattle, rattle, come the drums, mingled with the long-
drawn-out notes of the tin or silver trumpets. Suddenly
a loud shout arises, a shout of merriment, as a monstrous
figure, clad in skins of beasts, and, apparently, hung
round with bladders, in his hand a long stick, dashes
out of the advancing throng, clearing the intervening
space between it and the Emir's residence in a succession
of frantic bounds. This is the Court fool, and his appear-
ance is quite in setting with the piece. For this whole
scene is a scene out of the Arabian Nights, and, really, one
would hardly be astonished at the appearance of Jins,
or even of Eblis himself. At last, here is the Emir and
his immediate bodyguard, and the drummers and the
38
THE EMIR OF ZARIA.
lin, J.IIIR Ul' KAIM.^A.
Sf-r /■. I.|li
THE SALLAH AT ZARIA
trumpeters. The air resounds with prolonged " Ah ! Ah !
Ahs." There is a vast tossing of arms, and prancing of
horses, and ghttering of spears, a cUmax of sound and
colour — and dust.
The Emir Aliu is a fine looking man, with a good
straight nose, intelligent, rather cruel-looking eyes. His
mouth we cannot see, for the folds of the turban are
drawn across the lower part of his face. A dark, indigo-
dyed purple turban and under-cloak ; over it a snow-
white robe of silk with a tasselled cape which half hides
the turban — these are the principal coverings to volu-
minous robes of many tints. His feet are encased in
beautifully embroidered boots, and his saddle is richly
ornamented. On the forefinger of his left hand is a heavy
silver ring. Halting, he turns and faces the multitude.
His attendants, one on either side, wave the dust away
from his face with ostrich feather fans. Others, dressed
in red and green, and carrying long staves, range them-
selves in front of him and shout his praises in stentorian
tones. Four figures on foot advance, three of them are
clad in skins and carry drums. The fourth is a crouching
creature with a curious wizened face bearing a drawn
sword in his hand. A sword dance ensues, the four going
round and round in a circle. The gentleman with a
sword contorts himself, prods viciously at imaginary
foes, and every now and then makes a playful attempt to
smite off one of the drummers' legs. This performance
being terminated — accompanied the while by incessant
shouting on the part of every one in general — the
actors retire, and the Emir holds up his thin aristocratic
hand.
Instantly a silence falls. The change is singularly
impressive. The Emir begins to speak in a low voice to
a herald mounted on a raised platform at his side. The
herald, the perspiration pouring down his face, shouts
out each sentence as it falls from the Emir's lips. As
39
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
the speech proceeds the Emir becomes more animated.
He waves his arm with a gesture full of dignity and com-
mand. And now the silence is occasionally broken with
sounds of approval. Finally he stops, and it is the turn
of the Resident who smilingly delivers himself of a much
shorter oration which, as in the previous case, is shouted
to the assemblage by the herald. I was able to obtain,
through the courtesy of the Resident, from the Emir's
Waziri a rendering of the speech of which the following
is a translation —
" The Emir greets you all with thanks to God. He thanks God's
messenger (Mohammed). He gives thanks for the blessings of his
parents and his ancestors. He gives thanks to the Europeans who
are the gates of his town. He thanks all White men. Next — you must
attend to the orders which the Emir gives you every year, I say unto
you leave off double dealing. Remove your hand from the people.
Let them follow their own courses. Separate yourselves from in-
justice. Why do I say ' Give up injustice ' ? You know how we were
in former days and you see how we are now. Are we not better off
than formerly ? Next — ^I thank my headmen who assist me in my
work. I thank my servants who are fellow workers. I thank my
young chiefs who are fellow workers. I thank the men of my town
who are fellow workers. I thank my followers in the town. I thank
the village heads. I thank all the people of the land of Zaria who are
helping me in my work. Next — I wish you to pay attention to the
commands of the English. And I say unto you that all who see them
should pay them respect. He who is careless of the orders of the White
man does not show them respect. Though nothing happens to him he
cries on his own account (i.e. his stupidity is his punishment), for it
is his ignorance that moves him. Next — every one who farms let
him pay his tax. Every one who says this man is my slave, or this
woman is my slave, or these people are my slaves, and uses force
against them, let judgment fall upon him. What I say is this — may
God reward us ! May God give us peace in our land ! May God give
us the abundance of the earth ! Amen. Those who feel joyful can
say — ' This is our desire ! this is our desire ! ' "
After a vain attempt to shake hands with the Emir,
our respective mounts altogether declining to assist, we
ride cat of the town escorted by a couple of hundred
horsemen. A little way past the gates we halt while
they, riding forward a hundred yards or so, wheel, and
40
THE SALLAH AT ZARIA
charge down upon us with a shout, reining their horses
with a sudden jerk, so near to us that the ensanguined
foam from the cruel bits bespatters us.
As we ride home to the Residency two miles out of
the town, uppermost in the mind at least of one of us is
the fascination of this strange land, with its blending
of Africa and the East, its barbaric displays, its indus-
trial life, its wonderful agricultural development — above
all, perhaps, the tour deforce of governing it with a handful
of White officials and a handful of native troops.
41
MAP OF SOUTHERN NIGERIA SHOWING THE THREE PROVINCES,
PART II
SOUTHERN NIGERIA
CHAPTER I
Nigeria's claim upon public attention
Nigeria is a geographical expression applied to a terri-
tory in West Africa which by successive stages, covering
a period of more than one hundred years, under cir-
cumstances widely differing in character and incentive,
and almost wholly as the result of the initial enterprise
of British explorers and merchants, has passed under the
protection of Britain. With the discovery of Nigeria are
associated exploits which for romantic interest and per-
sonal achievements hold a prominent place in British
exploring records. The angry swirl of the Bussa rapids
must ever recall the well-nigh superhuman achievements
of Mungo Park, as the marvellous creeks and channels
of the Niger Delta evoke the memory of Richard Lander *
and John Beecroft.
You cannot visit the Court of the Emir of Kano
without remembering Clapperton's account of the awk-
ward religious conundrums with which the gallant sailor,
the first European to enter that fascinating African city,
was amazed and confounded by one of the present Emir's
predecessors ; nor ride over the wide and dusty road
into the heart of Hausaland without thinking that but
for Joseph Thomson's diplomatic tact in negotiating the
early treaties with its potentates, which were to pave
* Lord Scarborough, I am glad to know, is instituting a movement designed
to put up a monument to Richard Lander and Mungo Park at Forcados, one
of the mouths of the Niger. The suggestion that a monument should be erected
to the memory of Richard Lander at the mouth of the Niger was made last
year in the Times by the writer, who had the honour of reporting to Lord
Scarborough upon various sites examined in the course of this year, and
recommending Forcados as the most appropriate.
45
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
the way for the statesmanship of a Taubman-Goldie
and the organising genius of a Lugard, Nigeria would
to-day be the brightest jewel in the West African Empire
of the French. The spirit of MacGregor Laird, the hardy
pioneer who laid the first foundations of British com-
merce in this country seems to hover over the broad bosom
of the Niger. The marvellous panorama that unfolds
itself before your eyes at Lokoja (the confluence of the
Niger with its tributary the Benue) conjures up the
heroism and tragedy of the Allan-Trotter expedition ;
while to negotiate in a dug-out the currents that eddy
round the famous ju-ju rock — still termed Baikie's
Seat — ^is a reminder that somewhere in the blue depths
below lie the remains of Dr. Baikie's ill-fated Day-spring.
This land is, indeed, a land rich in heroic memories
to men of British blood. It is the more astonishing
that so little appears to be known by the general
public either of its past or, what is much more impor-
tant, of the many complex problems connected with its
administration.
Nigeria is, at present, arbitrarily divided into two
units, " Southern " and " Northern;" the division corre-
sponds with the historical events which have distinguished
the assumption of British control, and is to that extent
inevitable. But to-day, with internal communications
and administrative control rapidly extending, this situa-
tion presents many drawbacks. In the absence of any
considered scheme of general constructive policy laid
down at home, the existence of two separate Governments
with ideals necessarily influenced by the personal idio-
syncrasies of frequently changing heads in a territory
geographically united, through which the channels of a
singularly intensive internal trade have flowed for cen-
turies, must of necessity tend to promote divergencies
in the treatment of public questions, and, therefore,
46
''TMl
SHIPPING PALM-OIL ON THE NIGER AT HIljH WATER.
Sa- /.. 5-.
NIGERIA'S CLAIM UPON PUBLIC ATTENTION
create numerous difficulties for the future. I propose
to deal with this subject in greater detail later on.
/'^Meantime it would seem necessary at the outset to
(emphasize two facts which the public mind does not
1 appear to have realized. The first is that Nigeria,
I both in size and in population, is not only the most
considerable of our tropical dependencies in Africa,
but is the most considerable and the wealthiest of all
"our tropical dependencies (India, of course, excepted).
Embracing an area of 332,960 square miles, Nigeria is
thus equal in size to the German Empire, Italy and
Holland, while its population, though not yet ascertained
with accuracy, can hardly amount to less than fifteen
millions, being double that of British East Africa and
Uganda with Nyassaland thrown in, and nearly three
times as numerous as the native population comprised
in the South African Union. The second is that no-
where else in tropical or sub-tropical Africa is the British
administrator faced, at least on a large scale, with a
Mohammedan population, already to be counted in
millions and increasing year by year with significant
rapidity. Until a few years ago the work of Great
Britain in West Africa, apart from a few trifling ex-
ceptions, was confined to the administration of the Pagan
Negro. The position is very different now. In the
southern regions of the Protectorate, where its pro-
gression is a modern phenomenon, Islam is, from the
administrative point of view, a purely social factor. But
in the northern regions, where Mohammedan rule has
been established for centuries, under the Hausas, and in
more recent times under the Fulani, Islam has brought
its laws, its taxation, its schools and its learning. It is
there a political as well as a religious and social force,
soUdly entrenched. This fact which, administratively
speaking, need not alarm us — unless the Administration
is goaded into adopting a hostile attitude towards its
47
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
Mohammedan subjects — does, however, invest Nigeria
with an additional interest of its own and does supply a
further reason why the affairs of this greatest of our
African protectorates should receive more intelligent
consideration and study at the hands of the public than
it has enjoyed hitherto.
48
CHAPTER II
THE NIGER DELTA
What is now known as Southern Nigeria comprises 77,200
square miles, and includes the whole seaboard of the
Nigerian Protectorate, some 450 miles long, and the
marvellous delta region whos^e network of waterways
and surpassing wealth in economic products must be
seen to be realized. Pursuing its southward course, the
Niger, after its journey of 2,550 miles across the continent
from west to east, bifurcates just below Abo into the
Forcados and the Nun. This is the apex of the delta,
and here the Niger is, indeed, majestic. From each of
these main channels of discharge spring countless others,
turning and twisting in fantastic contours until the
whole country is honeycombed to such an extent as to
become converted into an interminable series of islands.
The vastness of the horizon, the maze of interlacing
streams and creeks, winding away into infinity, the
sombre-coloured waters, the still more sombre impene-
trable mangrove forests — here and there relieved by taller
growth — impress one with a sense of awe. There is
something mysterious, unfathomable, almost terrifying in
the boundless prospect, the dead uniformity of colour,
the silence of it all. It is the primeval world, and man
seems to have no place therein.
Small wonder that amidst such natural phenomena,
where in the tornado season which presages the rains the
sky is rent with flashes only less terrific than the echoing
49 E
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
peals of thunder, where the rushing wind hurls forest
giants to earth and lashes the waters into fury, where
for months on end torrential downpours fall until man
has no dry spot upon which he can place his foot ; where
nature in its most savage mood wages one long relentless
war with man, racking his body with fevers and with
ague, now invading his farms with furious spreading
plant life, now swamping his dwelling-place — small wonder
the inhabitants of this country have not kept pace with
the progression of more favoured sections of the human
race. It is, on the contrary, astonishing, his circum-
stances being what they are, that the native of the Niger
delta should have developed as keen a commercial instinct
as can be met with anywhere on the globe, and that
through his voluntary labours, inspired by the necessities
and luxuries of barter, he should be contributing so
largely to supply the oils, fats, and other tropical pro-
ducts which Western industrialism requires. Trade with
the outer world which the merchant — himself working
under conditions of supreme discomfort, and in constant
illi-health — ^has brought ; improved means of communi-
cation through the clearing and mapping of creeks and
channels, thereby giving accessibility to new markets
which the Administration is yearly creating — ^these are
the civilizing agents of the Niger delta, the only media
whereby its inhabitants can hope to attain to a greater
degree of ease and a wider outlook.
The outer fringe of the delta is composed entirely of
mangrove swamps, whose skeleton-like roots rise up from
the mud as the tide recedes, and from whose bark the
natives obtain, by burning, a substitute for salt. F6r
untold centuries the mangrove would appear to have been
encroaching upon the sea, the advance guard of more
substantial vegetation springing up behind it with the
gradual increase of deposits affording root-depth. Apart
from the deltaic system proper, produced by the
50
THE NIGER DELTA
bifurcation of the Niger and its subsequent efforts to reach
the ocean, the seaboard is pierced by several rivers, of
which the Cross, navigable for stern wheelers of light
draught in the wet season for 240 miles and in the dry for
forty, is the most important. The Benin River links up
with the deltaic system on the east, and on the west
with the lagoon system of Lagos, into which several
rivers of no great volume, such as the Ogun and Oshun,
discharge themselves. So continuous and extensive are
these interior waterways that communication by canoe,
and even by light-draught launches, is possible from one
end of the seaboard to the other — i.e., from Lagos to
Old Calabar.
The mangrove region is sparsely populated by fishing
and trading tribes. It is curious to come across signs of
human life when you would hardly suspect its possible
presence. A gap in the whitened, spreading roots, a
tunnelled passage beyond, a canoe or two at the opening ;
or, resting upon sticks and carefully roofed, a miniature
hut open on all sides, in which reposes some votive
offering, such are the only indications that somewhere
in the vicinity a village lies hidden. A visit to some
such village holds much to surprise. Diligent search has
revealed to the intending settler that the particular spot
selected contains, it may be a hundred yards or so from
the water, a patch of firm land where, doubtless with
much difficulty, a crop of foodstuffs can be raised, and
here he and his family will lead their primitive existence
isolated from the outer world, except when they choose
to enter it on some trading expedition. Further inland
somewhat, as for instance, near the opening of the Warri
creek (whose upper reaches, bordered with cocoanut
palms, oil palms, and ferns, are a dream of beauty), one
of the many off-shoots of the Forcados, where behind the
fringe of mangroves the forest has begun to secure a
steady grip, neatly kept and prosperous villages are more
51
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
numerous. Their denizens are busy traders and there
are plentiful signs of surface civilization. An expedition
in canoes to the chief of one of these Jekri villages led
us from a little landing stage cut out of the mangroves
and cleverly timbered along a beaten path through
smelling mud, alive with tiny crabs and insect life of
strange and repulsive form, into a clearing scrupulously
clean, bordered with paw-paw trees and containing some
twenty well-built huts. A large dug-out was in process
of completion beneath a shed ; fishing-nets were hanging
out to dry ; a small ju-ju house with votive offerings
ornamented the centre of the village green, as one might
say ; a few goats wandered aimlessly about, and a score
of naked tubby children gazed open-eyed or clung round
their mothers' knees in affected panic. Beyond the ju-ju
house a one-storeyed bungalow with corrugated iron roof
and verandah unexpectedly reared its ugly proportions,
and before long we were discussing the much vexed
question of the liquor traffic over a bottle of ginger ale
across a table covered by a European cloth, with an in-
telligent Jekri host, whose glistening muscular body,
naked to the waist, contrasted oddly with the surroundings.
These included a coloured print of the late King Edward
hanging upon the walls in company with sundry illus-
trated advertisements all rejoicing in gorgeous frames.
The walls of the vestibule below were similarly adorned,
and through a half-open door one perceived a ponderous
wooden bed with mattress, sheets, pillows, and gaudy
quilt (in such a climate !) complete.
The deltaic region is the real home of the oil palm
-with its numerous and still unclassified varieties, although
it extends some distance beyond in proportionately
lessening quantities as you push north. No other tree
in the world can compare with the oil palm in the mani-
fold benefits it confers upon masses of men. Occurring
in tens of millions, reproducing itself so freely that the
52
THE NIGER DELTA
natives often find it necessary to thin out the youngest
trees, it is a source of inexhaustible wealth to the people,
to the country, to commerce, and to the Administration.
The collection, preparation, transport, and sale of its
fruit, both oil and kernels for the export trade is the
paramount national industry of Southern Nigeria, in
which men, women, and children play their allotted parts.
Beautiful to look upon, hoary with antiquity (its sap was
used in ancient Egypt for cleansing the body before
embalment), the oil palm is put to endless uses by the
natives — its leaves and branches as roofing material, for
clothing, for the manufacture of nets, mats, and baskets ;
its fruit and covering fibre in various forms for food (not
disdained by the resident European in the famous palm
oil chop) , for light, for fuel. To the Southern Nigerian native
inhabiting the oil-palm area the tree is, indeed, domestically
indispensable, while its product represents something like
90 per cent, of his purchasing capacity in trade. How
entirely wrong would be any attempt at restricting his
free enjoyment of its bounties needs no emphasizing.
The importance of the export trade in the products of
the oil palm may be gauged by the returns for 1910,
which show that Southern Nigeria exported 172,998
tons of kernels and 76,850 tons of oil, of a total value of
no less than ;f 4, 193,049 ; and yet the capacities of the
trade, especially in kernels, are only in their infancy.*
Many districts, rich in oil palms are unproductive owing
to inaccessibility of markets or lack of transport ; in
others which supply oil, the kernels, for sundry reasons,
among which insufficiency of labour to spare from farming
operations no doubt predominates, are not collected,
although it is commonly reckoned that three tons of
* The total value of the nett commercial trade of Southern Nigeria amounted
to ^9,288,cwo in 1910, viz. imports ;^4,320,ooo, exports ;^4,968,ooo. Among the
imports, cotton goods amounted to^i, 306,812. Ten years ago the total import
of the latter was only ;^6o5, 146. The whole commercial movement has grown
enormously in the last few years, the total nett turnover in 1907 amounting
only to ;^6,974,ooo.
53
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
kernels should be available for every ton of oil. In con-
sidering these figures, realizing the future potentialities
of the trade, and realizing, too, the truly enormous sum
of African labour which it represents (every nut is cracked
by hand to extract the kernel), one cannot but reflect
upon the foolish generalities which ascribe " idleness "
to the West African negro, whose free labour in this trade
alone gives employment directly and indirectly to tens
of thousands in England and in Europe, from the merchant
and his clerks, from the steamship owner and his employes
on land and sea, to the manufacturer of soap and candles
and their allied trades ; from the .coopers who turn out
the casks sent out from England in staves for the con-
veyance of the oil, to the Irish peasants who collect the
stems of the common sedge shipped out to Nigeria from
Liverpool for caulking these casks.
The bulk of the oil is exported to England (;^i, 191,000
value in 1909), but nearty the entire kernel crop goes to
Germany, where it is treated by the big crushing mills.
It is possible that this state of affairs may undergo con-
siderable change within the next decade, and the reason
for it is, incidentally, of considerable economic interest,
as it is of moment to Nigeria. Up to within three or four
years ago palm kernels were crushed and the oil almost
entirely used by the soap trade, but chemistry has now
found a process of refining and making palm-kernel oil
edible, as it may, perhaps, do some day for palm oil itself,
as a base for margarine, for which coprah and ground-
nut oil were formerly employed. This has had as a con-
sequence an enormous widening of the home market, and
the soap trade has now to contend with keen competition
for the supply of one of its staples. The resultant effect
is the initiative of Lever Brothers (Limited), who,
finding the need of enlarging and giving increased security
to their supplies of the raw material, are, with commend-
able enterprise, erecting three large crushing mills in
54
THE NIGER DELTA
Southern Nigeria, the one at Lagos being already in a
fair way to completion. If the numerous difficulties
they will have to face are successfully negotiated, the
ultimate result can hardly fail to be that of transferring
the considerable palm kernel crushing industry from the
banks of the Rhine to those of the Niger, besides creating
a new export trade in oil cake from the Niger to England
and the Continent.
55
CHAPTER III
THE FOREST BELT
Beyond the deltaic region proper lies the vast belt of
primeval and secondary forest of luxurious growth, giant
trees, tangled vines and creepers, glorious flowering
bushes, gaudy butterflies, moist atmosphere, and suffoca-
ting heat. Beyond the forest belt again lies, with re-
current stretches of forest, the more open hilly country,
the beginning of the uplands of the North. When an
authority on forestry recently wrote that "British
Columbia is the last great forest reserve left," he forgot
West Africa. That is what West Africa has continu-
ally suffered from — forgetfulness. The resources of the
Nigerian forest belt are as yet far from being fully deter-
mined, but sufficient is now known of them to show that
they are enormously rich. Besides the oil palm and the
wine palm (which produces the piassava of commerce)
the forest belt contains large quantities of valuable
mahoganies, together with ebony, walnut, satin, rose,
and pear woods, barwood, and other dye-woods, several
species of rubber, African oak, gums (copal), kola, and
numerous trees suitable to the manufacture of wood-
pulp, ^il-bearing plants abound in great quantities,
as do also fibres, several of which have been favourably
reported upon by the Imperial Institute. The shea-
butter tree, to which I shall have occasion again to refer,
is an inhabitant of the dry zone.
The soil of this forest region is wonderfully fertile,
and forest products apart, the possibilities of agricultural
56
THE FOREST BELT
development are considerable. The three articles under
cultivation by the natives the Administration has of late
years done its best to popularize have been c otton , cocoa,
and^ maize. For several reasons maize is an uncertain
quantity. The land bears two crops a year, the larger
crops ripening in July, but a wet August will play havoc
with harvesting and storing arrangements, while the
amount available for export must always depend upon
local food requirements and available labour. The culti-
vation of cocoa, for which the humid atmosphere, rich
alluvial soil, and abundant shade of the forest region
seem peculiarly suitable, has, on the other hand, steadily,
if slowly, increased since it was started fifteen years ago.
In 1900 the quantity of cocoa exported was valued at
£8,622. It had risen in 1910 to £101,151. The efforts
made within the last few years by the British Cotton
Growing Association, supplemented by those of the
Administration, to revive on a large scale the export trade
in raw cotton started by the Manchester manufacturer,
Mr. Clegg, at the time of the American Civil War, has so
far been partially, but only partially, successful. The
industry has progressed, but far less rapidly than its
promoters hoped.* Things do not move quickly in West
Africa. In all these questions several factors have to
be taken into account, for which sufficient allowance is
not made in Europe. For one thing, the really immense
amount of labour' which the Nigerian population is already
required to put forth in order to feed itself and to sustain
the existing export trade is not appreciated.
The idea that the native has merely to scratch the
earth or watch the fruit ripening on the trees in order to
sustain himself and his family is, speaking generally, as
grotesque an illusion as that he is a helpless, plastic
creature with no will of his own. The native is on the
whole an active, hard-working individual, the ramifications
* Vide Part IV.
57
/
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
of whose domestic and social needs involve him in con-
stant journeyings which absorb much time, and if his
soil is prolific in the bearing of crops, it is equally so in
invading vegetation, which has constantly to be checked.
He is also a keen business man and a born trader, as any
European merchant who has dealings with him will bear
witness, and he will turn his attention to producing what
pays him best. In that respect he differs not at all from
other sections of the human race amongst whom the
economic sense has been developed, and he cannot be
fairly expected to devote his attention to raising one
particular raw material which a certain home industry
may desire, if he can make larger profits in another direc-
tion. The opening up of the country, the increasing
dearness of food supplies in the neighbourhood of all the
great centres, the intensifying commercial activity and
economic pressure so visible on every side, the growth
of population, and the enlargement of the horizon of
ideas must necessarily lead to a steady development in
all branches of production. But the native must be
given time, and the country is one which cannot be rushed
either economically or politically.
No sketch, however brief, of the potentialities of the
Nigerian forest belt would be complete without a refer-
ence to the labours of the Forestry Department, which
owes its initiation to the foresight -and statesmanship of
the late Sir Ralph Moor. Such reference is the more
necessary since the work of the department crystallizes,
so to speak, the conception of its duties towards the
native population which guides the Administration's
policy. No other department of the Administration
reveals so clearly by its whole programme and its daily
practice what the fundamental object of British policy
in Nigeria really is, and in view of the increasing assaults
upon that policy by company promoters at home, on
the one hand, and the obstacles to which its complete
58
THE FOREST BELT
realization is subjected in Africa on the other, it is abso-
lutely essential that public opinion in Britain should
become acquainted with the facts and be ;n a position to
support the Colonial Of&ce and the Administration in
combining equity with commonsense.
Briefly stated, the Forestry Department is designed
to conserve forest resources for the benefit of the State —
the State meaning, in practice, the native communities
owning the land and their descendants, and the Admini-
stration charged with their guardianship, and while en-
couraging any legitimate private enterprise, whether
European or native, to oppose the wholesale exploitation
of those resources for the benefit of individuals, white or
black. It aims at impressing the native with the economic
value of his forests as a source of present and continual
revenue for himself and his children ; at inducing native
coromunities to give the force of native law to its regu-
lations and by their assistance in applying them, to pre-
vent destruction through indiscriminate farming opera-
tions and bush fires, to prevent the felling of immature
trees, to replant and to start communal plantations. It
aims at the setting aside, with the consent of the native
owners, of Government reserves and native reserves, and
at furthering industrial development by private enter-
prise under conditions which shall not interfere with the
general welfare of the country. In a word, the Forestry
Department seeks to associate the native communities
with the expanding values of the land in which they dwell,
so that for them the future will mean increasing prosperity
and wealth, the essence of the policy being that these
communities are not only by law and equity entitled to
such treatment, but that any other would be unworthy
of British traditions. It is what some persons call maudlin
sentiment, the sort of " maudlin sentiment " which
stands in the way of the Nigerian native being expro-
priated and reduced to the position of a hired labourer
59
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
on the properties of concessionnaires under whose patriotic
activities the Nigerian forest would be exploited until
it had disappeared from the face of the earth like the
forests of Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, and Eastern
Canada.
Apart from the question of safeguarding the rights of
the people of the land, our wards, the necessity of forest
conservation in the interest of the public weal has been
taught by bitter experience, and experience has also
shown that scientific forestry can only be profitably
undertaken by the Government or by bodies whose first
obligation is the interest and protection of the com-
munity. The Forestry Department of Southern Nigeria,
short as its existence has been, is already a revenue-
making Department, for in the last ten years it has either
planted, or induced the natives to plant, trees (some of
which, like the rubber trees in Benin, are now beginning
to bear) whose present estimated value is £287,526, and
has thus added over a quarter of a million to the value
of the capital stock of the forests without taking into
account the indirect effects of the steps taken to help
their natural regeneration. The Department has many
local difficulties to contend with, especially in the Western
province, which I shall have occasion to discuss in con-
nection with the general administrative problem facing
the administration in that section of the Protectorate.
The character of its work necessitates that, in addi-
tion to scientific training in forest lore, those responsible
for its direction shall be possessed of knowledge of native
customs and of considerable tact in conducting negotia-
tions with native authorities, always suspicious of Euro-
pean interference in anything which touches the question
of tenure and use of land. The Administration is for-
tunate in possessing in the Conservator and Deputy-
Conservator two men who combine in a rare degree these
dual qualifications. It is but the barest statement of
60
THE FOREST BELT
fact to say that Mr. H. N. Thompson, the Conservator
who went to Southern Nigeria after many years in Burma,
enjoys an international reputation. As an expert in
tropical forestry he stands second to none in the world.
His colleague, Mr. R. E. Dennett, has contributed more
than any other European living to our knowledge of
Nigerian folklore, and he understands the native mind
as few men of his generation do. In view of its immense
importance to the future of the country it is very re-
grettable to have to state that the Forestry Department
is greatly undermanned and its labours curtailed in
many directions by the insufficiency of the funds at its
disposal. No wiser course could be taken by the admini-
stration than that of setting aside a sum of borrowed
money to be used, as in the case of the railways, as
capital expenditure on productive forestry work.
6i
CHAPTER IV
THE CENTRAL AND EASTERN PROVINCES
In connection with the internal government of the Pro-
tectorate it may be advisable to refer briefly to the House
Rule Ordinance of igoi which has recently given rise
to some controversy. The House Rule Ordinance is a
measure designed by the late Sir Ralph Moor to prevent
social ana chy from ensuing when slavery was abolished
by the British Government. It gives force of Law to
House Rule. House Rule is, in reality, the native form
of government, which has existed in Southern Nigeria
for many centuries. In recognizing the former the
Administration acknowledges the existence of the latter
for which it can provide no substitute. Native society,
as already stated, is in the patriarchal state. The foun-
dation of it ij the " Father," whether of the family, of
the community, or of the tribe. The members of the
House are, in a measure, apprentices. Under native
law there are obligations on both sides. It is a transi-
tional stage, and should be regarded as such, and allowed
to reform itself from within. The one difficulty, in this
respect, is lest the Ordinance should tend to prevent a
gradual internal evolution towards a higher state by
sterilizing any healthy influences making for modification.
A much greater danger would be any sudden change
which would throw the whole country into absolute
confusion. In the Western Province and in the Bini
district, where native rule has developed more rapidly
than in the Eastern and Central, the Father of the House
62
THE CENTRAL AND EASTERN PROVINCES
is subject to the Father of the district, and he in turn
is subject to the Paramount Chief of the whole tribe —
the Supreme Father. There is, therefore, a check upon
despotic abuses by the head of the House. In the bulk
of the Central Province and in the whole of the Eastern
Province, the head of the House is virtually the head of
the community, the higher forms of internal control not
having evolved. Any hasty and violent interference
which domestic " slavery," as it is termed, in a country
like the Central and Eastern Provinces should be strenu-
ously opposed. It would be an act of monstrous in-
justice, in the first place, if unaccompanied by monetary
compensation, and it would produce social chaos. But
there seems to be no reason why the House Rule
Ordinance should not be amended in the^ senssu of sub-
stituting for Paramount Chieftainship therein — which is
virtually non-existent — ^the District Commissioners, aided
by the Native Councils, as a check upon the now un-
fettered action of the heads of Houses. To destroy the
authority of the heads would be to create an army of wastrels
and ne'er-do-weels. Native society would fall to pieces,
and endless "punitive expeditions" would hg'the result.*
For purposes of administration Southesn Nigeria is
divided into three Provinces, the Eastern (29,056 square
miles), with headquarters at Old Calabar ; the Central
(20,564 square miles) with headquarters at Warri ; and
the Western (27,644 square miles), with headquarters at
Lagos, the seat of Government of the Protectorate. To
the Western Province is attached, as distinct from the
Protectorate, what is termed the " Colony of Lagos,"
comprising the capital and a small area on the mainland
— Lagos itself is an island — amounting altogether to
3,420 square miles. The supreme government of the
three Provinces is carried on from Lagos by the Governor,
* In this connection Mr. Dennett's paper in the September issue of the
journal of the Colonial Institute is very valuable.
63
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
assisted by an Executive Council and by a Legislative
Council composed of nine officials and six unofficial
members selected by the Governor and approved by the
Secretary of State. Each Province is in charge of a
Provincial Commissioner, although in the Western Pro-
vince his duties are more nominal than real. In none of
the Provinces is there a Provincial Council. The Central
and Eastern Provinces are sub-divided into districts in
charge of a District Commissioner and Assistant Com-
missioner, who govern the country through the recog-
nized Chiefs and their councillors by the medium of
Native Councils which meet periodically and over which
the District Commissioner or his assistant presides.
These Native Councils or Courts constitute the real ad-
ministrative machinery of the country. They administer
native law in civil and criminal cases between natives.
They may not, however, except by special provision,
deal with civil cases in which more than £200 is involved,
or with criminal cases of a nature which, under native
law, would involve a fine exceeding £100 or a sentence
of imprisonment exceeding ten years with or without
hard labour, or a flogging exceeding fifteen strokes.
Appeal from the Native Courts to the Supreme Court
can be made through the District Commissioners, who
have the powers of a Judge of the Supreme Court with
powers of jurisdiction limited by law. The District
Commissioner's Court is virtually a branch of the Supreme
Court, and deals almost entirely with cases in which non-
natives are concerned.
The Central and Eastern Provinces, which include the
deltaic and the larger part of the forest region, are in-
habited by Pagan tribes, among whom Mohammedanism
is at present making but relatively slow progress (none
at all in many districts) and Christianity, which by fits
and starts and with long intervals has been at them since
the fifteenth century, still less. These tribes are of an
64
THE CENTRAL AND EASTERN PROVINCES
independent, sturdy temperament, and in the remoter
parts of both Provinces still uncontrolled, or virtually
so. They are, almost without exception, great traders,
and the British merchants who know them best speak
highly of their honesty in commercial transactions.
The problem of governing these peoples offers no
complications, which may be called political, of a serious
character. It is rendered easier in the Central Province,
where the authority of the Benin Kingdom, exercised
for so many centuries, has led to the centralization of a
strong native authority ; and proportionately less so in
the Eastern Province, where no considerable native power
was ever evolved. The Administration levies no direct
tax, and its chief concern is to keep the peace, to open up
the country, and to check barbarous customs. Astonish-
ing progress has been effected in these respects during the
past decade, nor must' it be supposed that because there
is an absence of complex political questions, progress has
not been attended with complexities of a different order.
Indeed, people at home can have no conception of the
natural difficulties under which the administrator, the
merchant, and, for that matter, the native also, labour
in carr5dng out their respective tasks and avocations in
the deltaic and forest regions of Nigeria. For six months
in the year a very large portion of the Central and Eastern
Provinces is partially submerged. The Niger overflows
its banks, every forest rivulet becomes a river, the creeks
and channels spread their waters upon the land, the forest
is flooded over an enormous area, and the pathways inter-
secting it are impassable.
It is in circumstances such as these that District
Commissioners have to keep in touch with their districts,
not infrequently spending days and even nights in dug-
outs under conditions which may be better imagined
than described ; marching in the rear of weary carriers
through reeking, soaking, steaming forest ; negotiating
65 F
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
streams swollen into torrents ; camping where and when
they can, the boots they remove getting mouldy in a
night, the clothes they hang up wringing wet when they
come to put them on again ; add to this a body often
plagued with malaria and rheumatism, poorly nourished
with sometimes insufficient and usually untempting diet,
tormented by stinging insects, and a faint idea can be
formed of conditions, during the rainy season, of a life
which even in the dry season calls upon the utmost
reserves of a man's moral fibre, to say nothing of his
physical powers. That the latter give way does not,
alas! need demonstration, for while a favoured few resist,
the roll of deaths and invaliding tells its own tale ; and
it would not be surprising if the former proved itself
frequently unequal to the strain. Such cases are, how-
ever, extremely rare, and it is but natural if men labour-
ing for their country under the conditions of hardship I
have inadequately sketched should bitterly resent being
portrayed on public platforms at home in the light of
rivets in an administrative machine cynically demoraliz-
ing the natives of the country with drink in order to raise
revenue.* Assuredly it is necessary, as a prominent
statesman addressing the House of Commons declared
some years ago, that " the more you extend your Empire
the more imperative it is that this House should extract
irom its agents abroad the same standard of conduct
which we exact at home." But it is also necessary that
public opinion in Britain should take more trouble than it
does to realize something of the conditions under which
its agents in the most unhealthy tropical regions of the
Empire have to spend their lives, and should extend to
them more sympathy than, at present, it seems often
inclined to do.
It is in this part of Nigeria, where natural man is
perpetually in conflict with his environment, that you
* Vide Part IV.
66
_ ==.-v , - )
THE CENTRAL AND EASTERN PROVINCES
would expect to find those darker customs and practices
connected with the spiritual side of life, whereby humanity
has in all ages sought to propitiate the forces of Nature ;
customs which under the modern form of sword-dances,
Morris dances, and the like attest to their former exist-
ence in Europe. If we are honest with ourselves we
must admit that the inspiration which has evolved a
sort of misty horror around the peoples of the West
Coast of Africa, has been largely drawn from the setting
of swamp and forest where the sacrificial rites associated
with them, more prominently, perhaps, than they deserve,
have been performed. In themselves these rites differ
in no way from those we are familiar with in the records
of white peoples when they had reached a stage of in-
tellectual advancement which the Nigerian negro has
certainly never attained, and which it is doubtful if any
human stock could, or can ever, attain, in such an en-
vironment. Owing 'to the unconquered and, I think,
unconquerable natural forces surrounding him, the
Nigerian of the delta is still in the stage " to listen to the
will of Jove which comes forth from the lofty and verdant
oak " ; to seek as the load-star of his spiritual necessities
and in his ceaseless struggle against implacable odds, the
conciliation of the fertilizing spirit through whose assist-
ance alone he can hope to subject them ; to incorporate
the personality of protecting deities into man by oblation
and by human or animal sacrifice, the shedding of blood
being the mystic symbol of established contact with the
protecting spiritual elements (the same prompting ani-
mates the most sacred of Christian rites) as it remains
the tangible and most potent symbol of human brother-
hood. The sacrificial knife of the Nigerian negro may
seem more repulsive to the modern eye from the setting
of black forms framed in the deep shadows of primeval
forest and foetid swamp, and a double dose of original
sin may with complacency be assigned to him by the
67
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
superficial. But in itself and in the motive which raises
it quivering over the bound and helpless victim, it differen-
tiates not at all from the story of Abraham and Isaac
handed down to us in the sacred writings and not, cer-
tainly, in a light other than commendable, given the
setting. If some of those who are so ready to pass
shallow judgment upon the social and spiritual habits
of the West African chez lui and who are responsible for
so much misapprehension in the public mind as to his
true character, would study the book of Genesis, they
might approach the subject with an exacter sense of pro-
portion. For a cessation of these practices in their most
repellant forms — already much curtailed, openly at least
— ^time must be relied upon and the most powerful element
in hastening the process is not the punitive expedition,
but increased facility for inter-communication which
trade expansion generates and entails upon Government
to provide. It may be safely predicted that the process
will be far more rapid than it was in Europe.
No more striking object lesson in the capacity for
real progress along indigenous lines possessed by the
Southern Nigerian pagan could be sought than a com-
parison between the Bini people of 1897 and the Bini
people of to-day. A powerful tribe now numbering
some 150,000 and inhabiting the Central Province, the
Binis had long been the slaves, so to speak, of a theocracy
which had succeeded in denaturalizing the original native
state-form and in obtaining an over-mastering hold over
the people. The King's superstitions made him a puppet
in its hands. The murder of several British officials was
followed by the capture of the city, and the occupation
of the country. Though mild in comparison with the
autodafes and kindred pursuits of the Spanish Inquisition
and the long persecution of the Jews which have dis-
tinguished other priesthoods in cultured surroundings
that call for a certain sobriety of judgment in discussing
68
/■
^~^-
\
1
■•-■,-
THE CENTRAL AND EASTERN PROVINCES
the priesthood of primitive Benin, the latter had succeeded
m inspiring a reign of terror throughout the country.
No man's Hfe was safe, and Benin city, the capital, was a
place of abominations. The priesthood were rightly
broken, but the authority of the chiefs maintained, and
despite one single administrative error, which, if not
repaired, may occasion trouble later on, the Binis have
become one of the most prosperous and law-abiding
people in the Protectorate. They have co-operated so
efficiently with the Forestry Department that throughout
the Benin territory no tree can be unlawfully felled
without the Forest Officer being informed. They are
planting up their forest land with valuable timber trees.
Supplied by the department with seeds, shown how to
make nurseries and to supervise transplanting, but doing
their own clearing, planting, and upkeep, no fewer than
700 villages have established communal rubber planta-
tions of Funtamia elasUca which they are increasing year
by year. Many of the trees — of which there are one and
a quarter millions whose present estimated value at a
low computation is £165,000 — are now of tappable size.
Their share in the licence fees paid by European lease-
holders engaged in the timber and rubber industry in
Bini territory supplies the Bini communities with a
further source of income. So greatly do these intelli-
gent people appreciate the efforts of the Administration
to enrich their country that when a little while ago they
started tapping operations in their rubber plantations
under the supervision of the Forestry Officer, the chiefs
and villagers insisted that a third share should go to
Government, and, despite the Governor's objections, they
would consent to no other arrangement. This has now
become embodied in law. The Forestry Department
undertakes to dispose of the rubber from the communal
plantations, the profits being divided as to one-third for
the paramount chiefs, one-third for the village community,
69
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
and one-third for the Administration. From their
increased revenues the chiefs of Benin city, " the city of
blood," as it used to be termed, have already built for
themselves a substantial court-house of stone and brick
and furnished their capital with a proper water-supply,
putting down four miles of piping — ^thus saving the labour
of thousands of persons who had daily to trudge to and
from the river — and finding the money for a reservoir, a
pumping station, and public hydrants.
Such surprising results in the short space of fourteen
years are at once a tribute to British rule and to the negro
of the Nigerian forests. Many obvious morals suggest
themselves.
70
CHAPTER V
LAGOS AND ITS PORT — THE FUTURE BOMBAY OF
WEST AFRICA
Early in the seventies, a decade after the British occu-
pation, Lagos, for more years than one cares to remember
an important export centre of the slave trade, was a small
settlement inhabited by Yoruba and Bini agriculturists
and traders. The Hinterland, threatened by Dahomeyan
invasions from the west and Fulani inroads from the north,
distressed by internal struggles between Various sections
of the Yoruba people rebelling against the central autho-
rity, was in a state of perpetual ferment. Severed from,
the mainland, maintaining themselves from hand to
mouth, and swept by disease, the few British officials
led an unenviable existence. A small three-roomed
house protected from the rains by an iron roof harboured
the Governor, and the members of his staff were glad to
accept the hospitality of European merchants earning
a precarious if lucrative livelihood by trading with the
natives in palm oil, kernels, ivory, and cotton.
To-day Lagos is a picturesque, congested town of
some 80,000 inhabitants, boasting many fine public
buildings and official and European and native merchants'
residences, churches, wharves, a hospital, a tramway,
a bacteriological institute, a marine engineering establish-
ment, to say nothing of cold storage and electric light
plant, hotels, a racecourse, and other appurtenances of
advanced civilization. Like every other part of West Africa
71
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
that I have seen, Lagos is full of violent contrasts. Every
variety of craft — ^the tonnage of the place is something
like 250,000 tons per annum — is to be observed in the
water and every variety of dress in the busy streets, from
the voluminous robes of the turbaned Mohammedan to the
latest tailoring monstrosities of Western Europe. The
Yoruba lady with a Bond Street hat and hobble skirt ;
her sister in the infinitely more graceful enfolding cloths
of blue or terra-cotta, with the bandanna kerchief for
head-gear ; opulent resident native merchants or Govern-
ment clerks in ordinary English costume ; keen-featured
"uneducated" traders from whose shoulders hang the
African riga — a cosmopolitan crowd which includes Sierra
Leonean, Cape Coast, and Accra men, attracted by the
many prospects of labour an ever-increasing commercial
and industrial activity offers to carpenters, mechanics,
traders' assistants, and the like. Here a church thronged
on Sundays with African ladies and gentlemen in their
finest array ; here a mosque built by the local and rapidly
increasing Yoruba Muslims at a cost of £5,000. Here a
happy African family laughing and chattering in a tumble-
down old shanty within close proximity to a " swagger "
bungalow gay with brilliant creepers ; there a seminary
where a number of young ladies, looking supremely un-
comfortable in their European frocks, supplemented by
all the etceteras of Western feminine wardrobes, their
short hair frizzled out into weird contortions, are learning
as fast as their teachers can make them those hundred
and one inutilities which widen the breach between them
and their own beautiful, interesting land. A certain kind
of prosperity is writ large over the place, but there is good
reason to believe that economic pressure in its different
forms, none more acutely felt than the ascending price
of foodstuffs, is beginning to bear hardly upon the poorer
classes, and the political and social atmosphere of the town
is not altogether healthy,
72
LAGOS AND ITS PORT
Historical circumstances rather than natural advan-
tages have made Lagos the most important commercial
emporium of British West Africa and the starting-point
of a railway into the interior. It is difficult to see, if the
traf&c of this railway and its future feeders develops, as
there is every reason to believe it will, how the already
crowded and circumscribed area of Lagos can possibly
prove equal to the demands upon it. Indeed, its physical
features are in many respects most disadvantageous for
the role of the West African Bombay it appears called
upon to bear, and it is only by the expenditure of millions
which, spread over the Protectorate, would have achieved
results of much greater fruitfulness, that Lagos can be
converted into a harbour worthy of the name. For
Lagos is cursed with a bar which vessels drawing more
than fourteen feet cannot cross, and the absurd anomaly,
to say nothing of the expense and loss of time and damage
to valuable cargo involved, is witnessed of vessels with
merchandise consigned to the premier port in Nigeria
having to steam 120 miles south of it and there discharge
their freight into branch steamers for conveyance to
destination. An elusive and sinister obstruction is Lagos
bar, strewn with wrecks and hitherto refractory to
dredging, which shifts its depths three feet in a single
week, while the position of the channels is continually
altering. As one surveys the coast-line and notes the
two, comparatively speaking, deep and roomy anchorages
of Forcados and Old Calabar, one cannot refrain from
marvelling somewhat at the curious chain of events
which has conspired to concentrate effort and expense
upon a place so difficult of access. However, the past
cannot be undone, and no doubt there is much to be said
in favour of Lagos, or rather of the happenings which
have ministered to its selection. Be that as it may, the
destinies of Southern Nigeria have for the last five years
been in the hands of a Governor of large ideas and enormous
73
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
energy. Sir Walter Egerton, who, despite numerous dis-
appointments and maddening delays, has pursued with
dogged persistence and infinite resource the object dearest
to his heart — that of opening the harbour. A compre-
hensive scheme of works, entailing the construction of
two stone moles, one on either side of the entrance, com-
bined with harbour and channel dredging, is proceeding
under the direction of Messrs. Coode, Son, and Matthews,
and the constant personal supervision of the Governor,
in the confident belief that its completion will ensure
(combined with dredging) a depth of twenty-seven feet
at high water, corresponding to twenty-four feet at low
tide. When I was in Lagos a month ago * the work on the
eastern mole had advanced 4,500 feet seawards, but the
western mole is not yet started, and will not be, it is
feared, for some time, a further delay having been caused
by the foundering of the Axim, with much indispensable
material on board.
,One must have stood at the extremity of the eastern
mole and watched the greedy, muddy-coloured sea absorb-
ing like some insatiable monster the masses of grey rock
hurled, at all times of the day and every day in the week,
into its depths, to appreciate the colossal difficulties of a
task which, brought to a successful issue, will always
remain ah impressive testimony to human perseverance
under climatic and other conditions of perennial difficulty.
West Africa has certainly never seen anything comparable
to it. Nature disputes with man for every inch of vantage.
As the work progresses the sand twists and writhes into
ever-changing formations ; banks arise and disappear
only to again re-form ; the foreshore on the outer side
of the mole grows and swells and rises weekly, threatening
to become level with the wall itself and even to overwhelm
it ; the scour of the sea scoops into the ocean's floor, thus
forcing the advancing mole into deep water, which
• February, 1911.
74
LAGOS AND ITS PORT
demands a proportionately larger meal of stone. From
out the greyness of the horizon the remains of the Kano,
KiUiwake, Egga, and other vessels that once were, lift
lamentable spars above the angry breakers. From Abeo-
kuta, thirty miles away, these innumerable tons of
granitic boulders must be brought, despatched in
" boxes " from the newly-opened quarries to Ebute-
Metta by rail. There the " boxes " are Hfted from the
waggons and hoisted by cranes into lighters, the
lighters are towed to the wharf, the " boxes " lifted
out of them, run along the mole, and their contents
hurled into the sea. Every foot's advance requires sixty
tons of stone. At the accelerated rate of progress now
ensured the eastern mole will be finished in four years.
The labour and organization required to bring this great
work to its present stage — ^initial steps in West Africa
being invariably characterized by endless impediments —
have been prodigious. Despite the sombre prognostica-
tions one hears in certain quarters, there seems no reason-
able doubt that the bar will yield in time, as the forest
has yielded, to British genius and pertinacity aided by
African muscles, but at a cost which, when the time
comes to add up the bill, will prove, I think, much heavier
than generally supposed.
Lagos is joined to the mainland by two substantial
bridges, one connecting the island with another small
island called Iddo, which stands between Lagos Island
and the continent, and one connecting Iddo with the
continent itself at Ebute-Metta. From thence the rail-
way starts on its way northward, traversing the whole
of Yorubaland and tapping the Niger at Jebba.
75
CHAPTER VI
THE YORUBAS AND THEIR COUNTRY
The administrative problems which confront the Govern-
ment of Southern Nigeria in the western, or Yoruba,
province are very much more comphcated than any to
be met with in the central and eastern provinces. They
arise partly from the character, at once progressive and
unstable, of the Yorubas themselves, partly from the
curious divergence in the political relations subsisting
between his Majesty's Government and the various
sections of the old Yoruba confederation, partly from
the influences working in favour of direct British rule
which find favour in the Lagos Legislative Council, but
mainly through neglect, disinclination to look a situation
not without delicacy in the face, and the absence of any
serious effort to map out a definite, consistent policy.
In one respect at least, that of the rapid assimilation
of every feature, good, bad, and indifferent, which comes
to them from the West with the influx of European
religious and social ideas, law, and commercial and in-
dustrial activity, the Yorubas (who considerably out-
number them) may be termed the Baganda of West
Africa. If this capacity spells true progress for a tropical
African people, then the Yorubas are infinitely more pro-
gressive than any of the peoples, not of Nigeria merely,
but of Western Africa. It is, nevertheless, worthy of
remark that, without exception, all the native papers
published in Lagos which, if not in every case edited by
76
THE YORUBAS AND THEIR COUNTRY
Yorubas, profess in every case to be the mouthpieces of
the " Yoruba nation," ceaselessly lament the European-
izing of the country, the decay of the national spirit, the
decadence of family authority, and the deterioration of
the rising generation without, however — so far as many
years' perusal of their columns can enable one to judge
— ever making an attempt to grapple with the pro-
blem in a constructive sense, and, in some cases, per-
haps unwittingly, contributing not a little to further
the processes which they denounce and deplore. In
this, their notable characteristic, the Yorubas may
have been influenced by environment, for although a
considerable portion of the area they inhabit is forest
land, much of it is open park-like country, and the
whole of it lies outside the deltaic region altogether.
It is among the Yorubas that Christian missionary pro-
paganda has obtained most of its converts in West Africa,
although none of the ruling chiefs have accepted the
Christian faith, and although Islam is now making much
more headway than Christianity. Moreover, official
Christianity, already represented in Yoruba by as many
sects as we have at home, has been riven by the defection
of a body, some 3000 strong, I beheve, which has con-
stituted itself an independent Church, the real, though
not explicity avowed, motive being a refusal to abide by
the monogamous sexual relationship which the Church
enforces. With Christian missionary teaching Western
education, or, more accurately, and, generally, semi-
education (and indifferent at that) has, of course, gone
hand in hand, and it is among the Yorubas almost ex-
clusively, so far as Southern Nigeria is concerned, that
the problem of the " educated native " and what his part
is to be in the future of the country arises and threatens
already to become acute.
Nowhere in Africa, it may be confidently asserted,
are so many radically different influences, policies and
n
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
tendencies at work among one and the same people as
are observable to-day in this Yorubaland of 28,000 square
miles. The situation is really quite extraordinary, and
offers an unlimited field of speculation to the student.
The natural aptitudes of the Yorubas — of both sexes —
are husbandry and trade, not soldiering. But the neces-
sities of tribal defence drove them to concentrate in large
centres. These centres have remained and become the
capitals of separate provinces, allegiance to the original
head having mostly fallen into virtual, in some cases
into total, desuetude. Thus we find to-day a series of
native towns which for estimated numbers surpass any-
thing to be met with in any part of native Africa — such
as Ibadan,, 150,000 ; Abeokuta, 100,000 ; Oshogbo, 40,000 ;
Ogbomosho, 35,000; Ife, 30,000; Oyo, 40,000; Ijebu-
Ode, 35,000 ; Iseyin, 40,000 ; some twelve other towns
with a population of between 10,000 and 20,000 ; and
twice as many more whose inhabitants number 5000 to
8000. The most surprising contrasts, illustrative of the
divergences referred to, are noticeable in these agglome-
rations of human life — for instance, between Abeokuta,
Ibadan, and Oyo. Abeokuta, the capital of the " Egba
united Government " (whose authority extends over
1869 square miles), its mass of corrugated iron roofs
glaring beneath the rays of the tropical sun, spreading
around and beneath the huge outcrop of granitic rock
where its founders first settled a hundred years ago,
offers the curious picture of a Europeanized African town
in the fuUest sense of the term, but with this unique
feature, that its administration and the administration
of the district, of which it is the capital, is conducted
by natives — i.e. by the Alake (the head chief) in council.
It is, of course, true that the British Commissioner
wields very great influence, but he is invested with no
legal powers of intervention whatever, because the British
treaty with the Egba section of the Yoruba people
78
^^^?^^^%^^
THE YORUBAS AND THEIR COUNTRY
recognizes their independence in all internal affairs ; and
all Government notices and pronouncements posted up
in the town are signed by the Alake and the Alake's
secretary. The Commissioner, Mr. Young, finds himself,
indeed, in a position where the utmost tact is required.
He has passed through very unpleasant times, and the
confidence and respect he has ultimately won constitute
a veritable triumph of personality. He has achieved the
seemingly impossible task of becoming a real power in a
native State over which, save in its external relations
and in civil and criminal cases affecting " non-Egbas,"
the British Government has no legal jurisdiction. The
Alake, a burly African, has not — a matter of thankfulness
— adopted European dress, as the bulk of his officials have
done, but he lives in a two-storeyed European house
boasting of a tennis-court which, I am confident, the
ample proportions of its owner forbid him from using.
The whole machinery of administration is on the Euro-
pean pattern, with its Secretariat, Treasury, Public
Works Department, Police, Prison, Printing Offices, Post
Office, etc. — all managed by Europeanized Africans. I
visited most of the Government departments, the prison,
and printing offices, and was impressed with the industry
and business-like air which reigned within them. The
revenues, thanks to the Commissioner, are in a healthy
state. Excellent roads have been and are being con-
structed. A water supply is being arranged for out of
a loan of ^^30,000 advanced by the Southern Nigeria
Government. Labour-saving machinery is being intro-
duced at the Commissioner's suggestion. An imposing
college is in course of erection. It is all very remarkable
and interesting. Whether it is durable is a matter which
I shall have occasion to discuss later on.
Very different is the state of affairs such as I found it
early in this year in Ibadan, capital of a district of 4000
square miles with a dense population of 430,000 (107 to
79
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
the square mile), an enormous, straggling, grass-roofed,
rather unkempt town luxuriating in tropical vegetation and
whose neighbourhood abounds with rich and delightful
scenery. Here, administratively speaking, government is
neither fish, fowl, nor good red-herring ; neither African,
nor European, nor Europeanized-African. All real in-
fluence has been taken out of the hands of the Bale
(head-chief) and nothing has been substituted for it.
Treated at intervals with unwise familiarity and with con-
temptuous disregard, the present Bale, a man obviously
unfitted for his office, has no authority over his chiefs,
who in council — as I have myself witnessed — openly
deride him. The inevitable consequence is that the chiefs
themselves constantly intrigue against one another and
have no prestige with the people, while the people them-
selves have no respect either for their own rulers or for
the white man. A visit to the Bale's Court in company
with the recently-appointed Acting-Resident was a sur-
prising revelation — quite as painful, I am inclined to
believe, to that official as to the writer — of unmannerly
conduct, of total absence of respect for his Majesty's repre-
sentative, of utter lack of decorum and dignity. The
" Ibadan Government," as I saw it, is a caricature, and
a dangerous caricature, of government, unlike anything,
I am glad to say, which I observed in either of the two
Protectorates. The town and the inhabitants are ob-
viously out of hand, and in my opinion — an opinion
which, having felt bound to communicate it to the
responsible authorities in Nigeria, I am the freer to state
here — ^is that if the whole place be not thoroughly over-
hauled, events must arise at no distant day leading to
considerable trouble. I am inclined to think that some
people would rather welcome trouble.
Oyo, again, is a singular contrast both to Abeokuta
and to Ibadan. The seat of the Alafin, titular head of
all the Yoruba-speaking peoples, Oyo is a clean, peaceful,
80
THE YORUBAS AND THEIR COUNTRY
sleepy town charmingly situate in open country and
reverentially regarded by many Yorubas. Here the
native form of government has been happily preserved
against many assaults from both within and without.
The Alafin's abode — the Afin — consists of a collection
of spacious compounds beautifully thatched with here
grass and surrounded by a wall. Here the Court is held,
distinguished by all the ceremonial inherent to what was
once (and might again become) a wonderfully efficient
national Government. In its courthness, its simple if
barbaric dignity, the decorum of chiefs and councillors,
and the manifest honour in which the ruling head was
held, this Pagan Court recalled the best type of native
government I had previously observed in the Mohammedan
Hausa provinces of Northern Nigeria, although differing
radically from the latter in construction and formulae.
The Alafin himself, a man of great strength and stature,
his head surmounted by the national casque or crown
of heavy native coral, with a curious face which reminded
one of the lineaments of the Egyptian Sphinx (the
Yorubas profess to trace their descent from Egypt),
is one of the most striking native personalities I observed
in Nigeria. A notable incident in the State reception I
witnessed was the presence among the prostrated chiefs
of several whose dress showed that they had embraced
Islam, doing obeisance to their pagan lord.
This brief description of the three most important
centres of Yoruba life will serve to show how varied and
haphazard are the forms which British policy takes in
the Western Province. I fear that much trouble lies
ahead if steps are not adopted to evolve something more
closely approximating to statecraft in handling the
problems of the country. Aft attempt to show what
might be done and the reasons for doing it will be made
in the next chapter.
8i G
CHAPTER VII
BRITISH POLICY IN YORUBALAND
The political situation in Yorubaland, some aspects of
which were briefly sketched in the preceding chapter, is
one that, obviously, cannot last. Its inconveniences are
too numerous and too palpable and it bears within it
the seeds of dissolution. The whole relationship of the
different Yoruba States (or, rather, dismembered sections)
between themselves and between them and the British raj
as established by Treaty or by Agreement (which should
have equally binding force) abounds in contradictions,
irregularities, and potency for mischief. In the Abeokuta
district we have theoretically no authority, since, as
already mentioned, there is a Treaty guaranteeing the
independence of the Egbas in their internal affairs. But
every one knows that, given an untactful Commissioner
or the development of some more than usually menacing
intrigue against the Alake, circumstances might arise at
any time which would compel British intervention.
With Oyo we have a treaty of friendship and commerce
and we have a separate treaty of the same kind with
Ibadan, although Ibadan recognizes the paramountcy of,
and pays tribute to, Oyo. In Oyo we have not materially
interfered with native government. In the Ibadan dis-
trict native government is, in practice, a myth. Such a state
of things leads to singular inconsistencies, and the Southern
Nigeria Administration would find it difficult to reconcile
its actions in certain directions with its actions in others.
82
'r'*'-^-yrT
• -*->4^**«v
■^;*
ENTRANCE 10 THE ' AFIX OR RESIDENCE OF THE ALAFIN OF 0\0,
SHOWING T'.-PICAL "I'ORt'BA THATCHING.
BRITISH POLICY IN YORUBALAND
Take, for example, the land question. If there is
one thing upon which all the most experienced Nigerian
administrators are agreed it is the absolute essentiality,
for the future of the people of the country, that their
use and enjoyment of the land should be secured, not
only against a certain type of European capitalist who
covets this rich soil for his own schemes, and, under the
pretence of industrial expansion, would cheerfully turn the
native agriculturist, farmer, and trader into a "labourer,"
but against the class of native who, for his own ends,
for speculative purposes mainly, seeks to undermine
native law and to change the right of user upon which
native land tenure is based, into that of owner at the
expense of the community at large. More especially
does this become a question of vital importance to native
communities where, as in Yorubaland, you have a com-
paratively dense population which under the pax Britan-
nica is bound to increase at a very rapid rate, and thus
requires every inch of land for its own future uses. But
as matters stand at present, we cannot, in the Egba
district, which, being nearer to Lagos, is more accessible
to certain undesirable influences, both European and
native, and to the infiltration of European laws and
customs regulating the tenure of land, take effective
measures to counteract these influences. We could, of
course, if we chose, not in the Egba district only, but
throughout Yorubaland. But there has been a lamentable
reluctance both at home and in the Protectorate to foresee
and cope with a predicament which all realize, which some
from a natural bent of mind inclining them to favour the
substitution ever5rwhere of direct for indirect rule, and
others who are of the same way of thinking but from
motives of self-interest may secretly rejoice at, but which
the officials whose hearts are really in the country and
who have sufficient experience to understand the endless
and disastrous embarrassments that the disintegration
83
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
of native law relating to land would produce, deeply
deplore. What has been the result ? The Egbas are
beginning to buy and to sell land among themselves in
absolute violation of their own customs and laws, thereby
laying up for their country a heritage of trouble and
inserting the thin edge of the wedge of their own undoing
by letting in the land monopolist and speculator. This,
according to all its professions and to its actions in some
specific circumstances, for which it is to be warmly
commended, is, in the view of the Administration, inimical
to the public interest of the Protectorate. What is
springing up in Abeokuta to-day will spread to the other
districts to-morrow — nay, is doing so.
Take another example. The welfare of an agri-
cultural community demands, for many reasons scientifi-
cally substantiated, that a stop should be put to the
reckless destruction of timbered areas such as has been
proceeding all over Yorubaland. This is inherently a
public interest, and the Forestry Officer in the discharge
of his duties is merely a servant of the public. But in
the Western Province, for the same reasons, we cannot
or are unwilling to put our case to the native authorities
for the protection of the people against themselves with
the same moral force as in the case of the other two
provinces. We are confined, or think we are confined,
to simple persuasion. Now, persuasion by the Forestry
Ofiicer alone is one thing, and persuasion by the Forestry
Officer supported by direct representations from the
Executive at Lagos is a very different thing. It is the
latter form of persuasion that has been absent, and very
great credit is due alike to the Forestry Officers and to
a Commissioner trusted by the native rulers, Mr. W. A.
Ross, as well as to the intelligence of those native rulers
themselves, that in the Oyo district both State and
communal reserves have been created, the latter of
great extent including the entire valley of the Ogun.
84
BRITISH POLICY IN YORUBALAND
But in the Abeokuta and Ibadan districts persuasion has
failed hitherto to secure any really tangible results. It is
almost unnecessary to point out that the interests of the
population do not suffer merely indirectly and potentially,
but directly thereby. Not only does Southern Nigeria
import quantities of timber from Europe when the
country should itself provide for all requirements, but
even so primitive a necessity as firewood is beginning
to make itself felt round such towns as Ede, Abeokuta,
and Ibadan.
In these problems the policy of the Southern Nigeria
Administration has been to leave the matter to the native
authorities, in other words, to let the land question slide
down a perilous declivity, and to allow the question of
forestry preservation to be left to the unsupported efforts
of the Forestry Department. If this policy of non-
interference had been consistently applied in other
directions an intelligible case, at least, might be made
out for it. But the facts are notoriously otherwise. To
mention but one instance. Two years ago pressure was
put upon the Ibadan authorities to vote unpopular
licensing regulations in the interests of temperance, and
one of the incidents subsequently arising out of it was the
stoppage of the Bale's stipend by the Acting Resident
with the concurrence of the Executive at Lagos ! Only
last February a Bill called the " Foreign Jurisdiction
Ordinance, 1911," was passed through the Lagos Legis-
lative Council, which provides for the extension of the
laws of the colony to the Protectorate of Yorubaland
(except Abeokuta) without the native authorities being
even consulted, the Attorney-General adopting, in effect,
the extraordinary position that the Government could
take no account of " agreements, understandings, or
letters " (concluded or written by previous Governors)
with the native chiefs ! If the native chiefs realized what
the logical outcome of the Ordinance might mean for them,
85
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
by an Executive in Lagos, which adopted the legal argu-
ment quoted, there would be ferment from one end of
Yoruba to the other.
It must be clear from what precedes that the time
has come when the whole position of the Yoruba States
in relation to the paramount Power should be reconsidered.
The railway and other agencies are causing the country
to move forward very fast, and conditions are being
evolved through the attempt to drive in two directions
at once, which can only lead, if not to the ultimate
annexation of Yorubaland, then to what would, if
possible, be even worse — viz. the strangulation by
successive stages of every effective agency in native
government, leaving the chiefs and their councils mere
puppets in the hands of the Lagos Legislative Council.
Now neither of these courses is, I am convinced, desired
by the Imperial Government. The drift is, nevertheless,
apparent to all that have eyes to see and ears to hear.
There is a strong party in Lagos favouring direct rule.
There is a combination of distinct infiuences^n many
respects working unconsciously — ^making for the break-
up of native land tenure and the undermining of native
authority. There is the increasing danger of leaving
the land question unregulated and the difficulty attend-
ing the adoption of adequate measures for forest preserva-
tion.
Only one course would appear open to the authorities
if they desire to stop the dry rot. The first step would
consist in getting the Native Councils — i.e. the Chiefs
in Council — of all the districts in the Western Province
to pass an identical measure of national land preservation
which would become known as the Yoruba Land Act.
Inalienability of land is the cardinal principle of Yoruba
land tenure. The preamble of the measure would define
Yoruba law and custom in regard to land. The body
of the measure would declare to be illegal all buying
86
BRITISH POLICY IN YORUBALAND
and selling of land, either between natives and natives or
between natives and non-natives, and would establish
limitations of area and time for the holding of leased
lands by private individuals or associations, with pro-
vision for revision of rentals at specified periods. The
need of such a measure should be recognized and the
action proposed sanctioned by the Secretary of State,
and the matter should be represented to the native
authorities with all the additional weight which in their
eyes it would under those circumstances possess. It
cannot be doubted that were the measure fully and
thoroughly explained to the Native Councils and its
urgency in the interests of their people emphasized,
little or no trouble would be experienced in ensuring its
adoption. In the improbable event of difficulties arising
it would be the plain duty of the Administration to
overcome them. The Administration should be able
to count in a matter of this kind upon the support of
every patriotic educated Yoruban. The second step
would be more far-reaching — viz. the general recon-
struction of the machinery of national government over
the whole province, and the welding together under the
headship of the Alafin of Oyo — the " King and Lord of
Yorubaland," as he is described in the British Treaty —
working with a Council representative of all Yorubaland,
of the separate districts which internal anarchy and
external aggression between them have caused to fall
away from the central authority. The existing Councils
of the various districts would, of course, remain, but we
should have what we have not at present, a true " Yoruba
Council," a strong central native Government through
which the development, the progress, and the common
welfare of the country could proceed on definite, ordered,
national lines.
This would be Empire-building of the real kind. It
would not be unattended with difficulty. It would
87
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
require time, much tact, and, above all, full and frank
exposition and explanation. But it is feasible of accom-
plishment, and by a policy of this kind alone can one of
the most interesting and promising races of Western
Africa hope to reach, under our supreme direction, its
full development. The elements necessary to the success
of such policy exist. They do not need to be created,
but only to have their vitality revived and their course
adjusted and guided.
88
PART III
NORTHERN NIGERIA
CHAPTER I
THE NATURAL HIGHWAY TO THE UPLANDS OF THE NORTH
A CASUAL visitor provided by private kindness with the
hospitality of a stem-wheeler and not, therefore, exposed
to the discomforts (soon, it is to be hoped, to be a thing
of the past, with the completion of railway communica-
tions between Lagos and Zungeru) with which an inex-
cusably inefficient service of river-boats afflicts the
unhappy official on his way to Northern Nigeria, packed
like a sardine, and feeding as best he can, may be pardoned
for finding much of captivating interest in 400 miles of
leisurely steaming, with many a halt en route, from
Forcados to Baro, the starting-point of the Northern
Nigerian Railway to Kano. The heat of the afternoons,
the myriad insect visitors which are heralded by the light-
ing of the lamps, blacken the cloth and invade every part
of the person accessible to their attentions, the stifling
nights, spent, may be, at anchor under the lee of per-
pendicular banks ; these are trifles not worthy of mention
by comparison with the rewards they bring. Kaleido-
scopic varieties of scenic effects enchant the eye as hour
follows hour and day follows day on the bosom of this
wonderful Niger, passing from serpentine curves so
narrow that the revolving paddles seem in imminent
danger of sinking into the bank itself or snapping against
some one of the many floating snags, to ever broadening
and majestic proportions with vistas of eternal forest,
of villages nestling amid banana groves, of busy fishermen
91
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
flinging their nets, of occasional dark massive heads
hfted a brief second from the deeps to disappear silently
as they arose, of brilliant blue kingfishers darting hither
and thither. Now the river flows through some natural
greenhouse of palms and ferns, whose nodding fronds
are reflected in the still green waters, now past a fringe
of matted creepers gay with purple convolvulus pierced
at intervals with the grey upstanding bole of the silk
cotton tree. Here its course is broken by long stretches
of fine hummocky sand across whose shining surface
stalk the egret and the crane, the adjoining rushes
noisy with the cackle of the spur-winged geese. Here
it glides expanding between open plains bordered with
reeds, only to narrow once more as the plain heaves
upward and the tall vegetable growth gives way to arid
granite outcrops, ascending towards the far horizon
into high tablelands. If at dawn the Niger veils its
secrets in billowy mists of white, at sunset the sense
of mystery deepens. For that, I think, is the principal
charm of this great highway into the heart of Negro
Africa, the sense of mystery it inspires. Cradled in
mystery, for two thousand years it defied the inquisitive-
ness of the outer world, guarded from the north by
dangerous shoals and rapids ; hiding its outlet in a
fan-shaped maze of creeks. To-day when its sanctuaries
are violated, its waters churned and smitten by strange
and ugly craft, it is still mysterious, vast and unconquered.
Mysterious that sombre forest the gathering shades
encompass. Mysterious that tall half -naked figure on
yonder ledge, crimson framed in the dying sun, motionless
and statuesque. Mysterious that piercing melancholy
note which thrills from the profundities beyond, fading
away in whispers upon the violet and green wavelets
lapping against the side of the boat. Mysterious those
rapid staccato drumbeats as unknown humanity on
one shore signals to unseen humanity on the other.
92
OUTLINE MAP OF NORTHERN NIGERIA.
Miles 60 4-0 20 O
Scale *,ooo.ooo or ioit "tnclies to 64- Miles
100 200 400
eoOMilcs
Kailiv^j <sonStfiu:ted
f\o a-cl p}-opo5e,d
B EFER ENCE
■ - ^j ^ ^'- Tel'^j^ra.ph Const rust e^ ,
undet' Cor}SCraOC lO/i
prODcxSc d-
NATURAL HIGHWAY TO THE UPLANDS
Mysterious the raucous cry of the crown-birds passing in
long Hues to their resting-place in the marshes. Mys-
terious those tiny lights from some unsuspected haunt
of natural man that spring into life as the sun sinks to
slumber, and darkness, deep unfathomable darkness,
rushes over the land there to rest until a blood-red
moon, defining once again the line of forest, mounts the
sky.
From the point of view of navigation and of commerce
the Niger is a most unsatisfactory and uncertain river
to work. It can be described, perhaps, as a river full
of holes with shallows between them. Its channels are
constantly changing. It is full of sandbanks which take
on new shapes and sizes every year. The direction of
the water-flow below Samabri, where the bifurcation
begins, is so unreliable that within a few years the Nun
has become virtually useless, the Forcados gaining what
the Nun has lost, while there are recent indications that
the process may again be altered in favour once more
of the Nun to the detriment of the Forcados. In the
course of the year the water level varies twenty-seven
feet, the period of rise being from June in an ascending
scale until the end of September, the fall then com-
mencing, the river being at its lowest from December to
May. In the rainy season the banks are flooded in the
lower regions for miles around. In the dry season the
banks tower up in places fifteen feet above water level.
Roughly speaking, the Niger is navigable for steamers
drawing five feet in June, six feet in July, and so on up
to twelve feet in the end of September ; from November
to April for vessels drawing between four and five feet.
But the conditions of two consecutive years are seldom
alike.
Government has done little or nothing to cope with
these natural difficulties. The Admiralty charts available
to the captains of steamers are ludicrously obsolete, and
93
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
all wrong. No continuous series of observations have been
taken of the river, and no effort made to tackle the
problem of improving navigation. Four years ago, by
Sir Percy Girouard's directions, soundings were, indeed,
taken over a distance of 350 miles from Burutu (Forcados)
to Lokoja at the junction with the Benue ; with the
result that only seven miles of sand-bars were reported
to require dredging in order to secure a six-foot channel
all the year round. The experienced merchant smiled.
He is a slightly cynical person, is the West African
merchant who knows his Niger. Anyhow he is still
whistling for his six-foot channel. One dredger, the
best which money could buy, was purchased by the
Northern Nigerian Administration. It did a little dredg-
ing round about Lokoja (and the merchants in the south
declare that the performance has made matters worse
for them), has been used as a passenger boat up the
Benue, and is now, I believe, filling up the swamps at
Baro ; but the six-foot channel still exists as an attractive
theory in the Government Blue Book. There is so much
to praise, administratively speaking, in Nigeria that one
feels the freer to speak bluntly of the failure of Govern-
ment to handle this matter of Niger navigation. It is
one of the inevitable, one of the many deplorable, results
of dual control over a common territory ; one of the
consequences of the long competition between the two
rival Administrations, each quite honestly playing for
its own hand and each quite satisfied that it alone can
think imperially. The upshot has been pernicious to
the public interest. The river-service is shocking from
the point of view of efficiency, and enormously costly.
The steamers themselves are falling to pieces. There
is no system of public pilotage, or of lighting. Trading
steamers must anchor at night, which involves, in the
aggregate, a great waste of time and money. The two
Administrations are so busy squabbling over their
94
NATURAL HIGHWAY TO THE UPLANDS
competing railways and manoeuvring to frame rates
which will cut one another out, that the great natural
highway into the interior is utterly neglected.
It is impossible that feelings of respect should not
go out, not only towards the official who labours under
these conditions in the Niger waterways but also towards
the merchant building up in quiet, unostentatious fashion
the edifice of commercial enterprise upon which, in the
ultimate resort, the whole fabric of Administrative
activity reposes. I do not now speak of the heads of
these powerful trading firms in Europe, many of whom,
by the way, have themselves gone through the mill in
their time. To them England is indebted for the Imperial
position she holds in Nigeria to-day, a fact which is too apt
to be forgotten. I refer to the men, mostly young, in
charge of trading stations on the banks of the Niger and
its creeks, living a life of terrible loneliness amid primitive
surroundings in a deadly climate, separated in many
cases several days' journey from another white face,
not nearly so well housed as the officials (I am describing
Southern Nigeria, be it remembered), and not, like them,
helped by the consciousness of power or stimulated by
the wider horizon the latter enjoy. Thrown entirely
on their own resources, usually unfitted by their previous
life to face the privations and isolation of an existence
such as this, very hard-worked — their lot is not an
enviable one. No doubt the hardships they have to
endure are incidental to a career they freely choose,
although often enough with little or no previous com-
prehension of its character. No doubt the fibres of a
minority will be toughened by their experiences. No
doubt these hardships are infinitely less severe than those
which the early pioneers were compelled to undergo,
many succumbing under the process; but in that con-
nection it should not be forgotten that the latter had
the incentive of carving out their fortunes with their
95
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
own hands, whereas the present generation out in
Nigeria are not their own masters. One cannot help
reflecting upon the irony of the contrast between the
commiseration so freely lavished at home upon the spiritual
drawbacks of the Nigerian native, and the total lack of
interest displayed by the Church in the welfare of these
young fellows, many of them mere lads, exposed to all
the moral temptations of their savage environment
in which only exceptional natures will detect the broaden-
ing spiritual influences. What an untold blessing would
be a periodical visit to their African homes, fronted by
the silent river, invested by the tropical forest, from an ex-
perienced, genial, sympathetic minister of God, who for a
day or two would share their lives and win their confidence.
There is another matter which should be raised.
These young men who come out from England — I refer
to the Enghsh trading firms only, not having inquired
into the system prevailing among the Continental firms —
do so under a three years' contract. This is an altogether
excessive period for the Niger. It should be cut down
one half. Even then it would be half as long again as
the officials' term of service. Professors of tropical
medicine and magnates at home may say what they like
about the improvement of health in the large European
settlements. The towns are one thing. The " bush "
is quite another. Speaking generally, the climate of
Nigeria, and the conditions under which four-fifths of
white humanity have to live are such as combine, even
in favourable circumstances, to impose the severest
strain, both physical and mental, upon all but a select
few. At the end of a year's continuous residence, the
strain begins to make itself felt in a multiplicity of ways.
Not to acknowledge it, and not to make provision for it,
is, on the part of an employer, penny wise and pound
foolish — ^to put the matter on the lowest ground.
At Idah we leave Southern Nigeria. That bold bluff
96
NATURAL HIGHWAY TO THE UPLANDS
of red sandstone crowned with grey-trunked baobabs
and nodding palms — black with roosting and repulsive
vultures — which overhangs the river at this point, stands
out at the dying of the day, a sentinel pointing to the
north. Henceforth the appearance of the country under-
goes a remarkable transformation, more and more accen-
tuated with every hour's steaming. High valleys,
slopes and tablelands ; a sparser vegetation ; masses
of granite or red sandstone vomited promiscuously from
broken, arid plains and taking on fantastic shapes ; in
the distance, mountain ranges and solitary rounded
eminences — on our right. King William's range rising to
1200 feet, on our left. Mounts Jervis, Erskine, Soraxte,
and many others, varying from 400 to 1000 feet. The
river curves, winds and narrows, obstructed here and
there by dangerous boulders, which the falling waters
bring into view. More substantial, better-thatched huts
appear upon the banks, and around them an increasing
number of robed Africans. Plantations of yams, and
guinea corn set out on parallel, raised ridges, attest a
higher skill in cultivation. Cattle are seen cropping the
green stuffs near the water's edge, and canoes pass
bearing cattle, sheep and goats to some neighbouring
market. We enter the spreading domain of Mohammedan
civilization, and before long we shall find ourselves in
a new world, as our gallant little vessel, none the worse
for a narrowly averted collision and grounding on a
sandbank or two, casts anchor at Lokoja. Here beneath
the wooded heights of Mount Patte the wonderful pro-
spect afforded by the junction of the Niger and Benue
unfolds itself, and presently we shall mingle with robed
and turbaned African humanity, come from immense
distances to this great market of the middle Niger.
The mangroves of the Delta, the awesome grandeur of
the forests, these are left far behind. We have entered
the uplands of the North.
97 H
CHAPTER II
NORTHERN NIGERIA PRIOR TO THE BRITISH OCCUPATION
The political events of which Northern Nigeria was the
scene last century are well known, but a brief recapitula-
tion of them is necessary by way of introduction to the
study of its present conditions, the life of its people, and
the accomplishments and problems of the British Ad-
ministration.
In the opening years of the nineteenth century, what
is now Northern Nigeria consisted of the shattered
remnants of the once famous Bornu Empire ; of seven
independent states more or less (generally less) con-
trolled by chieftains of the remarkable so-called " Hausa "
race, invaders of a thousand years before " out of the
East," and of the aboriginal inhabitants whose origin
is lost in the mists of antiquity. Scattered throughout
the region and constantly shifting their habitat in re-
sponse to the necessities of their calling, were tribes
of light-coloured straight-haired people, Fulani, nomadic
herdsmen and shepherds. From the ranks of these people,
spread over West Africa from the Senegal to the Chad,
had sprung from time to time political leaders, divines
and men of letters who had played a conspicuous part
in the history of the old Niger civilizations. The Hausa
Chieftains had established a nominal authority over a
wide expanse of territory and were constantly at war
with the aborigines on their borders. It was not,
however, for warlike feats, but for their commerce,
98
PRIOR TO THE BRITISH OCCUPATION
farming, cotton and leather industry ; for the spread of
their language ; for the great centres of human activity
they had formed and for the fertility and prosperity of
the land which they had made their home, that the
Hausas were justly renowned all over Western and
Northern Africa. They had evolved no great imperial
dominion whose various parts acknowledged a central
Head, such, alternately, as Melle, Ghanata, Kanem and
Bornu ; but they had leavened with their intelligence
and fertilised with their industrial achievements some of
the naturally richest areas of tropical West Africa, and
they had earned for themselves in these respects a
widespread fame.
It was at this period that a learned Fulani, Othman
Fodio, fell foul of the chieftain ruling over the most
ancient and aristocratic of the Hausa States, Gober.
The latter, fearing for his authority, ordered all the
Fulani in his country to be slaughtered, with the result
that Othman found himself at the head of a numerous
following. Emerging successfully from the struggle,
Othman preached a jihad, confided sacred standards
to his worthiest captains and despatched them far and
wide. The Hausa Chieftains were successively over-
thrown and replaced by Fulani, and regions unassimilated
previously by the Hausas were occupied. Othman' s
warriors even crossed the Niger and invaded Yorubaland,
a large part of which they conquered and retained
(Ilorin), the forest belt, Yoruba resistance within it, and,
probably, the tsetse fly proving an insurmountable
barrier to further progress southwards. Down the Niger
they advanced no further than the neighbourhood of
Lokoja. Othman adopted the title of Sarikin mussulmi,
and during his life and that of his son Bello, Hausaland
experienced for the first time the grip of a central,
directing power. It is doubtful, however, if this change
in their rulers had much effect upon the mass of the
99
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
population, to whom dynastic convulsions mean very
little, and it is noteworthy that the Fulani conquerors
possessed sufficient statecraft to interfere but slightly
with the complicated and efficient system of administra-
tion and of taxation which the Hausas had introduced.
They took over the government of the towns from the
Hausas, the people in many instances assisting and
welcoming them. The general condition of the country
remained pretty much what it had been. Moreover —
and this fact is significant in connection with the argu-
ments I shall presently adduce as regards the inspiring
motive of the Fulani uprising — ^such of the old Hausa
families who by their learning and piety had become
invested with a special public sanctity were not generally
molested by the conquering Fulani. Thus the Kauru,
Kajura and Fatika families of Zaria, which had given
birth to a long line of Mallams, were preserved in all
their authority and dignity by Othman and his suc-
cessors.
A period of comparative political quiet ensued.
Othman issued regulations, and caused them to be
strictly enforced, inflicting the severest punishments upon
robbers and evil-doers generally. A recrudescence of
spiritual influence and of letters everywhere manifested
itself. Learned men flocked to Sokoto, where Othman
had built his capital, from West and North Africa. The
trans-desert trade revived. Security was so well estab-
lished that Clapperton, who visited the country during
Bello's reign, records the common saying of the time that
a woman could pass unmolested through the land, even
if she carried a casket of gold upon her head. With the
death of Bello the influence of the central power, enor-
mously difficult to maintain in any case owing to the
greatness of the area and the absence of ways of com-
munication, declined. Administrative decay gradually
set in and extended with the years. Little by little the
100
PRIOR TO THE BRITISH OCCUPATION
authority of the Emir of Sokoto was openly questioned,
in all save spiritual matters. Allegiance slackened.
Emirs quarrelled amongst themselves. This or that chief
acted on his own responsibility in political affairs affecting
the general weal, or entirely broke away from control.
The roads became infested with bands of highwaymen
whose proceedings differed in no way from the banditti
of feudal Europe. Rebellious chieftains formed robber
strongholds. Military operations degenerated into mere
raiding for the capture and sale of prisoners of war to
replenish revenues from ordinary taxation which the
disturbed state of the country was causing to decrease.
There has probably been a natural tendency in recent
years to exaggerate the aggregate effect for evil upon
the country which accompanied the weakening of the
Fulani dynasty. There is no proof that the state of
affairs was worse than what had obtained previous to
Othman's jihad. It could hardly have been worse than
the condition of Western Europe at sundry stages in its
history, when the weakness of the paramount authority
and the foraging and strife of rival Barons combined to
desolate the homesteads of the people and lay waste the
country side. Some notion of parallels in approaching
the events of West African history is very desirable,
but not often conspicuous. But there can be no doubt
— the evidence of one's own eyes in ruined villages and
once cultivated areas " gone to bush " is conclusive —
that when the alien Britisher arrived upon the scene as
a reforming political force. Northern Nigeria was once
more urgently in need of a power sufficiently strong to
restore order. Such was the condition of the Hausa
States. In Bornu matters had gone from disorder to
chaos, culminating in the final tragedy of Rabeh's
incursion, the slaughter of the Shehu and the sack of Kuka,
the capital.
There is no need here to describe the events which
lOI
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
led to the British occupation, or to narrate the circum-
stances attending it. We have replaced the Fulani in
supreme control of the destinies of Northern Nigeria.
We are there to stay.- How are we carrying out our
self-imposed mission ? What are the problems with
which we have to grapple ? These are the questions to
examine. But before doing so, let us first see what
manner of people they are over whom we rule henceforth
as over-lords. What is their mode of life, their principal
occupation, their character, and the material and spiritual
influences which direct their outlook and mould their
existence ?
102
CHAPTER III
THE INDIGENOUS CIVILIZATION OF THE NORTH
An attempted reconstruction of the prehistoric period
— considered locally — of that portion of Western Central
Africa, now known as Northern Nigeria, would take up
many chapters, and would be largely founded upon
conjecture. It suffices to say that in the course of ages,
through the influences of Moorish, Semitic, and probably
pre-Semitic Egyptian culture, fused in later times with
Mohammedan law, learning and religion, there has been
evolved in this region a civilization combining a curious
mixture of Africa and the East, to which no other part
of the tropical or sub-tropical continent offers even a
remote parallel. And this is the more remarkable since
these territories have been separated from the east
by inhospitable, mainly waterless stretches, and from the
north by vast and desolate sandy wastes; while south-
wards the forest and the swamp cut them off from all
communication with the outer world by sea. The
peoples responsible for the creation of this civilization
did not acquire the art of building in stone, but, at a
cost of labour and of time which must have been gigantic
(slave-labour, of course, such as built the pyramids)
they raised great cities of sun-dried clay, encompassing
them and a considerable area around, for purposes of
cultivation and food-supply, with mighty walls. These
walls, from twenty to fifty feet high and from twenty to
forty feet thick at the base, in the case of the larger
103
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
cities, they furnished with ponderous and deep towered
entrances, protecting the gates with crenellated loop-
holes and digging deep moats outside. They learned
to smelt iron and tin ; to tan and fabricate many
leather articles durable and tasteful in design ; to
grow cotton and fashion it into cloth unrivalled for
excellence and beauty in all Africa ; to work in silver
and in brass ; to dye in indigo and the colouring juice of
other plants ; to develop a system of agriculture in-
cluding (in certain provinces) irrigated farming, which,
in its highest forms, has surprised even experts from
Europe ; to build up a great trade whose ramifications
extend throughout the whole western portion of the
continent ; to accumulate libraries of Arabic literature,
to compile local histories and poems, and, in a measure,
to become centres for the propagation of intellectual
thought.
That is the condition in which Leo Africanus found
them in the sixteenth century, when he first revealed
their existence to an incredulous and largely unlettered
Western world ; in which the pioneer explorers of the
nineteenth century found them ; in which the political
agents of Great Britain found them ten years ago when
destiny drove her to establish her supremacy in the
country. That is the condition in which they are to-day
in this difficult transition stage when the mechanical
engines of modern progress, the feverish economic
activity of the Western world, the invading rattle of
another civilization made up of widely differing ideals,
modes of thought, and aims, assailed them.
Will the irresistible might wielded by the new forces
be wisely exercised in the future ? Will those who, in
the ultimate resort, direct it, abide by the experience
and the advice of the small but splendid band of men
whose herculean and whole-hearted labours have in-
scribed on the roll of British history an achievement,
104
IRON-SMELTHRS.
Fl'LANI CATTLE,
Sa- f- 29.
INDIGENOUS CIVILIZATION OF THE NORTH
not of conquest, but of constructive statesmanship of
just and sober guidance nowhere exceeded in our manage-
ment of tropical dependencies ? Will they be brought to
understand all that is excellent and of good repute in
this indigenous civilization ; to realize the necessity of
preserving its structural foundations, of honouring its
organic institutions, of protecting and strengthening its
spiritual agencies ? Will they have the patience to move
slowly ; the sympathy to appreciate the period of strain
and stress which these revolutionary influences must
bring with them ; the perception to recognize what
elements of greatness and of far-reaching promise this
indigenous civilization contains ? Or will they, pushed
by other counsellors, incline to go too fast both politically
and econoinically, impatiently brushing aside immemorial
ceremonies and customs, or permitting them to be
assaulted by selfish interests on the one hand and short-
sighted zeal on the other ? Will they forget, amid the
clamorous calls of " progress " and " enlightenment "
that their own proclaimed high purpose (nobly accom-
plished by their representatives) of staying the ravages
of internal warfare and healing open wounds will be
shamed in the result if, through their instrumentality,
the seeds of deeper, deadlier ills are sown which would
eat away this fine material, destroy the lofty courtesies,
the culture and the healthy industrial life of this land,
converting its peoples into a troubled, shiftless mass,
hirelings, bereft of economic independence and having
lost all sense of national vitality ? Thoughts such as
these must needs crowd upon the traveller through these
vast spaces and populous centres as he watches the iron
horse pursue its irrevocable advance towards the great
Hausa cities of the plains, as he hears the increasing calls
from the newly opened tin mines for labour, from the
Lancashire cotton-spinner for cotton and markets ; as
he takes cognisance of the suggestions already being made
105
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
to break the spirit of the new and admirable land-law,
and of the efforts to introduce a militant Christian pro-
paganda ; as he listens in certain quarters to the loose
talk about the " shibboleths " and " absurdities " of
indigenous forms and ceremonies, the cumbrousness of
native laws and etiquette.
106
CHAPTER IV
THE LIFE OF THE PEOPLE — THE LONG-DISTANCE TRADER
A BROAD, sandy road, piercing a belt of shea trees,
gnarled and twisted, their bark figured like the markings
of a crocodile's back, from which peculiarity you can
distinguish the true shea from the so-called " false "
shea, or African oak. From the burnt grasses, golden
flowers destitute of leaf companionship peep timidly forth
as though fearful of such uncongenial surroundings. The
heat rays quiver over the thirsty soil, for it is Christmas
time and no rain has fallen for nigh upon four months.
On the summit of a blackened sapling, exquisite in its
panoply of azure blue and pinkey-buff, a bird of the size
of our English jay but afflicted with a name so common-
place that to mention it in connection with so glorious
a visitant would be cruel, perches motionless, its long
graceful tail feathers waving ever so slightly in the still
air. The sun beats downward shrewdly, and combined
with the gentle amble of the patient beast beneath you,
induces drowsiness. You find yourself nodding in the
saddle until the loosening grip of thighs jerks the rider
once more into sentiency. It is hot, dreamily, lethargi-
cally hot. All the world seems comatose, the unfolding
panorama unreal as if seen through a fog of visionary
reverie. But there is nothing fanciful about the rapidly
approaching cloud of dust ahead, which emits a swelling
murmur of confused sound. It takes shape and sub-
stance, and for the next half-hour or so, drowsiness and
107
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
heat are alike forgotten in the contemplation of a strange
medley of men and animals. Droves of cattle, among
them the monstrous horned oxen from the borders of
Lake Chad, magnificent beasts, white or black for the
most part. Flocks of Roman-nosed, short-haired, vacant-
eyed sheep — white with black patches. Tiny, active,
bright brown goats skipping along in joyful ignorance of
impending fate. Pack-bullocks, loaded with potash,
cloth, hides and dried tobacco leaves, culinary utensils,
and all manner of articles wrapped in skins or in octagon-
shaped baskets made of parchment, tight drawn in a
wicker framework, which later — on the return journey —
will be packed with kolas carefully covered with leaves.
A few camels, skinny and patchy, and much out at elbows
so to speak, similarly burdened. The drivers move
among their beasts. Keeping in the rear, with lengthy
staves outstretched over the animal's back, they control
any tendency to straggle across the road. Tall spare
men, for the most part, these drivers, small-boned, tough
and sinewy. Hausas mainly, good-featured, not un-
frequently bearded men, often possessed of strikingly
handsome profiles, with clean-shaven heads and keen
cheerful looks. But many Tuaregs are here also from
the far-distant north, even beyond the Nigerian border ;
their fierce eyes gleaming above the black veil drawn
across the face, covering the head and falling upon the
robe beneath, once white, now stained and rent by many
weeks of travel. From the shoulders of these hang
formidable, cross-handled swords in red-leather tasselled
scabbards. Nor are the Hausas always innocent of
arms, generally a sword. But here is a professional
hunter who has joined the party. You can tell him from
his bow held in the right hand and the quiver of reed-
arrows barbed — and, maybe, poisoned — slung across his
back. The legs of the men are bare to the knees, and
much-worn sandals cover their feet. Some carry loads
io8
.amoii
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■•*-^f
X
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• ,1 .»,
THE LONG-DISTANCE TRADER
of merchandise, food and water-gourds ; others have
their belongings securely fastened on bullock or donkey.
Women, too, numbers of them, splendid of form and car-
riage, one or both arms uplifted, balancing upon the
carrying pad {gammo) a towering load of multitudinous
contents neatly held together in a string bag. Their
raiment is the raiment of antiquity, save that it has fewer
folds, the outer gown, commonly blue in colour, reaching
to just below the knees, the bosom not generally exposed,
at least in youth, and where not so intended, gravely
covered as the alien rides by ; neck, wrists and ankles
frequently garnished with silver ornaments . Many women
bear in addition to the load upon the head, a baby on
the back, its body hidden in the outer robe, its shiny
shaven head emerging above, sometimes resting against
the soft and ample maternal shoulders, sometimes
wobbling from side to side in slumber, at the imminent
risk, but for inherited robustness in that region, of
spinal dislocation. Children of all ages, the elders
doing their share in porterage, younger ones held
by the hand (nothing can be more charming than the
sight of a youthful Nigerian mother gladsome of face
and form teaching the young idea the mysteries of head-
carriage !). Two tired mites are mounted upon a patient
ox, the father walking behind. A sturdy middle-aged
Hausa carries one child on his shoulders, grasps another
by the wrist, supporting his load with his free hand. A
gay, dusty crowd, weary and footsore, no doubt, tramp-
ing twenty miles in a day carrying anything from forty to
one hundred pounds ; but, with such consciousness of
freedom, such independence of gait and bearing ! The
mind flies back to those staggering lines of broken
humanity, flotsam and jetsam of our great cities, products
of our " superior " civilization, dragging themselves
along the Herefordshire lanes in the hop-picking season !
What a contrast ! And so the trading caravan, bound for
109
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
the markets of the south, for Lokoja or Bida — it may well
be, for some of its units, Ibadan or Lagos — passes onwards,
wrapped in its own dust, which, presently, closes in and
hides it from sight.
Throughout the dry season the trade routes are
covered with such caravans and with countless pedestrians
in sniall groups or in twos or threes — I am told by men
who have lived here for years and by the natives them-
selves, that while highway robbery is not unknown,
a woman, even unattended (and I saw many such) is
invariably safe from molestation — petty traders and
itinerant merchants, some coming north loaded with
kolas, salt and cloth, others going south with butchers'
provender, potash, cloth, grass, and leather- ware, etc.,
witness to the intensive internal commerce which for
centuries upon centuries has rolled up and down the
highways of Nigeria.
no
1>-M>
CHAPTER V
THE LIFE OF THE PEOPLE — THE AGRICULTURIST
Allahu Akhar ! Allahu Akbar ! The sonorous tones
perforate the mists of sleep, heralding the coming of the
dawn, Ashadu Allah, ila-allahu, ila-allahu ! Insistent,
reverberating through the still, cold air — the night and
first hours of the day in these latitudes are often very
cold, A pause. Then the unseen voice is again raised,
seeming to gather unto itself a passionate appeal as
the words of the prayer flow more rapidly. Ashadu an
Muhammad rasul ilahi ! Haya-al essalatu ! Haya al el
falahi ! Kad Kamet essalatu ! Another pause. The
myriad stars still shine in the deep purple panoply of
the heavens, but their brilliancy grows dimmer. The
atmosphere seems infused with a tense expectancy.
Allahu Akbar ! Allahu Akbar ! La illaha, ila- Allahu,
ila-Allahu. Muhammad Rasul ilahi. Salallah aleiheiu,
. . . Wassalama. The tones rise triumphant and die
away in grave cadence. It thrills inexpressibly does
this salute to the omnipotent Creator ringing out over
every town and village in the Moslem Hausa States,
" God the Greatest ! There is no God but the God ! "
And that closing, " Peace ! " It has in it reality. Surely
it is a good thing and not a bad thing that African man
should be reminded as he quits his couch, and as he
returns to it, of an all-presiding, all-pervading, all-com-
prehending Deity ? His fashion may not be our fashion.
What of that ? How far are we here from the narrow
III
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
cry of the " Moslem peril " ! Whom does this call to
. God imperil ? The people who respond to it and pro-
strate themselves in the dust at its appeal ? Let us be
quite sure that our own salvation is secured by our own
methods, that the masses of our own people are as vividly
conscious of the Omnipotent, as free and happy in their
lives, as these Nigerian folk, ere we venture to disturb
the solemn acknowledgment and petition that peal forth
into the dusk of the Nigerian morn.
And now a faint amber flush appears in the eastern
sky. It is the signal for many sounds. A hum of many
human bees, the crowing of countless roosters, the
barking of lean and yellow " pye " dogs, the braying
of the donkey and the neigh of his nobler relative, the
bleating of sheep and the lowing of cattle. The scent
of burning wood assails the nostrils with redolent perfume.
The white tick-birds, which have passed the night close-
packed on the fronds of the tall fan-palms, rustle their
feathers and prepare, in company with their scraggy-
necked scavenging colleagues the vultures, for the
useful if unedifying business of the day. Nigerian life
begins, and what a busy intensive life it is ! From
sunrise to sunset, save for a couple of hours in the heat of
the day, every one appears to have his hands full. Soon
all will be at work. The men driving the animals to
pasture, or hoeing in the fields, or busy at the forge, or
dye-pit or loom ; or making ready to sally forth to the
nearest market with the products of the local industry.
The women cooking the breakfast, or picking or spinning
cotton, or attending to the younger children, or pounding
corn in large and solid wooden mortars, pulping the
grain with pestles — ^long staves, clubbed at either end —
grasped now in one hand, now in the other, the whole
body swinging with the stroke as it descends, and,
perhaps, a baby at the back, swinging with it ; or
separating on flat slabs of stone the seed from the cotton
112
THE AGRICULTURIST
lint picked the previous day. This is a people of agri-
culturists, for among them agriculture is at once life's
necessity and its most important occupation. The sowing
and reaping, and the intermediate seasons bring with
them their several tasks. The ground must be cleared
and hoed, and the sowing of the staple crops concluded
before the early rains in May, which will cover the land
with a sheet of tender green shoots of guinea-corn, maize,
and millet, and, more rarely, wheat. When these crops
have ripened, the heads of the grain will be cut off, the
bulk of them either marketed or stored — spread out
upon the thatch-roofed houses to dry, sometimes piled
up in a huge circle upon a cleared, dry space — in granaries
of clay or thatch, according to the local idea ; others
set aside for next year's seeds. The stalks, ten to fifteen
feet in height, will be carefully gathered and stacked for
fencing purposes. Nothing that nature provides or man
produces is wasted in this country. Nature is, in general,
kind. It has blessed man with a generally fertile and
rapidly recuperative soil, provided also that in the more
barren, mountainous regions, where ordinary processes
would be insufficient, millions of earth-worms shall
annually fling their casts of virgin sub-soil upon the sun-
baked surface. And man himself, in perennial contact
with Nature, has learned to read and retain many of her
secrets which his civilized brother has forgotten. One
tree grows gourds with neck and all complete, which
need but to be plucked, emptied and dried to make
first-rate water-bottles. A vigorous ground creeper yields
enormous pumpkin-shaped fruit whose contents afford a
succulent potage, while its thick shell scraped and dried
furnishes plates, bowls, pots, and dishes of every size,
and put to a hundred uses : ornaments, too, when man
has grafted his art upon its surface with dyes and carved
patterns. A bush yields a substantial pod which when
ready to burst and scatter its seeds is found to contain
113 I
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
a fibrous substance which resembles — and may be identical
with, I am not botanist enough to tell — ^the loofah of
commerce, and is put to the same uses. From the seeds
of the beautiful locust-bean tree {dorowa), whose gorgeous
crimson blooms form so notable a feature of the scenery
in the flowering season, soup is made, while the casing
of the bean affords a singularly enduring varnish. The
fruit of the invaluable Kadenia or shea tree is used for
food, for oil, and medicinally. The bees receive par-
ticular attention for their honey and their wax, the latter
utilized in sundry ways from ornamenting Korans down
to the manufacture of candles. As many as a dozen
oblong, mud-lined, wicker hives closed at one end, the
other having a small aperture, may sometimes be seen
in a single tree. Before harvest time has dawned and
with the harvesting, the secondary crops come in for
attention. Cassava and cotton, indigo and sugar-cane,
sweet potatoes and tobacco, onions and ground-nuts,
beans and pepper, yams and rice, according to the
locality and suitability of the soil. The farmers of a
moist district will concentrate on the sugar-cane — its
silvery, tufted, feathery crowns waving in the breeze
are always a delight : of a dry, on ground-nuts : those
enjoying a rich loam on cotton, and so on. While the
staple crops represent the imperious necessity of life —
food, the profits from the secondary crops are expended
in the purchase of clothing, salt and tools, the payment
of taxes, the entertainment of friends and chance ac-
quaintances (a generous hospitality characterizes this
patriarchal society), and the purchase of luxuries, kolas,
tobacco, ornaments for wives and children. It is a
revelation to see the cotton-fields, the plants in raised
rows three feet apart, the land having in many cases
been precedently enriched by a catch-crop of beans,
whose withering stems (where not removed for fodder,
or hoed in as manure) are observable between the healthy
114
THE AGRICULTURIST
shrubs, often four or five feet in height, thickly covered
with yellow flowers or snowy bolls of white, bursting
from the split pod. The fields themselves are protected
from incursions of sheep and goats by tall neat fencing
of guinea-corn stalks, or reeds, kept in place by native
rope of uncommon strength. Many cassava fields, the
root of this plant furnishing an invaluable diet, being
indeed, one of the staples of the more southerly regions,
are similarly fenced. Equally astonishing are the irri-
gated farms which you meet with on the banks of the
water-courses. The plots are marked out with the
mathematical precision of squares on a chess-board,
divided by ridges with frequent gaps permitting of a free
influx of water from the central channel, at the opening
of which, fixed in a raised platform, a long pole with a
calabash tied on the end of it, is lowered into the
water and its contents afterwards poured into the trench.
Conditions differ of course according to locality, and the
technique and industry displayed by the farmers of one
district vary a good deal from the next. In the northern
part of Zaria and in Kano the science of agriculture has
attained remarkable development. There is little we can
teach the Kano farmer. There is much we can learn
from him. Rotation of crops and green manuring are
thoroughly understood, and I have frequently noticed
in the neighbourhood of some village small heaps of ashes
and dry animal manure deposited at intervals along the
crest of cultivated ridges which the rains will presently
wash into the waiting earth. In fact, every scrap of
fertilizing substance is husbanded by this expert and
industrious agricultural people. Instead of wasting money
with the deluded notion of " teaching modern methods "
to the Northern Nigerian farmer, we should be better
employed in endeavouring to find an answer to the
puzzling question of how it is that land which for cen-
turies has been yielding enormous crops of grain, which
115
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
in the spring is one carpet of green, and in November
one huge cornfield " white unto harvest," can continue
doing so. What is wanted is an, expert agriculturist
who will start out not to teach but to learn ; who will
study for a period of say five years the highly complicated
and scientific methods of native agriculture, and base
possible improvements and suggestions, maybe, for
labour-saving appliances, upon real knowledge.
Kano is, of course, the most fertile province of the
Protectorate, but this general description of agricultural
Nigeria does not only apply to Kano Province. I saw
nothing finer in the way of deep cultivation (for yams and
guinea-corn chiefly) than among the Bauchi pagans.
The pagan Gwarri of the Niger Province have for ages
past grown abundant crops in terraces up their mountain-
sides whither they sought refuge from Hausa and Fulani
raids. The soil around Sokoto, where the advancing
Sahara trenches upon the fertile belt, may look arid
and incapable of sustaining annual crops, yet every year
it blossoms like a rose. But the result means and needs
inherited lore and sustained and strenuous labour.
Prom the early rains until harvest time a prolific weed-
growth has continuously to be fought. Insect pests,
though not conspicuously numerous in most years,
nevertheless exist, amongst them the locusts, which
sometimes cover the heavens with their flight ; the cater-
pillar, which eats the corn in its early youth ; the blight
(daraba), which attacks the ripening ear. In some
districts not so favoured, the soil being of compact clay
with a thin coating of humus, intensive cultivation has
proved exhausting, and it is a study to note how every
ounce of humus is tended with religious care. Very
hard work at the right time is the secret of success for the
Nigerian agriculturist. It is httle short of marvellous
Ihat with all he has to do he somehow manages to build
our railways and our roads. Indeed, if that phenomenon
ii6
■mmmm
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^i^'miUv^
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- \ji^^in^
THE . AGRICULTURIST
has in many respects its satisfactory, it has also its
sombre, social side. One can but hope that the former
may outweigh the latter as the country gradually settles
down after the severe demands placed upon it these last
few years.
Truly a wonderful country, and a wonderful people,
a people who with fifty years' peace will double its
numbers, a people whom it is our paramount duty to
secure for ever in the undisturbed occupation and en-
joyment of the land, precluding the up-growth of a middle-
man class of landlord from which the native system is
free, and being so free need never be saddled with.
117
CHAPTER VI
THE LIFE OF THE PEOPLE — THE HERDSMAN AND THE
ARTISAN
The word " peasant " as applied to the Fulani is, no
doubt, a misnomer. I employ it merely to distinguish
the herdsmen from the caste of statesmen and governors,
evolved in Nigeria by the genius of Othman Fodio, but,
as their recorded history throughout Western Africa
shows, inherent in this mysterious race whose moral
characteristics have persisted through all degrees of
admixture with the negro. The Fulani peasant is but
rarely an agriculturist in Nigeria, but he plays an im-
portant, if indirect, part in the agriculture of the Hausa
provinces. Over the face of the land he wanders with
his great herds — which may number upwards of several
thousand head in one herd — of beautiful hump-backed
cattle, mostly white, ever seeking " pastures new."
Speaking under correction, in Borgu only does his settle-
ment partake of permanency. Elsewhere he is a wan-
derer. One month a given district may be full of Fulani
camps, come from where his fellow-man has but the
vaguest of notions. The next, not a single Fulani will
be seen within it. But they return, as a rule, the ensuing
year to their old haunts. To the Hausa farmer the
M'BororojioT " Cow-Fulani" are an invaluable asset, and
he enters into regular contracts with them for turning
their cattle on to his fields ; and he buys milk from them.
I struck several of their encampments, at distances
ii8
A FLXANI GIRL.
THE HERDSMAN AND THE ARTISAN
hundreds of miles apart. The first, at the crossing
of the Bako, between Badeggi and Bida, was in charge
of a patriarch who might have stepped out of the book
of Genesis : a Semite every inch of him : spare of form,
emaciated in feature, with high cheek-bones, hawk-Uke
nose, flashing, crafty eyes, a long white beard and a
bronzed skin without a trace of black blood.
There is no more interesting sight in Nigeria than a
Fulani encampment. It is usually pitched well away
from the beaten track, albeit within convenient distance
of a village. You rub your eyes and wonder if you can
really be in the heart of the Dark Continent, as these
gracefully built, pale copper-coloured men and women —
one may say of some of the young girls with the sun
shining on their velvety skins, almost golden coloured —
appear tending their herds and flocks, or standing and
sitting at the entrance to their temporary shelters. Even
the latter differ frequently from the African hut, resembling
in shape the wigwam of the North American Indian. As
for the people themselves, you are aware of an indefinable
sentiment of affinity in dealing with them. They are
a white, not a black race.
I have discussed their origin and West African history
elsewhere,* and will only say here that delicacy of
form, refinement of contour and simple dignity of bearing
distinguish this strange people, just as the ruling families
possess the delicacy of brain and subtlety of intellect
which impress their British over-lords. A fact worth
recording, perhaps, is that while the Hausa woman
spins and the Hausa man weaves cotton, the Fulani
woman does both the spinning and the weaving.
If the agricultural life of the Northern Nigerian
peoples is a full one, the industrial life, especially in the
northern provinces of the Protectorate, is equally so.
It is an extraordinarily self-sufficing country at present,
* " Affairs of West Africa." Heinemann, 1902.
119
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
and the peasant-cultivator and artisan are inter-
dependent, the latter supplying the domestic wants and
making the requisite implements for the former. The
variety of trades may be estimated from the old Hausa
system of taxation. This system the Fulani adopted,
modifying it slightly here and there by enforcing closer
adherence to the Koranic law, and we are modifying it
still further by a gradual process tending to merge
multiple imposts under two or three main heads, with
the idea of establishing a more equitable re-adjustment
of burdens and to ensure greater simplicity in assessment.
The Hausa system provided that taxes should be levied
upon basket and mat-makers, makers of plant for cotton-
spinners, bamboo door-makers, carpenters, dyers, black-
smiths and whitesmiths, as well as upon bee-keepers,
hunters, trappers and butchers. Exemption from taxes
was granted to shoe-makers, tailors, weavers, tanners,
potters, and makers of indigo ; but market taxes were
imposed upon corn measurers, brokers, sellers of salt,
tobacco, kolas, and ironstone.
The chief agricultural implement is the Hausa hoe,
the galma, a curious but efficient instrument, which
simultaneously digs and breaks up the soil and is said
to be of great antiquity, but which is easier to draw than
to describe. There is also in daily use among the Hausas
a smaller, simpler hoe and a grass-cutter, while the pagan
favours a much heavier and more formidable-looking
tool. This pagan hoe somewhat resembles our English
spade, but is wielded in quite different fashion. Iron
drills, rough hammers and axes, nails, horseshoes, stirrup-
irons and bits are included among the ordinary forms of
the blacksmith's art. Iron-stone is common in many
parts of the country and is extensively worked, furnaces
being met with in every district where the use of the
metal is locally in vogue. It is to be hoped that " Civi-
lization " will not seek to stamp out this native industry
120
THE HERDSMAN AND THE ARTISAN
as the tin-miners have done their best — and, unless
the promise made to the smelters of Liruei-n-Kano by
Sir H. Hesketh Bell is not speedily carried out, but
too successfully — ^to crush the interesting tin-smelting
industry. The history of native tin smelting in Nigeria
furnishes a remarkable proof of the capacity of the
Nigerian native, but is too long to set forth here in
detail. Suffice it to say that for a hundred years, a
certain ruling family with numerous branches, has
succeeded in turning out a singularly pure form of the
white metal whose sale as an article of trade brought
prosperity to the countryside. When I left the tin
district, owing to unjust and stupidly selfish interference
with immemorial rights, the native furnaces had been
closed for nine months and poverty was beginning to
replace comparative affluence.
Hoe-handles, mortars, pestles, beds, doors, gins,
spindles, bobbins, looms, shuttles, saddles, riding-boots,
sandals, slippers, bridles, scissors, razors, rope, fishing-
nets, earthenware cooking-pots, lamps, water-bottles
and pipes are among the innumerable articles turned out
by the artisan in Northern Nigeria. Indigo dye-pits are
to be found in many towns, but the great tanning centre
is Kano. Cloth-beating is a recognized branch of the
former industry. After removal from the circular pits
sunk d fleuv de terre, the clothes are hung up to dry and
then handed over to the beater. In a dark and spacious
hut perspiring men kneel in rows facing one another on
either side of a huge log of wood, stained black and
smooth-polished with constant use, upon which the
cloths are spread and vigorously beaten with rounded
wooden mallets. Very hard work it is, as I can personally
testify, having tried my hand at it, much to the enter-
tainment of the dusky experts. The Kano tanneries
are in appearance disappointing ; in odours surpassing
anything that can be imagined. But the product is
121
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
astonishingly excellent. The completed skins, dyed deep
red or orange with native dyes, the roots, leaves and bark
of sundry shrubs and trees being utilized in the many
processes through which the raw hide passes, are as soft
to the touch as Russian leather. They are greatly
appreciated in the Western world, and the trade is a
rapidly increasing one.
122
CHAPTER VII
THE CITY OF KANO AND ITS MARKET
You are permanently conscious that this country has a
history and traditions. Nowhere, perhaps, does the fact
impress the new-comer more vividly than at Kano. It is
a wonderful place to find in Central Africa, this native
city with its great enfolding walls, twelve miles in circum-
ference, pierced by thirteen deep gateways [ko/as), with
platform and guardhouses and massive doors heavily
clamped with iron ; with its written records dating
back nearly eight hundred years. And although in-
comparably the most important it is not the oldest
of these Hausa cities — Katsina, now in the same
" province," is probably older. When the West-Saxon
realm fell before the onslaught of the Danes and the
first Danish King reigned over England, Hausaland was
conquered by an unknown people from the East, and when
the prosperity of the English towns was beginning to
revive under Henry I., Gijimasu, the third King of the
invading djmasty, was building Kano. When Henry VIII.
was laying the foundations of personal government, the
" rich merchants and most civil people " of Kano were
entertaining Leo Africanus. Three hundred years later
(1824) Clapperton entered this " great emporium of the
kingdom of Hausa," which Barth forty years afterwards
termed the " far-famed entrep6t of Central Africa ; "
which Lugard was subsequently to describe as exceeding
anything he had ever seen " or even imagined " in Africa.
123
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
Tributary now to this, now to the other, evanescent
African kingdom, frequently at war with its neighbours,
repeatedly besieged, it has survived every vicissitude.
Neither the disastrous struggles with Katsina in the
seventeenth, and with Gober in the eighteenth centuries,
nor the deposition and defeat of the forty-third (and last)
King of the original dynasty by the Fulani early in the
nineteenth century, nor yet the occupation of the country
by the British seven years ago, have destroyed its influence
or impaired its commercial prestige — a tribute to the
staying power and to the sterling qualities of the truly
remarkable African people whom, in the providence of God,
it has now fallen upon us to rule. Its market-place, still
the scene of clamorous activity, continues to attract
merchants and merchandise from all parts of western
Central Africa. It still remains the nerve-centre of a
district whose natural fertility, aided by the labour and
skill of a hard-working, industrious population, not only
supports, as it has done for many centuries, a population
of equal density to the square mile as England boasts, but
exports large quantities of grain to less-favoured regions ;
and its looms continue to supply the requirements of an
immense area ranging from the Chad to Timbuktu and
the borders of Tripoli, and (in part, at least) southwards
to the Niger.
Picturesque by day, with numerous and gaily dressed
pedestrians and horsemen perambulating its tortuous
streets, busy crowds around its markets, dye-pits, tanne-
ries, and looms, Kano is still more so when the moon floods
its broad open spaces with light and flings strange shadows
across the sandy thoroughfares where they abut upon the
dwelling-places of its inhabitants. Then, but for the
occasional howl of a dog, this city which has endured so
long and withstood so much lies wrapped in impenetrable
silence. The ugly sores of Africa — not, assuredly, as ugly
or as numerous as those of Europe, but more conspicuous
124
THE CITY OF KANO AND ITS MARKET
— are mercifully hidden. No one walks abroad. Yet you
know as you wander with noiseless footsteps through its
curves and labyrinths, escaping for once from your in-
evitable native attendants (delightful people, but sadly
hampering at times), that behind these thick clay walls
and closed doors, the mysterious world of Africa is awake
and stirring, that social world with its primitive impulses,
but also with its many courtesies and refinements, that
world of habit and of thought, guarded with jealous
reticence from the alien, unfathomed and unfathomable
even by the most experienced of Residents. And, again,
at sunrise, when from the summit of the minaret outside
the Emir's residence, the pink flush of dawn steals down
the sides of the city's guardian hills, Dala and Goron-
duchi, flickers upon the fronds of the palm trees, and re-
veals the seemingly interminable vista of houses, mostly
flat-roofed, but varied here and there by others of humbler
thatch and conical in shape ; when the blue wreaths of
smoke from many fires mount perpendicularly into the
crisp, still air, mingled with the aromatic scent of burning
wood and a confused murmur of awakening life — then,
too, the city holds you in the grip of a fascinated interest.
It is difficult to explain this fascination, for the architec-
ture of Kano, though imposing in its way, is rude. There
are no flashing domes and sumptuous buildings as in the
East ; yet the few who have visited it, and" the handful
of officers — aU travelled men — who by turn have had
responsibility for the good order of the Emirate would be
prepared, I fancy, one and all to confess that not even
the blunting effects of familiarity can do away with the
curious influences it exercises.
A visit to the famous market-place — the Kasua Kurumi
— which covers a wide expanse, and where anything from
4000 to 7000 persons may be congregated together,
according to the day, is a bewildering experience. In this
tmnultuous sea of humanity, shot with brilliant colours,
125
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
details are swamped at first in general impressions. You
are aware of a vast concourse of men and women, cheery-
faced, closely packed together, clad in robes of many hues
— ^white and various shades of blue predominating ; of
tossing arms and turbaned heads ; of lon^ lines of clay-
built booths where piled-up merchandise awaits the
customer ; of incessant movement, the strife of many
tongues, the waft of many scents, mostly the reverse of
fragrant — over all, blue sky and fierce hot sun. As you
move along with frequent pauses necessitated by the
crush, and the eye gets more accustomed to the scene,
some at least of its component parts stand out more
clearly from the ever-shifting view, and the extraordinary
variety of human types and the multiplicity of articles on
sale is realized.
The home of the Kanawa (people of Kano), whose
industry is famed from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean,
one would naturally expect to find their numbers in the
ascendant. Keen-featured men of business, women with
elaborate coiffures resembling pictures of old Assyrian
helmets, their cheeks often disfigured by exaggerated
" beauty spots " daubed on with lead or antimony. Other
Hausas, visitors from Katsina, Gober, or Daura, each with
the distinguishing facial mark of his clan, six strokes with
a dot for Katsina, two for Daura, and so on. Pale-
complexioned Fulani from the country, the women wearing
their straight hair in ringlets, with silver earrings and
gentle eyes. The Nupe, with his characteristic headgear
of red, black, and yellow straw. Thick-lipped Kanuris
from Bornu. Tall, lithe Tuareg from distant Sokoto, or
Asben. The Arab merchant, arrogant and intriguer,
making his way through the market to the " Arab
quarter," a quarter of the city remarkable for its
Moorish architecture and unpleasantly notorious for its
smells.
Each trade has its quarter. Beneath the shelter of
126
THE CITY OF KANO AND ITS MARKET
the booths vendors sit cross-legged, their wares spread out
before them. Cloths of every hue and texture under the
sun, it would seem, absorb one whole quarter, and form,
perhaps, the most important article of sale, although the
more valuable clothes are seldom seen, for the Kano
market is essentially a retail one, transactions in objects
of more costly worth taking place within the shelter of
private houses. You will see enough in the cloth quarter,
however, to appreciate the diversity of quality and design,
from the beautifully embroidered Kano riga (a sort of
hoodless cloak universally worn by the better classes,
covering the body from neck to knee) to the common
shirting of Manchester, the white hullan or gown from
Bornu, the arigiddi, or woman's cloth from Zaria, the
faringodo, or plain white cloth from Ilorin, the majai, or
webbing made by the pagan tribes of Bauchi, and used by
the Fulani for girths. The products of native looms from
towns hundreds of miles distant, enjoying special renown
for some attractive peculiarity, are purchasable here,
together with the manufactures of Europe. The former
are almost infinite in diversity, and each has its particular
uses. Black, white, and blue gowns, brocade, striped
brocade, striped shirting, white shirting, shirting with a
red border, white and black checks, drill, red baft, cloths
for turbans, caps, fezzes, expensively embroidered trousers,
sleeveless under-vests, velvet — all in endless variety.
In the leather quarter you will find great quantities
of saddlery from Tripoli, and also of local manufacture,
highly ornamented bridles, stirrup-leathers, despatch-
bags, Korans in leather cases, purses, red slippers, sandals,
quilted horsecloths, undyed goatskins and cowhides,
swords in scabbards, many of them admirable in workman-
ship. An examination of the latter will disclose the
interesting fact that the blades of the most expensive speci-
mens bear the Solingen mark, a curious example of the
conservatism of this interior African trade, for as far back
127
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
as the middle of the last century Solingen sword blades
were imported into Kano across the desert. Passing out
of the leather quarter you will find silver, brass, and tin
ware ; among the former necklaces and earrings which
would not disgrace a London jeweller's shop- window,
ruder bangles and anklets, partly tin, partly silver ; brass
urns and bowls, and glass bracelets from Bida. Necklaces
of beads, Venetian and local, of agates imported from
Tripoli and polished and cut at Bida, of cheap European
coral, of different kinds of bright-coloured local seeds.
Rough pottery, but often of elegant design, such, for
example, as the small lamps used for burning ground-nut
oil, in the manufacture of which mica enters.
Sheds and stalls, in addition to the booths, are devoted
to the sale of numerous merchandise. The store of an
elderly white-turbaned Hausa contains a mass of rough
silk mixed up with the cocoons ; these are produced by
the silkworm, which feeds on the tamarind tree. The
rigas made from it are very dear, and also very pleasant to
the touch, resembling in that respect and in colour tussore.
Here is a stall containing the products of the local smithy,
stirrup-irons, locks for doors, every kind of agricultural
implement used by the native farmer, axes, knives, and
skin-scrapers used in preparing goat and sheep skins for
export. There a stall filled with native herbs used as
medicines, from the tafarnua for rheumatism to the karijiji
for colds, the kula and passakori much used by women
after child-birth. Much space is taken up by the sellers
of foodstuffs, mostly vegetable, such as guinea-corn and
millet in variety, beans, yams, sugar-cane, sweet potatoes
(in variety), pepper, onions, the fruit of the tamarind, the
red flowers of the tobacco plant, cassava, and ginger.
In another direction you will observe on sale European
salt and native potash in cakes and cones, zana-mats,
firewood, native rope, roofing, sticks with branches,
guinea-corn and millet stalks for fencing, native beds,
128
ONE OF THE CATE\VA\-S Tc l KANO CITY, SHOWING OULEK U'ALE.
1^%ril
,^lf^
mim,
;V /
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W^-<u
,V«^'
ANOTHER OF THE ENTRANXES TO THE CFIA'.
THE CITY OF KANO AND ITS MARKET
doors made of palm sticks, baskets, mats in great diversity
of size and colouring. Round about the booths and sheds
on every side sit men and women (mostly the latter) selling
articles of local or European origin ; by their side, and,
apparently, no more carefully watched than the articles
themselves, small piles of cowries and sometimes the new
nickel coinage we have introduced, and threepenny bits
represent the takings of the day. Among such articles
are to be observed indigo, antimony, ground-nuts, the
inevitable kola-nut, shea-butter, spices, cow-dung in small
packets (very precious), raw cotton, henna {lelli) for stain-
ing hands or feet, fresh honey, cakes and sweetmeats (of a
fearful and wonderful composition), native soap from
Nupe {sabouni), bobbins, shuttles, and other necessities of
the national, industry, cigarettes, red wool, green wool,
crochet-thread, water-pots, and sundry cheap trinkets
from Europe. The butchers' quarter it is best to pass by
swiftly ; unsavoury in Europe, the flies and tropical sun
do not improve it in Africa. Long files of cattle, donkeys,
sheep, and goats can be seen winding their way to the
cattle market, where many thousands are daily on sale.
129
K
CHAPTER VIII
A VISIT TO THE EMIR OF KANO
Kano Province under the British Administration includes
a number of independent Emirates which we found exist-
ing and which we have maintained, viz. : Kano, Katsina,
Katagum, Daura, Kazaure and Gummel. The total area
of the Province is 28,600 square miles, i.e. almost the size
of Scotland, and its population 2,600,000, or what that of
Scotland was in the middle of last century.
The present Emir, Abbas, a reserved and very dark
Fulani, with refined regular features and long aristocratic
hands, is a fine figure of a man. The description of a visit
to him may serve to convey some idea of the ceremonious
•etiquette observed at the courts of the Mohammedan
Emirs (Kano being typical of all the great Emirates, with
the exception of Sokoto where formalities are even more
elaborate), besides throwing light upon several questions
of interest and moment connected with the problems of
British administration. To depict the Emir's residence
as a compound built of clay is, while accurate, to give but
an inadequate idea of the imposing character of these
solid structures, the best of which are, with supervision,
capable of resisting for centuries the action of the weather.
I am probably understating the case when I say that the
tall and bulky wall — some fifteen feet in thickness —
surrounding the residence encloses five acres. Dismount-
ing at the principal entrance, we are escorted through the
gateway by several functionaries and emerge into a vast
130
A VISIT TO THE EMIR OF KANO
enclosure open to the sky. At its extremity, facing us, is
an inner wall and another deep embrasured gateway
leading to the state apartments. On our right stands the
Emir's private mosque, a building of considerable pro-
portions but smaller, of course, than the public mosque
outside the walls. Here and there a few picturesque
figures are noticeable. For, perhaps, a minute we wait.
Then a blare of trumpets resounds, and through the inner
gateway emerges a brilliant gathering which advances
slowly towards us, the Emir in the midst. Within a dozen
yards or so it halts, and the Emir, separating himself
from the throng, greets us with hand outstretched — ^the
only African in the Emirate to whom etiquette allows
this particular form of salutation with the White man.
Towering above most of the councillors, officers of state
and heads of leading families by whom he is accompanied,
and bearing himself with great dignity, the Emir murmurs
some words of welcome. He is dressed entirely in costly
white robes and turban ; his feet are encased in ostrich-
feather sandals, a footgear introduced in the sixteenth
century by Mohamijia Rimf a, the twentieth Emir of Kano,
justly revered for a reign full of years and usefulness, and
he carries the silver-mounted staff of office presented to
all the ruling Emirs by Sir Frederick Lugard after the
British occupation. He invites us to follow him and leads
the way in silence to his apartments, his courtiers closing
round us as we proceed. In the same impressive silence
we pass through the inner gateway and find ourselves in a
broad passage flanked on either side by lofty audience
chambers whose dimensions it is difficult to gauge in the
semi-obscurity which reigns within them. At the end of
the passage is yet another gateway. Thenceforth we
proceed alone with the Emir and the Waziri or Vizier —
the present holder of that office being a man of great inde-
pendence and strength of character, whose fearless candour
and ripe judgment have been of inestimable service in
131
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
assisting successive Residents to understand the many
complex problems of native administration. Crossing a
courtyard we enter the outer room of the Emir's private
apartments. And here for an hour we discuss many
things, chairs being provided for us while the Emir and
Waziri, in accordance with the etiquette of the country,
sit cross-legged before us. A word as to the architecture
and appearance of the room, which, as we were subse-
quently to ascertain, is roughly similar to the audience
chambers we have left behind. It is some twenty to twenty-
five feet in height, with an arched roof supported by wooden
beams on the cantilever principle ; both beams and roof
are, like the floor, stained a deep black with the varnish
obtained from the shell of the locust bean ; a few plates
of European manufacture are let into the supporting
rafters ; the walls, constructed of the usual sun-baked clay
mingled with other substances, have a glittering appearance
due to the admixture of mica ; two doors, an outward and
an inward one, of massive timber bound with iron bars
affixed by native nails ornamented with large circular
brass heads, and a divan of rugs and shawls complete a
picture which suggests a certain austere simplicity.
After the usual interchange of compliments, I said it
was desirable the Emir should understand clearly in
respect to any subjects which might be touched upon, that
I had no connection direct or indirect with the British
Government, or with any British commercial or other
interest; that I was merely visiting his country as an
independent traveller, and would report what I had seen
and heard, and that I hoped he would feel free to tell me
frankly what was in his heart, for the people of England
only wished to know the truth. Conversation then ranged
over the part of the province of Kano I had, up to that
time, visited ; the industry of the inhabitants, their methods
of agriculture, the care they bestowed upon secondary
crops, such as cotton, cassava and onions, the great city
132
A VISIT TO THE EMIR OF KANO
market and the variety of goods sold therein. I expressed
a wish to see the irrigated farms, and the Emir named
certain locahties near the city where such farms were to
be seen. The increasing prosperity of the country through
the preservation of peace was touched upon de part et
d' autre. The antiquity of the city and its interesting
records was the next subject approached. It would, I
remarked, be a very great pity if its essential characteris-
tics were not maintained amid the innovations which the
railway would bring in its train. From that point of view
I ventured to express regret that the ancient walls of the
city were, in parts, falling into disrepair. In time to come
future generations of Kanawa would, I thought, lament
the fact. Would it not be possible to start repairs on one
section at first, performing the needed work gradually,
doing a certain amount every year and finishing section
by section ? The Emir fully concurred, saying that his
people themselves wished the walls restored. He hoped
to deal with the matter, but thought that it might be
easier to commence preliminary repairs on a general scale
rather than start one part and finish that first as I had
suggested. From the question of the wall we turned to
the more difficult one of European traders and educated
Native traders from the coast whom the railway would
bring, settling in the city. The Emir remarked that,
while foreign merchants were welcome, it would be better
for them and for the city and its inhabitants if those who
wished to trade with the Kanawa founded places of busi-
ness at convenient spots outside.
Missionary propaganda in the Muslimised Hausa States
of the north was next touched upon. The subject has
already given rise to discussions at home, which are being
followed in Northern Nigeria with anxious concern, and
such momentous consequences are bound up in it
that I felt it incumbent to ascertain through personal
contact, the views of one of the most important,
133
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
in a certain measure the most important, of the Moham-
medan chiefs through whom we exercise supreme control.
I told the Emir I would be quite frank with him, and
hoped that he would be equally frank with me. The
English people and the Kanawa people, I said, worshipped
the same Almighty Creator of the universe. The English
people followed the teachings of Christ, the Kanawa people
the teachings of Mohammed, and both peoples thought their
religion the best. But although the people of England
held firmly to their beliefs, they had no desire to interfere
with that of the Kanawa. Their representative. Sir
Frederick Lugard, had pledged himself in their name to
that effect, and the English people always kept their word.
But, I went on, some of my countrymen who wished well
to the Kanawa, thought Christianity could be preached
in Kano without breaking this pledge, because there would
be no interference and no moral pressure would be put
upon the people of Kano to change their religion even
though Christian teachers sat down in the city and taught.
The Kanawa could come and hear them, or not, as they
pleased. That was the view held by some of the people in
my country. What I wished to know were the Emir's
opinions in the matter. Did he, or did he not, see
objections to the presence of Christiari preachers in the
city?
For some time the Emir kept silent, his fingers
twitching nervously. One could see the struggle passing
in his mind and realize some of the difficulties of his own
position. Presently he spoke thus — I reproduce the words
as literally as possible : —
" Mohammedanism is a matter of the heart. Our fathers and
our grandfathers were MusHms. For many generations we have been
MusSms. What is the use of preaching if there are no converts?
Even if the Christian missionary tried to meet the native on equal
terms he could not do so because all white men are Sarikis (chiefs),
and the people cannot help so regarding them. The missionaries
might not wish to use force. But they would exercise pressure
134
A VISIT TO THE EMIR OF KANO
amounting to force, because of the prestige all white men have, and
the people would be disturbed and troubled in their minds.
" There would be unrest."
I asked the Emir whether he would have any objection
to confirming in writing the views he had expressed. After
a further period of silent consideration, he said he had
none. Here is the letter subsequently received from him,
rendered from the Arabic text : —
" Praise to God who only is to be praised.
" Salutations.
" This letter is directed to the stranger, Mr. Morel, who has come.
" Know that as regards the preaching (of Christianity) which we
discussed here, my opinion is that it were better to stop it altogether,
from the first — ^because, if our people are disturbed about their religion
they will become suspicious and afraid. Hence the country will
become unsettled. Neither you nor we desire the country to become
unsettled, for that would be harmful. On the other hand, as regards
secular matters and the affairs of this world, we can do anything —
however great a change it might be — since our people are accustomed
to law and to obey the orders of their rulers as their fathers and grand-
fathers were before them. Also, as regards white men living in the
city of Kano, if they do so many of our people will leave it, since the
white men are too strong, and every one of them is in our eyes, a great
man and powerful. The lion and the lamb cannot lie down together.
My opinion is that the white man who may wish to settle should have
a separate town outside the city of Kano — then we shall have our town
and they will have theirs. This is the wisest course, and far more
advantageous for our subjects than a mixed city of natives and non-
natives.
" Peace."
At the close of the interview we were reconducted with
the same ceremonious politeness and in the same silence
as before to the ceutre of the outer enclosure, where we
took our leave.
135
CHAPTER IX
GOVERNING ON NATIVE LINES
The fundamental principle aimed at by the Government
in Northern Nigeria is indirect administration, i.e. adminis-
tration through the native rulers of the communities, the
Chiefs and their executives, under the supervision and
with the assistance of the Residents. That was the policy
laid down by Sir Frederick Lugard in a series of compre-
hensive Memoranda which form not the least notable
feature of the great work he carried out during his tenure
of office, a work entirely creative, be it remembered, a
work of which the value can but grow in public estimation
as the sense of perspective deepens with the years, and as
additional information supplies what in the early days of
the occupation was largely lacking. That was the policy
Sir Frederick Lugard's successor. Sir Percy Girouard,
found in being, not, indeed, unthreatened, but enthusiasti-
cally upheld by the most experienced members of the
Political Staff. He not only gave it his full official
support and checked certain leanings of an opposite kind,
but he brought to bear upon the situation a personal
sympathy, an illuminating and penetrative genius which
popularized the policy in quarters previously hostile or
indifferent. Sir Henry Hesketh Bell has loyally followed
in the footsteps of his predecessors. That nothing should
be allowed to divert us from keeping on the same road is
the writer's conviction, for what it may be worth, after
several years' study at a distance and recent investigations
on the spot.
136
GOVERNING ON NATIVE LINES
A genuine and honest endeavour is being made not
only to rule through the native Chiefs, but to rule through
them on native lines. Too much importance can hardly
be ascribed to the distinction. The success already
attained would be thrown away if policy were deflected in
the direction of substituting European for native ideas.
If the native machine is expected to perform functions for
which it is unqualified, the works get out of gear. If the
Chiefs are called upon to exercise their authority in en-
forcing measures essentially alien to the native constitu-
tion, their prestige over the individual lapses. They
become mere puppets, and indirect rule breaks down. I
hope to make clear what the native constitution is, and
what is meant by ruling on " native lines." The difficul-
ties of improving and purifying when required a native
administration, without impairing its general efficiency,
are always considerable. In Northern Nigeria they are,
for several reasons, peculiarly so. If the result, so far, has
shown the wisdom of the original conception, it has been
due to the determination and tact of the senior Political
Residents, and to the excellence of the native material.
Our task has been furthered by the administrative
capacities of the Fulani Emirs. Some were, indeed, found
unfit and had to be removed, but the majority are in-
creasingly showing themselves not only capable but quite
indispensable to the work of government.
It would, however, be mischievous to conceal the fact
that indirect rule in the proper sense of the term, i.e. in-
volving the preservation of native law and custom, has to
bear, in West Africa, the brunt of constant and insidious
assaults on the part of interested, or prejudiced, or ill-
informed opinion. This opposition is often quite honest
and quite easy to understand if the conditions are grasped.
It is important they should be grasped. Indirect rule is an
obstacle to employment and promotion in some branches
of the service. It restricts the scope of secretarial,
137
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
judicial, police and military activities. It robs the
educated native barrister trained in English law, and the
educated native clerk, of a field for the exercise of their
professions. It checks the European capitalist in a hurry
to push on " development." The missionary is apt to
regard it as a stumbling-block to Christian propaganda.
Finally, there is the type of European who is racially biased
against the retention of any sort of control by the native
in his own country. Indirect rule, therefore, has very
many enemies, and it cannot have too many friends among
the thinking public at home. So far as Northern Nigeria
is concerned, strenuous efforts will have to be put forward
by all who are convinced of the necessity of upholding
indirect rule therein, when the amalgamation of the two
Protectorates is taken in hand. That time cannot be far
distant and the wind which blows from the south is
charged with many hostile particles. There would seem,
then, to be solid reasons for the public to appreciate the
conditions, at once severely practical, and of the moral
order, which make the continuation of the existing policy
necessary to the welfare of the Northern Protectorate.
Let us first consider geographical verities and ways and
means. Northern Nigeria is 255,000 square miles in
extent and the territory is divided into thirteen provinces.
Of these provinces, Sokoto, the most considerable in point
of area, is nearly as large as Scotland and Wales ; Bornu
is the size of Ireland ; Kano is almost as large as Scotland ;
Kontagora-Borgu is slightly larger than, and Bauchi and
Muri the size of, Greece ; the Niger Province is as exten-
sive as Servia ; Yola is as large as Denmark, and Nassarawa
exceeds the area of Switzerland. It is only by realizing
space, by realizing that months of travel still separate
some provinces from others, that the expense, to say
nothing of other considerations, which would be entailed
in gathering up all the administrative threads of such a
territory into the hands of a staff of British officials can be
138
GOVERNING ON NATIVE LINES
understood. I have never heard it suggested that the
Lords of the Treasury parted enthusiastically with the
meagre sum allotted to Northern Nigeria. One cannot
imagine that their Lordships' satisfaction would increase
if they were presented not with a bill of a quarter of a
million but of two millions. The single Province of Kano,
which under the present system is supervised by seventeen
political officers, and more than pays its own way, would
require at least three hundred officials if direct rule were
established, or the prestige of the Emirs so weakened as to
deprive them of all real authority over the people, and
this, exclusive of a swarm of native officials who could
not be done without in any case. That brings me to my
next point. Direct rule would, of necessity, involve an
enormous, directly paid, native staff. For its every action
the Government would be compelled to accept responsi-
bility, and its members would, perforce, be largely com-
posed of the class of native — the most undesirable type,
it may be added — ^from which the policemen and soldiers
are now recruited. Putting aside the question of ex-
penditure altogether, can any sane man, disposed to look
the facts squarely in the face and knowing anything of the
country, contemplate with equanimity the consequences of
such a regime ? Then, assuming for purposes of argument
the non-existence of these impediments, where would lie
the moral justification, let alone the purely political
expediency, of sweeping away the rule of the natural
rulers of the country ?
139
CHAPTER X
THE FOUNDATIONS OF NATIVE SOCIETY — THE TENURE OF
LAND
Having indicated some of the quagmires into which direct
rule would lead us, one may now pass to an examination
of the foundations upon which native law and custom
repose in the organized society of the north, as revealed by
systematic inquiry extending over the past five years.
Essentially the same groundwork is found in the more
rudimentary pagan communities which have remained
without the area of Mohammedan organization. Inciden-
tally, it may be well to mark that Northern Nigeria has
not evolved powerful pagan organisms comparable with
those of Yoruba and Benin in the south. The basis of
the social system is the village community. A number of
village communities form the tribal community. The
partly hereditary, partly elective rule of the tribal com-
munity constitutes, with the Executive, the Government
of the entire community. The ruler himself is the
" Governor," against whose actions the people can appeal
to native law and custom. For the welfare of that
community the ruler is guardian. Land is the common
heritage of the community. The ruler is trustee for the
land. Upon him devolves the granting of rights of
occupancy. The structural law of tenure is the right of
occupier and user, not of owner. Private ownership of
land is unknown. The cultivator is, in reality, a licensee.
Alienation of land is unknown. The unit of taxation is
140
THE TENURE OF LAND
the village community. Each individual is supposedly
assessed according to his earning capacity. If he is an
agriculturist he furnishes a proportion of his crop, which,
in effect, is a rent paid to the community for the use of
land. If an artisan, he pays a tax upon his trade. If a
herdsman, upon his cattle. The community as a whole is
subject to specific imposts which assist in maintaining the
civil list of the ruler. The character of the taxes and
imposts follows the requirements of the Koranic law
modified, when considered expedient, by pre-Koranic
customary law. Justice is administered by judges con-
versant with the sacred books, appointed by the ruler and
exercised on the principles of Koranic law. If a balance
could be struck, it would probably be found that a system
of this kind ensures a greater amount of human happiness
than many of the forms of government even now existing
in Europe. Indeed, the closer one's knowledge of African
life and the more insight one obtains into the immense sea
of human misery heaving beneath the crust of Western
civilization, the more one is led to marvel at the shallow
commonplaces which picture the African wallowing in
degraded barbarism. Like all institutions, the African
system lends itself to abuse. Those abuses the British
Administration has set itself to correct, while maintaining
the system itself. Upon the Colonial Office continuing to
support that policy, and upon the men who are applying
it on the spot being enabled to go on with their work free
from interference, depends the future happiness and
prosperity of the Nigerian peoples, which, in effect, is at
once the Imperial interest and the justification of Imperial
rule.
The British, having replaced the Fulani, are in native
law and custom the conquering tribe. The urgency of
devoting as much time as it was possible to spare from the
pressing problems of the hour demanding daily solution,
to an investigation of the exact conditions prevailing in
141
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
each province was, therefore, imperative. In so extensive
a territory, differing local circumstances affecting soil,
population, occupation, distribution of power, and so on,
had obviously created different methods or rather heads
of taxation and variation in the formulae of Government,
assessment and levying of revenue, etc. One question
above all others had to be elucidated, that of the ownership
of land — basis of the whole social edifice. Sir Frederick
Lugard initiated these inquiries. They were vigorously
prosecuted by Sir Percy Girouard and the Residents, and
when it became apparent beyond all possibility of doubt
that the land, whether actually occupied or not, was
national ; that freehold property was foreign to all native
ideas ; and that, under native law and custom, the new
rulers of the country were recognized as holders of the
land in trust for the people and, thereby, the grantors of
occupants' rights. Sir Percy Girouard pressed for these
cardinal principles being given force of law. Legislation
which should embody them was, moreover, of additional
moment for two reasons. First, because the opening up
of the country was bound to give rise to the danger of
alienation of occupancy rights creeping in and being
incorporated into native custom, out of which would
automatically evolve a customary sanction for the mort-
gaging of land, the creation of a class of landlords, a wide
field for the European speculator in land, and a general
break-up of the native system. Secondly, because the
approach of the railways, the development of roads, the
increasing demand for foodstuffs and the all-round
intensifying economic pressure were bound, once more
automatically, to originate, independently of the industry
of the cultivator, an incremental value in the land.
Before that state of affairs was brought home to the native
and had, perhaps, been made under native law and custom,
the subject of private property, which would have meant
the creation of vested interests difficult to displace, it was
142
THE TENURE OF LAND
the obvious duty of a Government trustee for the commu-
nity to step in and secure these expanding values for the
future benefit of that community. But things move slowly
in West Africa, and legislation of the kind referred to was
novel : unique, indeed. West Africa's problems had
never been thought out ahead before. Just as matters
were ripening. Sir Percy Girouard was suddenly transferred
to East Africa. But the Colonial Office was sympathetic,
and there were men in Nigeria who, comprehending well
the perils of leaving the land question unregulated, were
determined to do their utmost to push the matter through.
On January ist of this year the most far-seeing
measure of constructive statesmanship West Africa has
ever known was put upon the statute-book. " The Land
and Native Rights Proclamation " consecrates the three
main principles of native law and custom. First, that the
whole of the land whether occupied or unoccupied is
" native land." Secondly, that the land is under the
control and subject to the disposition of the Governor, to
be " held and administered by him for the use, need and
common benefit of the natives of Northern Nigeria."
Thirdly, that the Governor's power shall be exercised in
accordance with " native laws and customs." For the
rest, and without going into detail, the measure can be
described as expressing the native system, and the natural
developments of the native system, in English. It is not,
in Nigeria, an innovating measure, but a conservative
measure ; not an experiment, but a preservation of the
status quo. It is not a measure of land nationalization,
because land nationalization means State control of the
land and all that is done upon it. What this measure does
is to provide for the communalizing of the communal value
of the land, leaving the occupier full control over the use
of land and full benefit for his private enterprise upon it,
with payment of rent to the community to which the land
belongs, instead of to a landlord. The individual's right
143
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
to all that is due to individual work and expenditure, but
not to the communal value, is secured. No freehold can
creep in and no monopoly profit can be made out of the
land. The holding up of land for speculative purposes is,
in effect, penalized, while the man who is industrious is
not made to pay more as the outcome of his enterprise.
At the same time the basis is laid for a land revenue which,
with the years, will be the chief source of income of the
Government — ^the healthiest form of income, perhaps, for
any Government. For the first time in the history of
West Africa, the art of governing the native on native
lines has become consecrated in British legislation and the
pernicious tradition of applying the law of England to
African land questions has been set aside. It is impossible
to exaggerate the potentialities for good of such a depart-
ture from crude, ignorant and unscientific precedent. It
will be the duty of the Colonial Office, to whom everlasting
credit is due for having sanctioned this proclamation, to
watch strictly that the principles laid down therein are not
departed from in practice, and to apply them, with the
modifications of method which differing and pre-existing
conditions render advisable, to Southern Nigeria also.
That attempts to undermine the provisions and the spirit
of the Northern Nigerian law will arise, may be unhesi-
tatingly assumed.
144
CHAPTER XI
THE FOUNDATIONS OF NATIVE SOCIETY — ^THE ADMINIS-
TRATIVE MACHINERY
The policy of governing Northern Nigeria on native lines —
in other words, of training the natives to govern themselves
instead of trying to govern them ourselves — ^has the
approval of the entire native community except the
criminal classes, who would be the only ones to benefit by
a weakening in the position of the native authorities and
in the decay of the etiquette attaching to their position.
It is being pursued in every branch of the Administration
concurrently, with a steadily marked improvement in the
efficiency and purity of the public service.
The native administrative machinery varies slightly in
the different Emirates, and is better organized in some
than in others, but a description of the system as it obtains
in the Kano Emirate, which is a little larger than Belgium
and Luxemburg, will serve as a general indication appli-
cable in its essentials to the others. The executive con-
sists of the Emir — advised and assisted by the Resident —
and his judicial and executive Council, composed of the
Waziri (Vizier, or Chief of Staff), the Maji (Treasurer), the
Alkali (Chief Justice), and five Mallamai (" teachers," men
versed in the law and in the customs of the country) of
repute. This is the Supreme Court of Appeal. The
Emirate is divided into districts under a district Chief or
Headman (Hakima) responsible to the Executive. Each
district is divided into sub-districts under a sub-district
145 L
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
Chief or Headman (Maijimilla) responsible to the District
Headman. Each sub-district is composed of townships
or villages with village-heads (Masugari) responsible to the
sub-district Headman.
Kano city itself is under the supervision of the Maajen-
Wuteri, who corresponds roughly with our English mayor
with twenty town police (dogarai), picturesque individuals
in red and green, and twenty night watchmen (masugefia)
under him. Ninety more police are spread over the various
districts and attached to the District Courts. There are
no British native police whatever. That experiment was
tried for a time, being attended with such conspicuous
ill-success and being accompanied by such an increase in
crime that it was wisely abandoned. Nothing could surely
convey a more striking proof of the order reigning through-
out the Emirate and of the law-abiding character of the
people, than the fact of its being policed with ninety men
armed with nothing more formidable than a sword.
Think of ninety constables sufficing for Belgium and
Luxemburg or any other area of 13,000 square miles in
Western Europe ; or take the population of the Emirate —
one and a half millions — ^and point to a single comparable
proportion of police to population in Europe. Crimes of
violence are extraordinarily scarce, and the Native Ad-
ministration, backed by the British "raj," has now such
a hold upon the country that for a case to be unreported
would be hardly possible. The roads are safe for the
solitary traveller — I frequently passed women alone, or
accompanied by a child, sometimes husband, wife and
child, many miles from the capital. I have walked alone
save for one white companion through the deserted
streets of Kano city at night. Kano city is not, however,
free from thieves, and seeing that so many strangers are
constantly coming and going it is hardly to be wondered at.
Some two years back night burglaries became unpleasantly
frequent. Native ingenuity hit upon a plan to cope with
146
THE ADMINISTRATIVE MACHINERY
them. The services of the professional rat-catchers were
enhsted. They were enrolled as night-watchmen, paid
£i a man, and told they would be fined 2S. 6d. every time
a robbery was committed. Very few fines were inflicted,
and Kano was cleared of its nocturnal undesirables " one
time."
The general standard of probity among the inhabitants
of Kano themselves is, however, shown by the free and
easy manner in which merchandise is left unguarded in
the great market, and it appears that lost property is
constantly being handed over to the Alkali, who has the
articles called out by a public crier in the market-place.
The absence of a fixed scale of emoluments for public
servants is always the weak point of native government.
Northern Nigeria was no exception to the rule. The
proportion of the taxes actually collected which eventually
found its way into the so-called Public Treasury, was used
by the Emir with small regard to the public interest and
with a great deal for his own. The Alkalis and their
assessors, though by no means universally corrupt, were
dependent for their living upon such sources as the fees
(usheri) upon judgment debts and upon the estates of
deceased persons (ujera). To Mr. Charles Temple, now
Acting Governor, whose knowledge of Northern Nigeria
and its peoples is unequalled, belongs the credit of having
instituted in the Kano Emirate the Beit-el-Mal or Public
Treasury in the proper sense of the word, which has since
been extended, or is being extended, into all of them. The
system follows traditional lines but vastly improves them.
In practice it works out as follows. Half the total revenue
collected goes direct to the Northern Nigeria Government.
Of the remaining half, fifty per cent, is paid into the Beit-
el-Mal to provide salaries for the native oflicials and to pay
for necessary public works. The balance is divided into
fifths on the basis of two-fifths of each district's yield to
the District Headman ; two-fifths of the sub-district's
147
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
yield to the Sub-district Headman ; one-fifth of his own
village's yield to the Village Headman. It will doubtless
be possible, as the system becomes perfected, for each
district to have its own Beit-el-Mal with limited powers,
receiving its instructions from the central Beit-el-Mal, just
as the local British Treasuries receive instructions from
the Treasury at Zungeru. This would enable the District
Heads, Sub-district Heads and Village Heads to have fixed
salaries like the Native Executive, a very desirable ideal
to aim at.
The Emir draws a fixed sum monthly from the Beit-el-
mal for his private expenses, which are numerous, and the
public expenditure is accounted for and overlooked by
the Resident. The Waziri draws £1000 a year, the Maji
;^36o, the Alkali £600, the Limam (High Priest) £72.
There are thirteen districts in charge of thirteen local
Alkalis drawing £60 a year each. The public works com-
pleted out of the Beit-el-mal funds during the last year or
two include the rebuilding of the Kano market at a cost
of £600, a new jail at a cost of £1000, a new Court House,
3^250, besides keeping the thirteen gates of the city in
repair, additions to the mosque, etc. In regard to the
latter, it is interesting to note that the work of adding to
the mosque and repairing the minaret, was entirely carried
out by contract labour. The contract was given out by
the Emir and the contractor paid the workmen to the
number of over a thousand, a previously unheard-of event
in native annals and an example of one of the many
improvements which the Native Administration is carrying
out under British influence. The Emir has also directed
that £1000 shall be contributed to the National School at
Nassarawa, which I shall have occasion to speak about in
a subsequent letter. Legislation for the purpose of legally
constituting the native Beit-el-Mals would seem to be
called for.
The administration of justice has been vastly purified
148
CORNER OF A KATI\-E 5IARKET.
ANOTHER CORNER.
THE ADMINISTRATIVE MACHINERY
by the inauguration of fixed emoluments. The District
Courts and the Supreme Court administer Koranic law,
or customary law, i.e. traditional law based on custom, or
Government proclamations. Speaking generally, the
Alkalis are a fine body of men, and they appear to be
realizing more and more the dignity and responsibilities of
their position. The chief Alkali in particular is a man of
very high character. The legal code in criminal and civil
matters is, of course, mainly inspired by the sacred books,
and the Alkali is generally a Doctor of Mohammedan
common law. His influence and power appear to be more
extensive than that of the Egyptian kadi, since he has
jurisdiction in criminal cases and in land suits, which the
latter has not. Of the cases tried in the courts of the
Kano Emirate, about 30 per cent, are matrimonial, such
as divorce, restitution of conjugal rights, alimony, etc.
The courts are very hard worked, deahng with about
7000 to 8000 cases per annum, and the Alkalis fully earn
their salaries. I attended the chief Alkali's court in
Kano city, and was greatly impressed by the general
decorum, the respect shown to the Alkali, the activity of
the assessors, the marshalling of the witnesses, the order,
rapidity, and business-like manner in which the whole
proceedings were conducted. It was an example of
native self-government in Western Africa which would
have astonished a good many people in Europe. No
British court, no alien magistrate, could possibly deal
with these " affairs of the people," which require a com-
plete mastery of Koranic law and customary law, such a
mastery as only a trained native can ever acquire, and it
is to be hoped that any attempts which may arise to
curtail the jurisdiction of the native courts — accepted by
all classes, of natives — ^will be promptly discouraged,
together with similar attempts to interfere with the present
Beit-el-mal system. From a practical point of view the
maintenance of the Native Administration, guided and
149
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
supervised by the Resident, i.e. indirect rule, is inseparable
from the financial question. If the Native Administration
were not financially provided for it would cease to exist.
If the Emirs and their executives were converted into
mere civil pensioners of the Government, they would
become figure-heads deprived of all power and prestige.
Under the system I have described the Emirs have power,
and only hyper-sensitiveness and short-sightedness can see
in their power our weakness. It is, on the contrary, our
strength and defence against the reactionary elements
which exist, and which are bound to exist in a country but
newly occupied, and which are certainly not less hostile
to the native authorities, who pursue their labours under
the segis of the British "raj," than they are to the
British "raj " itself. Anything that impairs the influence
of the native authorities, not only impairs the efficiency
of the Administration of the country, but is an invitation
to lawlessness and disorder.
It is only fair to state in this connection that the
initiative of perpetuating, under British rule and with
the modifications required, the system of land taxation
indigenous to the community, was due to the suggestion
of Sir William Wallace, for many years Acting High
Commissioner of Northern Nigeria.
150
CHAPTER XII
THE PRESERVATION OF THE NATIONAL LIFE
Among those to whom the government of the coloured
races of mankind appears in the Ught of a sacred trust
committed to an Imperial white people, as to the servants
of that people possessing the widest experience in the
practice of such government, the preservation of the
national life of these races must be a matter of paramount
importance. Increased knowledge born of familiarity in
the art of tropical government and of anthropological
knowledge, a clearer realization of human needs which an
expanding mental horizon brings with it, are teaching us
many things. They are teaching us that there can be no
common definition of progress or common standard for all
mankind; that the highest human attainments are not
necessarily reached on parallel lines ; that man's place and
part in the universe around him must vary with the dis-
similarities of race and environment ; that what may spell
advance for some races at a particular stage in their
evolution may involve retrogression, if not destruction, for
other races in another stage ; that humanity cannot be
legislated for as though every section of it were modelled
on the same pattern ; that to disregard profound divergence
in culture and racial necessities is to court disaster, and
that to encourage national growth to develop on natural
lines and the unfolding of the mental processes to proceed
by gradual steps, is the only method by which the exercise
of the Imperial prerogative can be morally justified. Our
151
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
one and only conspicuous Imperial failure was due to a
misguided belief that we could, and that it was desirable in
our own interests that we should, crush out nationality
by violence. It inflicted upon the victims immense misery
and upon the performers embarrassments which have
endured for centuries. Elsewhere we are experiencing the
discomforting reflex of a policy based upon the supposition
that East is capable of assimilation with West under alien
guidance. British India is rent with confusion and men-
tally unsettled by a jumble of conflicting ideals, to which
the Protected Native States offer a contrast that cannot
but carry with it its own very significant lessons.
All the good work accomplished in Northern Nigeria
during the last seven years can be flung away by a refusal
to benefit from experience in other parts of the world. In
pleading for the slow but sure policy everywhere in Nigeria,
and in pleading that where in Nigeria national life has
already expanded through the exercise of its own internal
forces into organized communities, possessing their own
laws and customs, their own machinery of government and
their own well-defined characteristics, that national life
shall be protected, preserved and strengthened to enable
it to bear the strain of new conditions, one is pleading, it
seems to me, for the true welfare of the people and for the
highest concept of Imperialism.
These considerations hold good as regards every branch
of European activity. Effective British political control
does not require constant encroachments of departmental
activity. British industrial interests can be allowed to find
a natural outlet in the ordinary play of economic forces
without calling upon Government assistance, for example,
to undermine a national weaving industry in which, as
Barth remarked of it many years ago, there is something
that is " truly grand," giving employment and support as
it does to innumerable families without compelling them
to sacrifice their domestic habits or to pass their lives in
152
PRESERVATION OF THE NATIONAL LIFE
immense establishments detrimental to health. British
commercial necessities do not demand that the big native
cities should be thrown open to the White trader, who can
pursue his useful avocations just as well, and certainly with
much greater regard to health conditions, outside than
inside them. In the same way the advent of the mission-
ary into the organized Mohammedan provinces of the
north before the country is ripe to receive them, would be
a positive danger, besides being an act perilously akin to
a breach of faith. Surely we have become sufi&ciently
intelligent to take a broadly human view of these things ?
There is a field in pagan Northern and pagan Southern
Nigeria sufficiently extensive to occupy all the energies of
all the missions put together, without invading the heart
of Moslem Nigeria. The advent of Christian missions into
Kano or Katsina or Sokoto, for example, would be regarded
as an act of aggression. Their presence in Zaria is a great
mistake, and I make bold to assert that it is only com-
parable to a man smoking a pipe on a barrel of gunpowder.
We hold this newly occupied country by the force of our
prestige, far more than by the very small number of native
troops in our service. That it is the duty of Government
to prevent the introduction of elements, whatever their
character and however lofty their motives, whose presence
is calculated to cause unrest, is sufficiently self-evident as
not to need emphasizing. No Government can afford to
disregard so clear a view as that formulated, for example,
in the Emir of Kano's letter given in Chapter VIII,
But one would desire, if possible, that the leaders of the
Christian Churches themselves should be brought to
appreciate the justice of the contention. The establish-
ment of Christian missions in the Mohammedan Emirates
would not succeed in damming up the self-propelling
currents of Islamic propaganda which are permeating
Nigerian paganism. That is the true problem which the
Churches have to face.
153
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
The question of economic development is on the same
plane. That peace, the advent of railways and the growth
of population will eventually result in the creation of a
large commercial movement of affairs with Northern
Nigeria — apart from the mineral output — is not to be
doubted. But exaggeration as regards immediate pros-
pects is to be deprecated, and the claims of economic
development, important as they are, should not be allowed
to play too great a part in administrative solicitude. The
main concern of the Administration for the next few years
should be that of placing the political, financial and educa-
tional organization of the country upon secure foundations.
Political unrest and social confusion are stumbling-blocks
to commercial progress, and everything should be done to
avoid them. Those in a position to realize the marvels
already accomplished in this region of Africa by the
handful of British officials administering the country,
and the many problems requiring on the part of those
who are called upon to deal with them the utmost
delicacy and tact in adjustment, cannot but enter a
caveat against all tendencies, from whatever source they
may emanate, be they of self-interest or of unselfish
devotion, to " rush " Northern Nigeria. Rapid expan-
sion does not necessarily mean progress. Sometimes
it means exactly the reverse. Let us, rendered wise
by experience elsewhere, set our faces like flint against
the " Europeanizing " of Northern Nigeria. In Sierra
Leone, in the Gold Coast, in the Western Provinces of
Southern Nigeria we have daily object-lessons of the
deplorable results of this denationahzing process. That
Northern Nigeria should be preserved from it must
be the earnest wish of all who are acquainted with its
peoples and alive to their possibilities.
154
CHAPTER XIII
A PAGE OF HISTORY AND ITS MORAL
If we have the imagination to grasp the true significance
of the events which led, a century ago, to the break-up
of the Hausa dynasty by the Fulani, we shall find the
key to the moral side of permanently successful govern-
ment in Northern Nigeria. The motive of the Fulani
jihad has usually been attributed either to mere religious
fanaticism or to personal and racial ambition ; or, again,
as an incident in the prolonged struggle for power on the
part of this or that ruler or dynasty which has destroyed
the fertile uplands of Western Africa south of the Sahara
since the shattering of the ancient Niger civilizations
by the Moorish invasion at the end of the sixteenth
century. It appears to me that this appreciation is
superficial, and that we must look deeper than the surface
results. I am not sure that these surface results them-
selves do not suggest the need of doing so. A man of
letters galvanizing a whole countryside to revolt against
oppression. Shepherds and cowherds flinging away their
sticks and staves and rallying to his standard. Initial
defeat turned into victory. A number of independent
States converted into a homogeneous entity acknowledging
a temporal and spiritual over-lord. An immense region
ill-provided with means of internal communication brought
to recognize one common authority — and all within a
year or two. These are remarkable occurrences. They
insinuate the existence of some driving force below the
155
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
surface. Is it possible to trace that force in the chequered
annals of this part of Africa ?
The Moorish invasion dealt the great Negroid Empire
of the middle Niger — ^the Empire of the Songhay — a
blow from which it never recovered. The invasion did
not actually swamp the Hausa States, but its indirect
consequences must have been felt throughout them in
everywhere shaking established order, and in the decay
of spiritual influence following upon the heels of anarchy.
In the absence of any continuous written records, the
history of the period following the advance of Morocco's
musketeers into the Western Sudan, appears to Western
minds as a confused medley of internecine strife with-
out defined objects of any kind. One can imagine,
let us say, a Chinese historian picturing the history of
England from the tenth to the fifteenth century much
in the same light, if his materials for composing it
were almost wholly confined to oral traditions. But
a close study of the few documents at our disposal
must, I think, induce the belief that, dating from the
introduction of a higher spiritual influence into the
country — Mohammedanism had begun to acquire a
footing by the eleventh century — ^the land was never
free from an agency which sought the uplifting of society.
Before the Moorish generals carried fire and sword into
the Niger Valley, holy voices were raised in protest
against the " decay of faith with the increase of in-
fidelity." "Not one of the acts forbidden by God"
— ^lament learned Arabic historians — " but was openly
practised ; wine was drunk, and adultery had become so
frequent that its practice seemed to have acquired
legality." The terrible punishment which ensued was
ascribed to these lapses : " It was on account of these
abominations that God avenged Himself by calling in
the victorious Moroccan army." We seem to be listening
to another Moses denouncing the wickedness of the people
156
A PAGE OF HISTORY AND ITS MORAL
of Israel. In the midst of all these disordered turmoils,
when the worship of the true God was being swept aside
by a wave of recrudescent paganism, when mosques were
being destroyed and desecrated and social lawlessness
reigned supreme, little knots of true believers gathered,
forming as it were islands in the sea of turbulence and
moral abasement, to which Christian Europe added a
renewed element of subversion by her demand for slaves,
thus intensifying internal warfare by furnishing it with
a new and deadly incentive.
There is evidence that in the middle and towards the
close of the eighteenth century the Hausa Kings were
relapsing into paganism (in Zaria, for instance, the old
Hausa " Tsafi," customs — rock worship — ^had been re-
vived). It was at this period that the spark of a spiritual
renascence arose in the most northerly of the Hausa
States, Gober. Othman Fodio, a Fulani, ultimately the
leader of the uprising, was above all a moral and spiritual
reformer, as was his teacher the Mallam Jibrila. He
sought to raise the whole tone of society. He used his
influence at the Court of the Hausa King to secure the
building of schools and the spread of letters. He him-
self and his brother and his son — into whose hands he
placed affairs of state after the conquest — wrote a number
of books whose titles are sufficient to indicate their
character. Here are some of them : " The Book mani-
festing the Path of Righteousness and Unrighteousness,"
" The Book for the saving of the People of the Time and
the Teaching of the Ignorant to understand the Know-
ledge of the Word," "Explanation to the Rulers as regards
their Duties and what is due from them in the execution
of their Duties," " The Book expressing the Difference
between Right and Wrong," " The Book the Window for
Students in the holding of the Doors of the Faith in God
the Giver," " The Book to prevent others from following
the promptings of the Devil," "The Book plainly showing
157
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
that the love of the World is the cause of every Fault."
A reflection by the way. When the Fulani reformers
were composing these works, and for many years after-
wards, European and American slavers were periodically
visiting the lower Niger, six hundred miles south, and, by
presents of guns and powder, hounding on the natives
to raid one another for the benefit of the Western
plantations !
Othman's converts were by no means limited to men
of his own race, as was subsequently shown in the ad-
herents he obtained. But it was not unnatural that such
a man should have been an offence to many ; that his
converts should have been molested ; and that finally, by
his personal action in releasing a number of them from
bondage, a collision with the authorities should have been
precipitated, which eventually led to the proclamation of
a holy war. Othman engaged in the struggle with
the words : " If I fight this battle that I may become
greater than my fellows, may the unbelievers wipe us
from the land." Upon its successful termination, the
statesman and the warrior became once more the social
reformer. Othman returned to his preaching and to the
compilation of his books.
A consideration of these facts irresistibly suggests
that the root causes of the Fulani outburst were
spiritual in their nature. Othman led a moral and
spiritual revival, among a people who, like all negroes
and negroids, are naturally more accessible to spiritual
influences than are the white peoples of the earth.
He gave a renewed inspiration to letters. That the
country, after half a century, fell back once more into
political chaos does not in the least weaken the moral
to be gleaned from these events. The religious revival
has not gone back. From that political chaos the country
has been rescued by the British power. One of the
obvious duties of the Administration is to continue the
158
A PAGE OF HISTORY AND ITS MORAL
work of the great Fulani reformer in everywhere extending
and broadening the intellectual horizon, and doing nothing
to weaken the national spiritual influences, of the people
of the land. The creation of a system of education which
shall be truly national is imperative at this moment when
the whole fabric of native society is being shaken by
disturbing elements. The field is clear : the slate clean.
We are here unfettered by those bitter experiences of
the West Coast of Africa and of India which are perpetual
reminders of past blunders and daily handicaps to true
progress.
159
CHAPTER XIV
A SCHEME OF NATIONAL EDUCATION
The predominant characteristic of our educational
methods — official and unofficial — in Western Africa
hitherto may be summed up in one word — denationali-
zation. The result is so notoriously unsatisfactory as to
need no specific illustration. If readers of Mr. Valentine
Chirol's book on India will turn to his chapters on the
failure of our educational methods there, and substitute
West Africa for India, they will be furnished with a
replica of the situation on the West Coast of Africa. It
is not an exact replica — for the reason that while the
ties of caste in India are a deterrent to denationalization,
such deterrent is non-existent in West Africa. But
there is not one charge which Mr. Chirol brings against
the Indian system that could not be equally brought
against the West African system, and identical conse-
quences are ensuing. We are barely beginning to realize
that the policy, or rather impolicy, of the last half -century
has been a hideous example of misdirected effort, and
there is hardly an administrator who does not contemplate
the development of the " educated native problem " with
the gravest foreboding.
The object of the Northern Nigeria Administration is
to set on foot an educational system throughout the
country which shall save the Protectorate from these
follies, while at the same time affording the rising gene-
ration the intellectual pabulum we are bound to provide,
i6o
A SCHEME OF NATIONAL EDUCATION
and ultimately laying the basis for a native civil service.
At the present moment the scheme is only in its infancy,
but the infant is robust and full of promise. It is at
Nassarawa, a beautifully situated and healthy spot a
few miles outside Kano, close by the Emir's country
residence, that the first Government schools have been
started. They consist at present of the Mallamai school,
or school for teachers, a school for the sons of Chiefs, an
elementary vernacular school and a technical school
with carpenters', blacksmiths', leather- workers', and agri-
cultural classes. The creation of a primary and secondary
school will follow as soon as the work is sufficiently
advanced. Special importance attaches to the elementary
schools, as through them the mass of the population will
be influenced. As soon as the teachers now being trained
are ready they will be supplied to the Provinces, where
the Residents are eagerly awaiting them, and it is the
intention in every case that they shall be accompanied
by a technical instructor. The training of Government
clerks and of artisans for the Public Works Department
is recognized as a necessity, but it takes quite a secondary
place in the general educational plan which has been so
successfully initiated, and these men will be trained so as
to retain both their national instincts and their national
dress.
A ride out to Nassarawa and some hours spent in
investigating the work already accomplished (there are
some 350 pupils) I shall always remember as one of the
most pleasurable experiences of my visit to Northern
Nigeria. Here at last, one saw, was a common-sense,
well-thought-out, scientific scheme to enlarge the mental
outlook of the West African on African lines, to preserve
his racial constitution, to keep him in touch with his
parents, in sympathy with his national life. Here, one
felt, was the nucleus of a future Hausa university to be
raised some day by the people themselves on their own
161 M
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
initiative, a university which should far outshine the
ancient glories of Timbuktu and Jenne, which should
herald the dawn of a real African renascence, which
instead of divorcing the people from their land should
bind them to it in intensified bonds of pride and love.
For one thing, the preservation of the national tongue
is aimed at, the general teaching being given in the
vernacular, for the present in Hausa — ^the lingua franca
of the country — although in course of time, as the system
extends, classes in Fulfulde {Fulani), Kanuri (the language
of Bornu), and, perhaps, Nupe, will doubtless suggest
themselves; not, however, to the exclusion of Hausa,
but in combination with it. For another thing, the fatal
mistake of taking in pupils free, or even paying them to
come, is not being repeated here ; the principle of every
pupil paying a fee, paying for his books and paying for
his medical attendance having been laid down from the
start.
The Mallamai school was full of special interest, being
composed of grown men from eighteen to thirty ; for
these are the teachers of to-morrow. I was told, and I
can well believe it from their intellectual faces, that the
rapidity with which they acquire and the ease with
which they retain knowledge, is amazing. Land sur-
veying and farm measuring is included in their curriculum,
and some of them, although their course of instruction
is not completed, have already rendered very considerable
assistance, their work (which I was able to examine at
a later date), calculated in acres and roods and covering
many assessment sheets, being neat and generally accurate.
I attended the geography lesson which was then going
forward, and found these future teachers studying, not
the configuration of the Alps or the names of the English
counties, but the map of Africa, the rivers, mountain
ranges and political divisions of their own continent :
not the distances between Berlin and St. Petersburg,
162
A SCHEME OF NATIONAL EDUCATION
Rome and Paris, but between Kano and Lokoja, Zaria
and Yola, and the routes to follow to reach those places
from a given spot. The various classes, I observed, were
not puzzling over, to them, incomprehensible stories
about St. Bernard dogs rescuing snow-bound travellers,
or busy bees improving shining hours, but becoming
acquainted with the proverbs and folk-lore of their own
land ; not being edified with the properties of the
mangel-wurzel or the potentialities of the strawberry,
but instructed in the culture requirements of yams,
sweet potatoes, and sugar-cane. I did not see rows of
lads in European costume, unsuited to the climate,
hideous (out here) and vehicles for the propagation of
tuberculosis, but decently clothed in their own graceful,
healthy African garb.
The school for the sons of chiefs — which, I venture
to hope, will not, as rumoured, be abandoned without
very careful consideration — struck me as a triumphant
proof of what a sympathetic Administration can accom-
plish in a very short time out here by way of winning
confidence and removing suspicions. Here were perhaps
threescore youngsters, the older and more advanced
boys forming a separate class, and a more intelligent,
keener crowd it would be difficult to select in any country.
Their presence — among them were sons of the Emirs of
Sokoto, Kano, Bauchi, Bornu, Katsina, Katagum, Bida,
Gombe, Gando, Daura, and Muri — ^together, was evidence
of the revolution which a few years have brought, for
their respective fathers were until our advent more or
less in a state of chronic friction and sometimes of open
warfare. These Yan Sarikis (sons of chiefs) are not
only allowed, but encouraged, to correspond with their
parents, and constant are the mounted messengers passing
to and fro.
In the technical school, the leather-workers were
particularly interesting. The encouragement of this
163
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
branch of native art should prove a great incentive to
what is a national industry. There is no reason why
in time the Hausa leather-workers should not only cut
out the trade in Tripoli saddlery and boots, imported
across the desert and sold at fabulous profits in the local
markets, but supply, as the Hausa cotton manufacturer
supplies, the needs of French and German territory.
Indeed, there is no limit to the vistas which this national
system of education opens up. A people of considerable
intellect, of notable industrial aptitudes, having the
sense of history, possessed of singular national vitality,
guided on national lines of thought expansion, the old-
time barriers of internecine strife wiped out — ^what a
magnificent experiment, and how great the privilege of
the initiators ! I referred to the opportunity for true
Empire-building which lies before us in Yorubaland, if
we will but seize it. Here at Nassarawa is Empire-
building of another kind in actual progress. One other
fact needs chronicling in connection with these national
schools. It is the intention of the Administration to
insist that all pupils receive careful religious instruction
from teachers of their own creed. When I visited the
schools, lessons in reading and writing the Koran were
being given by a Kano Mallam specially selected by the
Emir of Kano, somewhat on the model of the Egyptian
schools. It is earnestly to be hoped that the Colonial
Of&ce will resist any attempt at interference with this
policy. Interference would be disastrous. It has been
a prodigious labour of tact and careful steering, for
which Mr. Hanns Vischer, the director of education and
the founder of these schools, deserve the greatest credit,
to secure the support of the Emirs for a truly national
system of education. Many prejudices have had to be
overcome. The older school of Mallams do not look with
a favourable eye upon an innovation which must gradually
displace their influence in favour of a younger generation,
164
A SCHEME O^ NATIONAL EDUCATION
broader-minded and more tolerant because better edu-
cated than they. Attempts both internal and external
have not been, and are not, wanting to warn the chiefs
of the danger of permitting their sons to become con-
taminated by foreign doctrines inimical to Islam.
Justification for the confidence which the chiefs repose
in our good faith can alone enable us to defeat these
influences. Were that confidence to be shaken, the
effort to train the future rulers (under the British suze-
rainty) of the country with a view to making them
mentally and physically better fitted to assist the Ad-
ministration, and to bring them into closer contact with
one another and with the Government official, would
receive a fatal blow, and the prestige of the Government
would be deeply shaken. Let us once more turn to the
pages of Mr. Chirol's weighty volume and note the con-
sequences which have followed the elimination of re-
ligious instruction from the Government schools. To
allow a weakening of the spiritual forces at work among
the peoples of the Northern Hausa States would be to
perpetuate a cruel wrong upon those who have come
under our protection and from thenceforth are our
wards.
A rapid multiplication of national schools in Northern
Nigeria, so eminently desirable, entirely depends upon
the financial support which the Administration, hampered
in every direction for lack of funds, is able to contribute.
The Imperial Government would be displaying wisdom
in making a special grant for the purpose, the present
sum available being altogether inadequate for the im-
portance and urgency of the object in view, and in
seriously broaching the problem of control over all
unofficial educationary agencies in the Protectorate.
165
CHAPTER XV
COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT
The external, by which I mean non-indigenous, trade
of Northern Nigeria plays as yet but an insignificant part
in the commercial and industrial activities of the country.
It is largely in the hands of one company, the Niger
Company, Limited, to the enterprise of whose founder,
Sir George Taubman Goldie, is due our possession of the
Northern Protectorate. Three or four other commercial
houses have extended their operations to the territory,
and more will certainly follow. At present the only
other European firm, outside the Niger Company, which
is doing a large general business is that of Messrs. John
Holt & Co., Limited. Another alien commercial element
is the Arab trader. His seat of interest is Kano city,
where he has been established for several centuries, and
where, as already stated, there is a recognized Arab
quarter. The trans-desert trade from Tripoli has always
been in his hands, but he is now beginning to use the
parcel post and the western route largely. Ten thousand
parcels, weighing eleven pounds each, were despatched
or received by Arab traders during the first half of last
year. The Arabs appear to deal in lines of trade with
which European firms are not in touch. Several of them
have been in England, and the business headquarters of
one of them is in Manchester. They are intelUgent men,
but form an uncertain and not particularly safe element
in the affairs of Kano. A representative of these traders
who visited me at the house kindly placed at my disposal
i66
COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT
near the Residency, two miles from the city, gave it as
his opinion that the railway would double the trade of
the country in five years.
The two principal articles of import at present are
cotton goods and salt. The articles of export are shea-
nuts or butter, dressed and dyed goat and sheep skins,
ostrich feathers, rubber, ground-nuts, gum arabic, hides,
gum copal, beeswax, various kinds of oil-beans, cotton, and
a fibre resembling, and equal in value to, jute. Tin and
other minerals stand, of course, in a different category,
and cannot be regarded as " trade." Of these I formed
the opinion that a very large future expansion in the
shea-nut trade and ground-nut trade may be legitimately
expected. I rode for days through woods of shea, and
I found these trees growing abundantly all over the parts
of the Niger Province and Zaria Province I visited, and
in many parts of the Kano Province. The ground-nut is
already cultivated, its cultivation is easy, and the soil in
many districts along the Baro-Kano railway is suitable.
I see no reason why that railway should not, in parts,
and in time, attract to itself a population of ground-nut
cultivators, as the Dakar-St. Louis railway has done,
and the new Thies-Kayes railway is doing in Senegal.
The industry is at present handicapped because the
merchants will not buy the undecorticated nut, and the
price offered to the native is not sufficiently attractive to
induce him to go to the great labour involved in decortica-
tion. Seeing that the Niger ground-nut fetches much
higher prices than the Senegal and Gambia nut, it is
astonishing that the merchant is not prepared to deal with
the nut himself, and to purchase the undecorticated
article from the native. The present policy strikes one
as short-sighted.
A great many hopes have been engendered touching
an immediate and large export of raw cotton consequent
upon the termination of the railway. I should be
167
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
extremely loath to say anything here which would tend
to throw cold water upon the commendable enterprise
of the British Cotton Growing Association, to which
Imperially we owe much, and the problem is one which
is affected by so many varying local influences that to
dogmatize upon it would be unwise. Enormous quanti-
ties of cotton are undoubtedly grown, some districts in
the Zaria and Kano Provinces being almost entirely
devoted to its production, and many more off the beaten
track could be, if transport were available. But at
present there are two difficulties, apart from the general
difficulties affecting all economic development in Northern
Nigeria, to which I shall refer in a moment. One is the
question of price. The other is the local demand. In
one sense they are inseparable. The local demand for
the raw material by local weavers exceeds the supply,
and the result is that the price the Association finds
itself, either directly or through its agents, the Niger
Company, able to pay is insufficient to tempt the growers.
To overcome these obstacles the Association relies upon
the attraction offered by a permanent market at a fixed
price irrespective of local fluctuation ; an increased
yield per acre through an improvement in the varieties
produced, and improvement in methods of cultivation ;
and the inroads upon the local weaving industry through
the increasing import of Manchester cotton-goods. These
views may be quite sound, but, granted their soundness,
some time must elapse before they become appreciably
operative, and I have difficulty myself in believing that
any really substantial export of raw cotton is to be
looked for in the immediate future. But that the Asso-
ciation's general line of policy in seeking to develop and
expand the existing native-growing industry, as such, is
right, and that its labours are calculated to achieve these
ends, I am persuaded ; while I see no reason to doubt
that a considerable export of raw cotton will eventually
i68
COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT
be the outcome of those labours.* Among agricultural
products, corn should also figure largely in course of
time. The export of dressed goat and sheep skins is
steadily increasing. The trade now amounts to over
one million skins per annum, of a total home value of
;f5o,ooo to £60,000. Until a few years ago it was an
entirely trans-desert trade, and the skins were purchased
at Tripoli for the American market. Latterly the London
and Kano Trading Company have diverted more than
half of this trade by the western route, and London is
to-day the principal purchaser.
There would seem to be a good future for a trade in
hides, especially if Kano becomes a slaughter-centre for
cattle for the southern markets. The possible obstacle
to this is partly political and partly ethnological, and
the first, dii least, is worthy of special attention on the
part of the Administration. Virtually all the herds in
the Hausa States are the property of the Fulani. Now
the Fulani M'Bororo, as already pointed out, is a nomad,
and it is very doubtful if he will ever be anything else.
Indeed, his very calling necessitates that he should be
continually on the move to seek out pasture-land, accord-
ing to the seasons, and the localities he knows. But
the more the Protectorate is organized the more ill at
ease will the nomad Fulani become, especially as he
dislikes most intensely the jangali or cattle-tax, at the
best of times an unsatisfactory tax to enforce, and one
which, moreover, operates unfairly towards the small
herdsman. Here the ethnological peculiarity comes in.
The Fulani is very fond of his cattle. He does not
breed them for slaughter, but because he literally loves
them. He knows every one of them by name, and
lavishes as much attention upon them as he does upon
his children. This is peculiar to him not in Nigeria only
but all over Western Africa. Often have our of&cers in
* The subject is discussed at greater length in Part IV.
169
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
Northern Nigeria found it impossible to resist the pitiful
appeal of some old Fulani herdsman or his wife, begging
with eyes full of tears for the restitution of a favourite
ox or heifer taken with others under the " jangali "
assessment. The dual problem must be thought out or
the M'Bororo will silently disappear into the vastness of
Africa, as the Shuwa — ^his nomadic colleague of Bornou
— ^has already partly disappeared from Nigeria. Fulani
migration eastwards towards the Nile valley is a marked
phenomenon of the last ten years, both as regards French
and British territory in West Africa. Khartoum now
numbers some 5000 Sokoto Fulani alone. The dis-
appearance of the Fulani M'Bororoji from the Hausa
States would not only arrest any development of the
cattle and hides trades, but would be an incalculable
loss to Hausa agriculture for the reasons given in a
previous chapter.
The forest resources of the country are as yet practi-
cally untapped, for lack of adequate transport. They
are not as rich in Northern as in Southern Nigeria, because
the forests are much fewer, but there are very extensive
gum-copal forests in Bornu ; there is a good deal of
rubber in Bauchi and in some other provinces, the
Benue region especially abounding in rubber, copal, and
fibres of great value. The Muri province is particularly
rich. A forestry department organized on the Unes of
Southern Nigeria is urgently needed. But in this, as in
almost everything else, the Administration is hampered
for lack of funds.
There can be no doubt whatever, that Northern
Nigeria has immense potentialities but they are not
going to be developed in a day, or in a decade, and no
useful purpose can be served by pretending otherwise.
The very vastness of the country and the natural diffi-
culties of communication preclude rapidity in develop-
ment. In West Africa the game is generally to the
170
COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT
tortoise, not to the hare. And several factors must ever
be borne in mind. Northern Nigeria, as already stated,
is a remarkably self-sufficing country, one part of it
supplying the wants of another ; peopled with born
traders busily occupied in furthering the needs of a
comprehensive internal traffic. For instance, the river-
borne traffic of the Benue, both up and down, is entirely
in the hands now of Nupe and Kakandas trading on
behalf of native merchants, mostly Yorubas, at Lokoja.
There is an active overland trade between the Benue
region, north towards Kano and Bauchi, south with
Southern Nigeria right down to Calabar on the ocean.
Native merchants from the north import cloth, sheep and
cattle, and corn, taking away cash, galena and silver
from the Arifu native mines. Between district and
district, province and province, all over the country
there is a ceaseless interchange of commercial commodities.
That is one factor to take into account. Another is that
we must revolutionize our ideas as to general conditions
and capabilities for labour, proportionately to the needs
and extent of population. The belief that the majority
of the inhabitants of Northern Nigeria pass their time in
idleness, or what approximates to idleness, is a pure
delusion. Even from the European standpoint, which
is not and cannot be the African's from climatic causes
alone, the Northern Nigerian, speaking generally, is the
reverse of idle. Moreover, if on the one hand our
political administration tends to root the people in the
soil and increase the area under cultivation ; on the other
hand, our roads and railways and the opening of the tin
mines tend to take the people off the land and to create
an increasing class of casual, floating labour which
cannot itself provide for its own sustenance, and has to
purchase its food requirements. The economic con-
sequence is a steadily ascending price of foodstuffs in the
neighbourhood of all the great centres. From this the
171
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
farmer benefits, but at the expense of an increase in
the production of raw material for the export trade with
Europe. The Northern Nigerian farmer will grow the
crop which it pays him best to grow, and if he sees a
larger profit in corn for local consumption than in ground-
nuts or cotton for export, he will grow corn. These
economic questions do not appear to me to be given
their due proportion in the estimates which are made.
The whole country is in a state of transition, and it
must be given breathing space in which to adjust itself.
Patience and statesmanship are the main necessities of
the moment. Sir Henry Hesketh-Bell, who takes a keen
interest in all questions of economic development, may be
trusted to do all that is humanly possible to encourage
the commercial progress of the territory.
The outsider who attempts any detailed investigation
of trade conditions in Northern Nigeria must be pre-
pared to walk as delicately as any Agag, and even then
he is pretty sure to ruffle somebody's feelings. The fact
of the matter is, that the paramount position held by
the Niger Company — ^the " monopoly " as some call it,
although it hardly amounts to that and must decreasingly
do so — ^is a very sore point with many of the of&cials.
The aims of the latter and the aims of the company
necessarily diverge, but there is, I think, a tendency on
the part of some of the officials to forget the fact that the
Niger Company's enterprise is the explanation of our
presence in the country. One very sore point is the
question of " cash " for produce," and this affects not
the Niger Company only, but the other merchants. The
official case is, that the natives desire cash for their
produce, but that the merchants will not pay cash, or
pay as little cash as possible, because they make a very
much larger profit on the barter business ; that this
strangles trade development by discouraging the native
producer, who is automatically forced to accept goods
172
COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT
he often does not require, and must afterwards sell at
a loss in order to get the cash he wants.' Indeed, the
official case goes further. It is contended not only that
the naerchants will not buy produce against cash when
asked for cash, but on occasion actually refuse to sell
goods against cash offered by the native, demanding
produce in lieu thereof. For example, if a native has
sold his produce against cloth and then, possessing some
loose cash, desires to purchase, shall we say, earthenware
or salt, he is told that his cash will not be accepted, but
that he must bring shea-nuts or ground-nuts, or whatever
may be the product out of which the merchant can make
the biggest margin of profit. Instances are given of
merchants having refused to sell salt to natives for cash ;
of natives being able to buy cloth in the open market for
actually less than the merchants reckon in paying the
native producers,' and so on. Why, it is urged, should
the political officer encourage the native to bring produce
for sale to the merchant when all he will get is cloth that
he must sell at a loss in the market in order to get silver
to pay his taxes ? Hence we arrive at a point when,
as in the last published Government Report, the " per-
nicious barter system " is denounced, lock, stock, and
barrel. The views of the merchants are various. In
certain quarters the official allegations are altogether
denied. In others it is contended that the barter trade
is the best means of getting into touch with the actual
native trader ; that it would not pay to import cash to
buy rough produce like shea-nuts or ground-nuts, which
in many cases are all the natives have to offer ; that the
out-stations are in charge of native clerks from the coast,
who cannot be trusted with cash ; that the native gets
as good value in goods as he does in cash, and so on.
Proceeding from the defensive to the aggressive, many of
the merchants contend that competition, and competition
alone, can be expected to put large quantities of cash
173
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
into commercial circulation, and that the Government,
instead of fostering competition by encouraging new-
comers, and especially the small man, to go into the
country, handicaps the merchant by disproportionately
heavy taxes. The £20 trading licence for every trading
station, even far away in the bush, is particularly resented.
It is pointed out that if the Administration of Southern
Nigeria, whose economic resources are so much richer,
makes no such charge, it is preposterous that the Admini-
stration of Northern Nigeria, whose economic fortune,
in the European sense, depends so largely upon the
growth of trade, should do so. One firm of merchants
showed me their books, which disclosed in rent, assessment,
and licences a total annual charge of £150 for a single
station. No doubt there is much to be said on both
sides, and each side has a case. It was, for instance,
proved to my satisfaction that in certain instances cash
had undoubtedly been refused to native traders bringing
produce to the merchant stores for sale, and that, in
other instances, when cash had been given, the prices
paid, as compared with the local price governing mer-
chandise, was so much less as practically to drive the
native to accept merchandise. On the other hand, to
dub as " pernicious " the barter system, which is respon-
sible for the vast bulk of the trade that provides the
Government all over West Africa with such large revenue,
must appear a straining of the use of language ; nor does
the Administration, I think, allow sufficiently for the
innumerable difficulties which the merchant has to face
in Northern Nigeria. For example, in many of the out-
stations produce has often to be stored for six months or
more, depreciating all the time, before the state of the river
permits of its shipment. But, after all, cash is spreading
rapidly, and the key to the situation undoubtedly lies
in competition. The more the Administration can do to
attract new blood the better will be the all-round results.
174
CHAPTER XVI
MINING DEVELOPMENT AND THE BAUCHI PLATEAU
There appears to be no doubt that Nigeria is a highly
mineraUzed country. Iron exists in considerable quanti-
ties and in many districts, in Southern but more particu-
larly in Northern Nigeria. In the Southern Protectorate
large deposits of lignite have been discovered 40 miles
inland from Onitsha, and require more than a passing
mention.
Lignite, as is well known, stands about halfway
between wood and coal. It forms an excellent combustible,
and if it can be produced in the proper form for the purpose,
it would be invaluable for the Nigerian railways and for
the steamers and steamboats plying up and down the river,
besides saving the Administration, which is a large im-
porter of coal, much expense. The first experiments made
with the raw material, as extracted, by the Marine Depart-
ment, the Northern Nigerian Railway, and the Niger
Company were not altogether satisfactory, which is,
perhaps, not surprising. The Imperial Institute in London
is giving close attention to the matter. That the deposits
are of commercial value is undoubted. An analysis of the
Nigerian lignite and a personal investigation of lignite
deposits in Bohemia and elsewhere, conducted by Pro-
fessor Wyndham Dunstan, the Director of the Institute,
have shown that the Nigerian article is virtually identical
with the German and Austrian. Lignite is extensively
used in Germany, where it is manufactured into briquettes,
and excellent briquettes have been made by a German
175
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
firm from specimens of the Nigerian lignite supplied by the
Institute. It is probable that the difficulties experienced
locally in utilizing the material in its raw state would
vanish if the necessary machinery for the manufacture of
briquettes could be erected at or near Asaba. Meantime
the Administration has had a road constructed from Asaba
to the lignite-fields.
Great importance is attached locally to the Udi
deposits, specimens of which I was able to examine. To
the non-expert eye they have every appearance of rather
dirty-looking coaL Credit for this discovery is wholly due
to the mineral survey party sent out by the Imperial
Institute under Mr. Kitson. I am told that the deposits
cover an area of no less than five square miles. To work
them commercially a railway between Onitsha and Udi
will, of course, be necessary. The Udi district can hardly
be described as " open " at the moment, but a metalled
road to connect it with Onitsha is in a fair way of being
completed.
There can be little doubt that in these deposits the
Administration has a valuable source of potential revenue,
and that the Colonial Office will be called upon before long
to come to a decision as to the best means of reaping ad-
vantage therefrom. It is an open secret that demands for
prospecting licences and even for concessions are already
being made. In some quarters the opinion is entertained
that the home and local authorities would be well advised
to refuse to part with control over the fields, but, for some
years to come at any rate, to let the Southern Nigeria
Administration itself develop them. There seems to be
no reason why these deposits of fuel should not be made
to play as important a part in the future economy of
West Africa as the Nile Sudd appears likely to do in the
economy of Egypt and the Sudan.
Mineral oil has also been discovered in the Southern
Protectorate, but the extravagant hopes held out of being
176
MINERAL RICHES
able to work the latter at a profit seem in a fair way of
being abandoned, and the financial assistance lent by the
Administration has not so far justified itself. West Africa
is a peculiar country and is apt to turn the tables upon
the company promoter with a disconcerting completeness.
In the Northern Protectorate salt exists in Bornu, Sokoto,
Muri, and Borgu. Monazite has been found, although
not in large deposits, in Nassarawa and Ilorin. Mica
and kaolin occur in Kano. Tourmaline has been found
in Bassa. Kabba contains limestone deposits favourably
reported upon by the officers of the Imperial Institute as
suitable for agricultural purposes and the preparation of
mortar. Certain parts of Muri are rich in galena, con-
taining lead and silver. I am told that quite recently
extensive supplies of silver have been discovered in the
same district, the natives of which have, of course, been
trading in both silver and in lead for many years. Rumours
of the existence of gold and copper have not so far, to my
knowledge, been justified. Of precious stones, I have
only heard of small garnets being won, although I was
shown a handful of inferior diamonds supposedly dis-
covered in Southern Nigeria, and the blue clay formation
certainly exists in some parts of Bauchi. A number of
mineral surveys have been carried out by the Imperial
Institute, but the potentialities of the vast bulk of the
country are still unknown.
The chief discoveries have been concerned with tin.
The industry was originally, and in restricted form, a
native one, and has a somewhat romantic history. Its
brief outlines, obtained from conversation with the
native authorities of Liruei-n-Kano and Liruei-n-Delma,
are as follows. Some eighty years ago the people of the
former place, a small town in the south-east of Kano
Province, whose inhabitants carried on an iron smelting
industry under the direction of an able woman, Sariki,
found the white metal. They ascertained that it possessed
177 N
NIGERIA: ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
a trading value. They invented an ingenious but simple
method of treating and producing it in an exceedingly pure
form, which remained a secret among the members of the
ruling family and their adherents, but which was explained
to me by them in detail, by the side of one of their furnaces
at Liruei-n-Kano. After honeycombing the neighbour-
hood of Liruei-n-Kano with vertical pits, they wandered
in course of time over the whole stanniferous area,
washing and digging in the beds, as far south as the tenth
parallel. Further than that they could not move owing
to the hostility of the pagan tribes. Tin, in thin, rounded
rods, became a regular article of sale in the markets.
The first sample of tin ore was sent home by Sir William
Wallace, then Acting High Commissioner, in 1902. It
was examined by the Imperial Institute and was found to
contain over 80 per cent, of tin di-oxide, equal to about
64 per cent, of metallic tin. From that time onwards the
Niger Company which, under the arrangement contracted
with the Imperial Government at the time of the abroga-
tion of the Charter, stands to gain very largely through the
development of the mineral resources of the Protectorate,
has spent considerable sums — at first without return — in
proving and in encouraging the industry. To the com-
pany is due the fact that the field has been opened out at
all. It is but fair to state this because the company is
the butt of much criticism in Northern Nigeria, and in
some respects, I think, criticism inspired by jealousy of
its own remarkable enterprise. In the last three or four
years no fewer than eighty-two companies have been
floated to exploit Northern Nigeria tin with a total
capital of ;f 3,792, 132.* Hardly a week passes but that
some fresh company is not floated, or the attempt made
to do so. It has, therefore, become a very big thing
* In the case of some of these companies, such as the West African Mines,
Ltd., the Anglo-Continental Mines Company, Ltd., etc., only a part of their
capital is invested in the tin mines.
178
THE TIN INDUSTRY
indeed, and an outside non-expert opinion may be of some
use from the point of view of the " man in the street " at
home. The country is flooded with prospectors, on the
whole of a much better type than is usually attracted to a
new mining region, and the Government, under guarantee
from the Niger Company, are now building a light railway
in the direction of the principal deposits.
Needless to say, there has been the usual amount of
swindling, and, perhaps, more than the usual amount of
l5nng. Tin has been located in districts where there never
was and never will be the slightest vestige of tin ; imaginary
" bore-holes " have been sunk and companies have been
formed in London on the strength of utterly fraudulent
reports. Statements have been issued proclaiming that
the country is self-supporting for the white prospector in
the matter of supplies, which is totally untrue ; and that
it is a health resort, which is equally false. Young fellows
have been sent out on agreements which are a disgrace to
those who drew them up, and in some cases, their bones
are rotting in the ground. An unpleasant feature of the
affair has been the indecent precipitancy with which in
certain instances ex-Government officials have iden-
tified themselves with syndicates formed in London, a
practice which appears to be growing and which is to be
deprecated in the interest of the high standard and general
purity of our public service.* No doubt these incidents
are common in the initial stages of every such enterprise.
They are none the less to be deplored.
The western portion of the Bauchi province is the true
* Perhaps the above remarks are a little too sweeping. It has been brought
to my knowledge that in one such case where permission was sought by an
experienced ex-Government official and granted by the authorities, the former's
action was, as a matter of fact, twice instrumental in preventing a fraudulent
concern from being unloaded upon the public ; and no doubt there is something
to be said in favour of the practice from that point of view, arguing from an
isolated case. But I must adhere to the opinion that, speaking generally, the
practice is objectionable, and lends itself to incidents which are calculated to
impair the very high standard of public service of which Great Britain rightly
makes a boast.
179
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
centre of the nascent industry. The country about here
is wild and beautiful, broken by mountain ranges which
cannot always be negotiated on horseback, and rising
to a considerable height, up to 5000 feet round about
Bukuru and Pankshin. Anything more at variance with
the forest regions of the south it would be impossible to
imagine. The whole province is well watered, and the
mineral section lies in the watershed of three fluvial
systems, one feeding the Chad of which the Delimi (or
Bunga) is the most important ; another the Benue, of
which the Gongola, Kaddera and Sango are the principal
contributory offshoots ; another the Niger, through its
tributary the Kaduna which branches out into a fan of
numerous lesser streams. Naraguta, on the Delimi —
where most of the mining is actually concentrated — is
situate almost at the heart of these three systems. There
appears to be no bed of tin-bearing wash over the whole
country, but for centuries upon centuries hundreds of feet
of rock — chiefly granite of sorts, with gneiss and basalt —
have been denuded by the action of the weather, and the
tin discovered is the concentration of the tin disseminated
throughout those rocks which has been washed into the
beds of the rivers. Practically (there is one known
exception, perhaps two) all the tin as yet discovered is
alluvial, and there is virtually no alluvial tin except in the
river-beds themselves. It occurs in patches, which ex-
plains, although it does not excuse, the flamboyant
statements issued on the strength of specific returns, over
a given area, from washings. A company may have
secured a licence, or a lease, over a wide area in one parti-
cular corner of which one or more of these patches has
been met with. The returns from washings in these
patches, some of which are very rich, are made to apply
in prospectus-framing to the whole area, when the bulk of
it may be virgin not only of tin in payable quantities, but
of any trace of tin at all.
180
THE TIN INDUSTRY
It is unwise to dogmatize about a new country where
further discoveries may give a different complexion to the
situation. But in the present state of our knowledge, the
statements describing Northern Nigeria as the " richest tin
field in the world," are, to put it mildly, a manifest
exaggeration, and the happiest thing which could happen
to the country and to the industry would be a cessation
of the " boom." It may be fairly urged that the Govern-
ment's business is not the protection of the home investor.
All the same, it is not in the public interest that Northern
Nigeria should get a bad name, through wild-cat schemes
and dishonest finance. Five years hence a boom may be
justified by results. At present it is not. Disinterested
expert opinion on the spot estimates the eventual output
of the discovered field at 5000 tons per annum. It is
always possible that further and valuable deposits may be
struck. On the other hand, the life of an alluvial tin mine
is, by general consent, a short one, and ten years will
probably cover the life of the existing mines. Under the
circumstances it is very evident that a great number of
the companies which have been floated are over-capitalized
and will never pay an honest dividend. Companies with
a small capital, whose property is a good one and favour-
ably situated, have every chance of doing so. For the
small man, working with a modest capital, who is fortunate
enough to select a good site and who is prepared to come
in and do the actual mining, the prospects, I should say,
are distinctly good ; and prospectors of that sort could
count upon receiving every assistance from the Adminis-
tration, which is anxious to encourage them. For two
energetic men — it is always better to be d deux out here —
a capital of ^^3000 would be ample, and the conditions
made to licence and lease-holders are not onerous, although
the staff for dealing with applications is too small, en-
tailing vexatious delays. There is no serious labour
trouble, and there is not likely to be any, provided the
181
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
natives are properly treated. The representative of the
Niger Company, who has considerable knowledge of the
country and whom I saw at Joss — a beautiful station
reflecting the greatest possible credit upon the company
and its local staff — ^was very emphatic on this point, and
his views were borne out by the most experienced people
I consulted. In this connection I feel impelled to remark
that both from the political point of view, as from the
standpoint of the interests and progress of the industry
itself — not to mention other considerations — ^it is abso-
lutely essential that abusive acts, such as the incident
which occurred at the close of last year at Maiwa, should be
punished with exemplary severity. On that occasion the
guilty party escaped with a substantial fine. Should any-
thing of the sort recur, expulsion from the country ought to
accompany the fine. The Bauchi province is not yet entirely
"held," and much of it is peopled by very shy and timid
pagan tribes. These are amenable under just treatment to
regular labour on short terms and prompt pay, as has been
proved in the final stages of the completion of the Riga-
Chikum-Naraguta road, although such labour is quite
foreign to them. Harsh and unjust handling would send
them flying to the inaccessible hills. While on this subject
I am also bound to say that the political staff of the Bauchi
province is hopelessly and dangerously undermanned, or
was when I left the country last January. It is tempting
Providence to allow three hundred white prospectors to go
wandering over the face of a vast country like this (27,000
square miles) with a political staff amounting to no more
than thirteen all told ; and that number, a purely nominal
one, be it stated. Twenty political officers at least should
be permanently on duty in the province.
The question of transport has been a difficult one and
still remains so. The situation has been somewhat
alleviated by the construction of a road connecting
Naraguta with the Baro-Kano railway at Riga-Chikum,
182
TRANSPORT TO THE TIN MINES
although, following that road for its whole (then) com-
pleted length, I fail to see for my part that it will be of
much use in the rains without a series of pontoons over
the rivers which cut it at frequent intervals, and no measure
of the kind was in contemplation last January. Possibly
the situation has changed since. The scarcity and the
distance of the villages and, consequently, of food supplies
for men and beasts, from the road is also a drawback. But
doubtless the road wUl fall into disuse and turn out to have
been more or less a waste of money with the completion
of the railway which, mercifully, be it said, has been started
from Zaria instead of following the deserted country from
Riga-Chikum as was originally proposed. This railway is
being constructed in the direction of Naraguta. But not
to Naraguta itself, which is wise, for the development of
the industry in that immediate neighbourhood is still a
sufficiently doubtful quantity to permit at least of the
supposition that the centre of gravity may shift to Bukuru
or some other spot. The railway traverses the region
where the Kano tin deposits are situate — virtually the only
ones not entirely alluvial in character. At the present
time the road chiefly used for the transport of the tin is
that opened and maintained by the Niger Company
between the mines and Loko on the Benue, a distance of
i8o miles. The Niger Company have established ferries
across the rivers and organised a system of carriers and
donkeys. But at best the route is not an ideal one, costs
a great deal to keep open, and is hardly capable of dealing
with more than 500 tons per annum. I found complaints
rife as to the alleged favouritism shown by the company
in its management of the transport, but I failed to dis-
cover any specific facts justifying them. Of course the
company enjoys a complete monopoly of that road, even
the Government, it seems, having to apply to the com-
pany for carriers ; and a monopoly is always undesir-
able in theory and sometimes very irritating in practice.
183
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
(Apparently the same situation has come about in regard to
the Riga-Chikum road.) But it is difficult to see how
any tin at all could have been got down, or machinery and
stores got up, to and from the river if it had not been for
the company's enterprise and far-seeing methods. Cer-
tainly the loudest of its local critics would have been quite
unable to have coped with the problem.
Something remains to be said of the Bauchi province.
The province consists of the Bauchi and Gombe Emirates,
the Ningi Division, an independent community half
Muslim, half pagan, of erstwhile noted freebooters and
fighters, and the purely pagan section, of which the Hill
Division is the most important. The total population is
about half a million. In no part of Africa probably is
there such a conglomeration of different tribes — ^Angass,
Sura, Tangali, Chip, Waja, Kanna, Bukurus, etc., etc, — as
is to be found in the pagan division of Bauchi which, for
centuries, has been the refuge of communities fleeing from
Hausa, Fulani and Beri-Beri (Kanuri) pressure. No fewer
than sixty-four distinct languages — not dialects — are said
to have been noted within it. The men are an upstanding
race, lithe rather than muscular, great archers and in many
cases daring horsemen, riding bare-backed, covering
immense distances in a phenomenally short space of time
and shooting accurately (with the bow) while mounted.
Most of them go about absolutely naked but for a sanitary
adornment of special character. For a picture of primi-
tive man commend me to the spectacle of a naked Bauchi
pagan carrying a bow in his hand, on his back a quiver of
arrows ; on his head, its horns sticking out on either side,
the gory and newly severed head of an ox — the " Boar of
the Ardennes " in variation and in an African setting of
rugged mountains and dying sun ! I observed this sight
one evening riding into Naraguta from a distant mining
camp, passing, ten minutes later, a gorgeously attired
Mohammedan Sariki in his many coloured robes on a richly
184
THE BAUCHI PROVINCE
caparisoned horse. Northern Nigeria is a land of extra-
ordinary contrasts, which to some extent no doubt is the
secret of its fascination. The women's clothing is also of
the scantiest, consisting of a bunch of broad green leaves
fixed round the waist and falling over the hips and lower
abdomen. Their chastity is proverbial even among the
dissolute camp-followers.
Among these people many customs of great anthropo-
logical interest must linger, many religious practices and
philological secrets that might give us the key to much of
which we are still ignorant in the history of the country,
and assist us in the art of government. It seems a pity
that their gradual Hausa-ising, which must be the outcome
of the pax britannica, should become accomplished before
these facts have been methodically studied and recorded.
The pagan division of Bauchi is a unique corner of Africa,
and it would be well worth the while of Government and
of some scientific body at home to prosecute research within
it. The Administration has no money to spare. But it
is really a misfortune that public opinion in England is so
lax in these matters. We wait in order to understand the
ethnological lore of our African dependencies, until German
scientists have gone through them and told us what they
contain of anthropological value, incidentally sweeping the
country bare of its ethnological treasures. In these things
we appear to have no national pride whatever. If any
British scientific body should be stung by these mild
remarks into some sort of action, I would advise its
communicating with Captain Foulkes, the Political Officer
until recently in charge of the Hill Division, who is keenly
interested in the people and their customs which he has
more knowledge of than any one else.
The soil of the province is supposedly poor, but I
observed it to be covered in many places with millions of
casts of virgin soil flung up by earthworms, and these
must, when the rains come, enrich its recuperative
185
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
properties. The province would probably grow wheat. The
pagan cultivation is very deep and remarkably regular,
and these communities, for all their primitiveness, weave
grass mats of tasteful finish, colouring and design ; grow
cotton which they manufacture and sell, and tobacco
which they smoke, and snuff, and smelt iron. They are
also readily taking to the rubber trade and learning how
to tap the rubber trees which, in some parts, are to be met
with in every village, without destroying the tree. In the
plains there are large herds of cattle, which form the prin-
cipal wealth of the inhabitants, and an abundance of good
grazing land. The Fulani herdsman, ubiquitous as ever,
may be seen tending his beasts.
On all hands the Bauchi plateau is looked upon as an
eventual sanatorium where officials can recoup, and thanks
to which the term of service may be ultimately prolonged,
which, with the keenness which distinguishes this service,
they all seem to want — ^the Politicals, I mean. Even now
they play hide-and-seek with the doctors, and keep un-
commonly quiet when the time comes round for furlough,
lying low like Brer Rabbit. I hesitate to strike a discord
where so much unanimity prevails. No doubt it is a
generally accepted maxim that the bracing air of a moun-
tainous region, its cool nights and mornings, have recu-
perative effects upon the system undermined with malaria
and other ills, and it may well be — I devoutly hope so —
that in course of time the plateau will become the Nigerian
Simla and may also contain a population of white settlers
engaged in stock-raising and, perhaps, agriculture. But
the period within which these things can come about
strikes me as still remote. If they are to be, it will mean
the expenditure of much money, and, under existing cir-
cumstances of transport and housing, the climate of
Bauchi has been over-praised. You have always the
tropical African sun to reckon with, and there appears to
be some subtly dangerous quality about it which even men
who have lived in other tropical lands find very trying.
i86
CHAPTER XVII
THE NECESSITY OF AMALGAMATING THE TWO
PROTECTORATES
No interested student of Nigerian affairs can fail, I think,
especially after an exaimination of the problem on the spot,
to arrive at the conclusion that the present dual system of
administration, with its artificial territorial boundaries,
its differing methods, and its inevitable rivalries, has served
its turn and should be brought to an end as speedily as
possible. The situation, as it obtains to-day, is incon-
gruous — in some respects almost absurd ; and the absence
of a sense of proportion in estimating responsibilities and
acknowledging public services is conspicuous. No com-
prehensive scheme of development and, what is more
important, no unity of principle in public policy is possible
while it lasts. Moreover, just as each Administration
settles itself more firmly in the saddle and pursues its own
aims with increasing determination, so will differences in
the handling of great public issues accentuate themselves
and eventual adjustment on a common basis of principle
be attended with additional perplexity. It is not only
quite natural, but under the existing circumstances it is
right that the Administration of Southern Nigeria should
work for the interests of Southern Nigeria and the Admin-
istration of Northern Nigeria for the interests of the latter.
But Nigeria is geographically a single unit, and Imperial
policy suffers from a treatment which regards the interests
of one section as not only distinct from, but in certain
187
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
cases antagonistic to the interests of the other. It is not
suggested that administration should everywhere be
carried out on the same pattern. No one would contend
that the problems of government in the Northern Hausa
provinces can, for instance, be assimilated to the problems
of government in the Eastern Province of the Southern
Protectorate. But that the main principles of govern-
ment should be identical, and that the governing outlook
should be directed to a consideration of the interests of
Nigeria as a whole, can hardly be disputed. Take, for
example, the question of direct and of indirect rule. The
tendency in Southern Nigeria, as the Secretariat gets
stronger and the initiative of the Commissioners decreases,
is towards direct rule, especially in the Western Province.
Northern Nigeria has resolutely set the helm in the con-
trary direction. Take the question of taxation. North
of the imaginary line which separates the two Protec-
torates the native pays a direct tax to the Administration,
and tribute from the people to their natural Chiefs and to
the Government is assured on specific principles. South of
that line the native pays no direct tax to Government, and
in the Western Province the Central Administration doles
out stipends, apparently suspendable, to the Chiefs, while
the paying of native tribute to the Chiefs, where it has not
altogether ceased, exists only by the internal conservatism
of native custom. Take the question of education. The
Southern Nigerian system is turning out every year hun-
dreds of Europeanized Africans. The Northern Nigeria
system aims at the establishment of an educational system
based upon a totally different ideal. In Northern Nigeria
the land question has been settled, so far as the Northern
Protectorate is concerned, on a broad but sure foundation ;
but the Southern Nigerian native is an alien in Northern
Nigerian law. In Southern Nigeria there is no real land
legislation, and the absence of such, especially in the
Western Province, is raising a host of future complications.
i88
AMALGAMATING THE TWO PROTECTORATES
Every year the gulf widens between the two ideals, and
its ultimate bridging becomes a matter of greater difficulty.
While on the one hand the Northern Nigeria Administra-
tion has had the priceless advantage of " starting fresh "
and has been compelled to concentrate upon political and
administrative problems, British rule in Southern Nigeria
has been the slow growth of years, advancing here by
conquest, there by pacific penetration, here by one kind
of arrangement with native Chiefs, there by another
kind of arrangement. Politically and of necessity
British rule in Southern Nigeria is a thing of shreds and
patches. The last two Governors, both very able men
in their respective ways, have had, moreover, strong
leanings in particular directions ; sanitation was the load-
star of the first ; road construction, clearing of creeks and
channels, harbour improvements and commercial develop-
ment the chief purpose of the latter. It is no reflection
upon either (the material advance of the Protectorate
under Sir Walter Egerton's administration has been
amazing) to say that, between them, questions vitally
affecting the national existence of the people, the study
and organization of their laws and courts and administra-
tive authority, have been left somewhat in the background.
In criticizing a West African Administration it must always
be borne in mind that no broad lines of public policy are
laid down from home. None of the Secretary of State's
advisers have ever visited Nigeria, and however able they
may be that is a disadvantage. There is no West African
Council composed of men with experience of the country,
as there ought to be, which would assist the Permanent
Officials in advising the Secretary of State. The result is
that each Governor and each Acting-Governor " runs his
own show " as the saying is. One set of problems is jerked
forwards by this Governor, another by another. The
Governor's position is rather like that of a Roman Em-
peror's, and the officials responsible for large districts,
189
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
never knowing what a new Governor's policy is going to
be, look upon every fresh change with nervous apprehen-
sion, which has a very unsettling effect. A vast wastage of
time as well as many errors would be avoided if we had
clear ideas at home as to the goal we are pursuing, and laid
down specific principles by which that goal could be
attained. This could be done without hampering the
Governors. Indeed, the very indefiniteness of the home
view on all these problems is often a serious handicap to a
Governor who, for that very reason, may hesitate to take
action where action is required, fearing, rightly or wrongly,
the influence which Parliamentary questions may exercise
upon the Secretary of State, and who may also find him-
self committed by an Acting-Governor, in his absence,
to actions of which he personally disapproves. In other
instances the existence of definite plans in London would
act as a salutary check upon sudden innovations by a
new and inexperienced Governor. Frequent changes of
Governors there must be until the conditions of life in
Nigeria are very much improved ; but the inconveniences
arising therefrom would be largely mitigated if there were
continuity of a well-thought-out policy at home.
This digression is not, perhaps, altogether irrelevant
to the subject under discussion.
The position of Northern Nigeria is very anomalous.
A vast Protectorate shut off from the seaboard by another
less than four times its size ; having no coastline, and the
customs dues on whose trade are collected by the latter.
Southern Nigeria enjoying a very large revenue ; its
officials decently housed and catered for ; able to spend
freely upon public works and to develop its natural
resources. Northern Nigeria still poor, a pensioner upon
the Treasury, in part upon Southern Nigeria ; unable to
stir a step in the direction of a methodical exploration of
its vegetable riches ; its officials housed in a manner which
is generally indifferent and sometimes disgraceful, many
190
AMALGAMATING THE TWO PROTECTORATES
of them in receipt of ridiculously inadequate salaries, and
now deprived even of their travelling allowance of five
shillings a day. The latter measure is so unjust that a
word must be said on the subject. The reason for the
grant of this allowance [which the Southern Nigerian
official enjoys] was frequent travelling, expensive living,
and mud-house accommodation. As regards the two first,
the arguments to-day are even stronger than they used to
be. The safety of the roads and the increased pressure of
political work compels the Resident and his assistants to
be more or less constantly on the move if they are worth
their salt. When travelling about the country, 4s. to 5s.
a day and sometimes a little more is an inevitable ex-
penditure ; at present, a clear out-of-pocket one. As to
living, it is a commonplace that the price of local food
supplies is very much higher than it was seven years ago,
while the price of goods imported from abroad have not
all appreciably decreased. So far as the mud-houses are
concerned, probably more than half the of&cials, except at
places like Zungeru and Kano, live in mud-houses to-day.
The Resident at Naraguta, for instance, lives in a leaky
mud-house, while the Niger Company's representative at
Joss, five miles off, has a beautiful and spacious residence
of brick and timber. A good mud-house is not to be
despised, but the money to build even good ones is quite
inadequate. I could give several examples where officials
have spent considerable sums out of their own pockets to
build themselves a decent habitation of mud and thatch.
Some of the juniors have to be content with grass-houses,
draughty, bitterly cold at night and in the early morning,
and leaky to boot. Moreover, many of the brick-houses
supplied are an uncommonly poor exchange for £90 a year.
They are made of rough local brick, which already show
symptoms of decay, and the roof is often so flimsy that in
the verandah and supper-room one has to keep one's helmet
on as protection against the sun. I am not at all sure that
191
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
the real official objection to all but leading officials bring-
ing out their wives is not to be sought in the assumption
that married officials, other than of the first grade, would
no longer put up with the crude discomfort they now live in,
and would be a little more chary of ruining their health by
touring about in the rains — at their own expense. That
Northern Nigeria is not under present conditions a fit place
for other than an exceptional type of woman I reluctantly
admit ; but that the constant aim of Government should
be to improve conditions in order to make it so I am fully
persuaded. Our women as well as our men have built up
the Empire and made it, on the whole, the clean and fine
thing it is, and what a good woman, provided she is also
a physically strong one, can accomplish in Northern
Nigeria is beyond calculation. It is not too much to say
of a very extensive region in the eastern part of the Pro-
tectorate, that the moral influence of one such woman is
powerfully felt throughout its length and breadth. Other
aspects of this question will obviously suggest themselves,
and they ought to be boldly tackled ; but the national
prudery makes it difficult to discuss such matters
openly. The salaries paid in Northern Nigeria fill
one with astonishment. The salary of a first class
Resident appears to vary from £700 to £800 ; that
of a second class Resident from £550 to -^650 ; that
of a third class Resident from £450 to £550. Kano
Province when I visited it was in charge of a third class
Resident, admittedly one of the ablest officials in the
country, by the way ; that is to say, an official drawing
£470 a year was responsible for a region as large as Scot-
land and Wales, with a population of 2,571,170 ! The
Bauchi Province was in charge of a second class Resident,
drawing £570 a year ; it is the size of Greece, has a popula-
tion of about three-quarters of a million, and additional
administrative anxieties through the advent of a white
mining industry. These two instances will suffice. The
192
AMALGAMATING THE TWO PROTECTORATES
men saddled with these immense responsibilities are really
Lieutenant-Governors and should be paid as such. It is
perfectly absurd that an official in whom sufficient con-
fidence is reposed to be given the task of governing a huge
Province like Kano should be paid the salary of a bank
clerk, when, for instance, the Governor of Sierra Leone,
with half the population,* is drawing £2500, exclusive of
allowances. A comparison of the Northern Nigeria salaries
with those paid to the Governors of the West Indian
Islands gives furiously to think. The Governorship of
the Bahamas, 4404 square miles in extent, with a
population of 61,277, is apparently worth £2000 ; that of
the Bermudas, with an area of twenty-nine square miles
and a population of 17,535, £2946 ; that of Barbados,
166 square miles and a population of 196,498, £2500.
* Whose administration offers no problems comparable with the task of
governing a Hausa province.
193 O
CHAPTER XVIII
RAILWAY POLICY AND AMALGAMATION
To all these incongruities must be added the series of
events which have led to the creation of two competing
railway systems, and, consequently, to open rivalry
between the two Administrations in the effort to secure the
traffic from the interior, a rivalry which is certainly not
lessened by the circumstance that the method of railway
construction followed in one Protectorate differs radically
from that pursued in the other. This rivalry, needless to
say, is perfectly honourable to both sides, but it is de-
plorable, nevertheless, and not in the public interest, and
were the two systems placed under one management before
the amalgamation of the Protectorates, i.e. if Southern
Nigeria took over the Northern line, which it very natur-
ally wishes to do, having lent the money for its construc-
tion, and not appreciating the rdle of milch cow without
adequate return, friction between the railway manage-
ment and the Political Staff would be inevitable owing to
the fundamental divergence of method already referred
to. Moreover, the results achieved by Mr. Eaglesome and
his staff in laying the Baro-Kano railway have been of so
revolutionary a character as to suggest the advisability of
reconsidering the whole policy of railway construction in
British West Africa, such as has been pursued hitherto.
I will refer briefly to this method in a moment. Mean-
while the position of the competing lines is roughly this.
Southern Nigeria has built — or rather is building, for the last
section is not quite finished — a railway from Lagos which
194
SLE\r 0\ THE SIlJHrrx M Llli (LVirNSION) RAILWAY.
PLATE-LAVIKG ON THE NORTHERN NIGEREi RAILWAV.
RAILWAY POLICY AND AMALGAMATION
crosses the Niger at Jebba, proceeds therefrom to Zungeru,
the capital of Northern Nigeria, and onwards to a place
called Minna.* Northern Nigeria has built a railway from
Baro, a spot 407 miles up the Niger to Minna, where the
junction is effected, and thence to Kano. Southern Nigeria,
which looks upon the Northern Protectorate as its natural
hinterland, wishes to attract the trade of the north over
its line to Lagos, and desires that the through rates it has
drawn up should be accepted by Northern Nigeria, and
claims the right of fixing the rates on the section of its
railway from the point where it enters Northern Nigeria
territory (Offa) to the point of junction. The Northern
Nigeria Administration, which does not in the least regard
itself as the natural appanage of Southern Nigeria,
desires to feed the Baro-Kano railway in conjunction with
the Niger, and declares that the through rates proposed
by Southern Nigeria are so manipulated as to ensure the
deflection of the northern trade to Lagos and thus to
starve the Baro-Kano line, which would tend to reduce a
considerable section of it, apart from its very definite
strategical importance, to scrap iron. That was the
position when I left the country, and I do not gather that
it has greatly advanced since. There has been a conference,
but it has not resulted, and could not result, in agreement
as to the question of what line is to get preferential
treatment ; and that, of course, is the main question
which should be decided by an impartial authority, having
regard to the interests of Nigeria as a whole. Now a word
as to the two systems. So far as governing principles are
concerned, it would probably be regarded as a fair descrip-
tion to state that the Southern Nigerian method is less
concerned with capital expenditure and with rapidity of
construction, as with the advisability of securing perma-
nently good construction and putting in permanent work
throughout, including stone ballast, fine stations and so
* Now the capital of the Niger province.
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
on. The Northern Nigerian method, on the other hand,
aims at keeping down initial capital expenditure and
interest, exercising strict economy in the matter of
buildings, both for the public and for the staff, combined
with rapidity of construction and improving the line as
the traffic grows. These ideas represent two schools of
thought, and beyond the general remark that a rich
Administration may be able to afford what a poor one
certainly cannot, the non-expert had best not venture upon
an expression of opinion lest peradventure he be ground
between the upper and the nether millstone. But as regards
the respective systems under which these principles are
carried out, it is impossible to resist the conclusion that
Northern Nigeria has demonstrably proved its superiority
so far as actual construction is concerned. The Southern
Nigeria line has been, and is being, constructed on the old
model. Consulting engineers in London are employed by
the Colonial Office, and appoint the staff in Africa. They
are unchecked, for the Colonial Office has no independent
railway adviser for tropical Africa, no railway board, or
department, or anything of that kind. Thus there are
two distinct staffs concerned, a staff appointed by and
responsible to the Consulting Engineers in London, and
the General Manager's Staff in the Dependency. Where
the responsibility of one begins and the other ends, both
would probably find it difficult to define ; and no one who
knows West Africa can fail to appreciate the divided
counsels, the friction, the waste of time and money which
such a system must inevitably entail, even though every
human rivet in the machine were endowed with superlative
qualities. It is very difficult to arrive at a clear idea as
to what the average expenditure of the Southern Nigerian
railway has been per mile, but it does not appear to be
disputed that the cost of construction of the first section of
120 miles to Ibadan, plus the capital expenditure incurred
on the open line and the working capital for stores, was
196
LANDING-PI. ACK AT BARO
GROUP OF RAILWA\- LABOURERS — BARO.
Sl'C /I. 200.
RAILWAY POLICY AND AMALGAMATION
enormous, viz. £ii,ooo per mile. The expenditure upon
the remaining sections will probably be found to work out
at an average of between £5000 and £6000 per mile,
exclusive of railway stock and maintenance. Contract
labour has been employed except in the later stages, when
the line entering Northern Nigeria territory has come under
the system of political recruiting which will now be
described.
The great advantage which the Northern Nigerian
system possesses over that of Southern Nigeria is unity of
direction. But the vital difference between the two
systems is this : Northern Nigeria has shown that it is
possible to construct a railway without the services of
Consulting Engineers in England at all. Now this is a
fact which cannot be too pointedly emphasized ; because
Consulting Engineers are most expensive luxuries if they
are not necessities. The logical deduction is, either that
Consulting Engineers can be, and if they can be should be,
dispensed with for any future railways in West Africa ; or
that the Baro-Kano railway, without them, is a failure.
It appears to me that the Baro-Kano railway has been a
marvellous success from the point of view of construction.
What are the facts ? The Administration, i.e. its Public
Works Department, with the help of a few Royal Engineer
officers lent by the Home Government, has been its own
builder. The absence of any foreign body has reduced
friction to a minimum. In fact, there has been no friction
whatever, because the Railway Staff has co-operated in
every way with the Political Staff, and the exercise of the
Political Officers' legitimate duties in protecting the inter-
ests of the natives has not been resented or looked upon
in the light of vexatious interference by the railway
management. I should be the last to wish to minimize
the excellence of the individual work performed by the
engineers in charge of the Southern Nigeria line, which I
was able to admire, and from whom I received the greatest
197
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
hospitality and kindness at various stages in my journey ;
but the nature of the system there followed precludes that
enthusiastic co-operation of all the elements concerned
which is the predominating characteristic of Northern
Nigerian methods. And, as already stated, there is a very
considerable item of expense to be considered through the
employment of Consulting Engineers in London. In the
Northern Protectorate every one, from the Governor — the
Baro-Kano railway owes, of course, its inception to Sir
Percy Girouard — down to the foreman, has been, as it were,
a member of a single family. In fact, one might almost
say that the line has been built on the communistic
principle. In no direction does the system show better
results than in the organization of labour. It has proved
to demonstration what is the right way of dealing with
native labour in West Africa, viz. : that the labourer on
public works shall be drawn from the neighbourhood
where the public works are situate, that he shall proceed
to the scene of his labours accompanied by his own Village
or District Headman, the native authority to whom he
owes allegiance, and whom he knows and trusts ; that he
shall perform his duties in the presence and under the
supervision of that Headman, and that for the conduct of
the Headman himself, and for the whole proceedings under
which recruitment is carried on and labour performed, the
Political Of&cer shall be responsible. In other words, it
shows the right procedure to be that of recruiting through
and with the co-operation of, and by the orders of, the
natural authorities of the people under the supreme
control of the Resident, combined with a form of payment
which shall ensure the wage being placed in the wage-
earner's own hand, not in somebody else's hand. By this
system alone can the labour of the country employed in
agricultural and industrial pursuits be capable of bearing
an additional burden for public purposes, without in-
justice, without ferment, without dislocating the whole
198
IssViJi-'E*"'"
VILLAGE HEAD-MEN.
VILLAGE HEAD-MEX.
RAILWAY POLICY AND AMALGAMATION
labour system of the region. Persuaded of this truth, the
Political Officers of Northern Nigeria, aided by the ready
willingness of the Railway Staff, have achieved a veritable
triumph of organization which should ever remain a model
to follow. And in that triumph can be read a deep
political lesson. That such organization has been possible
in Northern Nigeria is due, primarily, to the existence of
a native political organization to which we could appeal
and upon which we could rely. The principle adopted on
the works themselves has been to give to each foreman his
own set of Headmen, with their own gangs to look after,
and to so regulate the labour that no individual should
work more than eight hours per diem. Built under
conditions such as these, the Northern Nigeria railway,
constructed under great difficulties with wonderful
rapidity and at a cost of well under £4000 per mile,
rolling-stock and stores included, is not only in itself a
striking performance — with, I believe, if free conditions of
development are assured to it, a bright economic future —
but a political and educational work of permanent value.
It has helped to bring the Political Officers into closer
personal touch with the population. It has increased the
confidence of the people in the honesty of their alien
overlords, and has imbued them with a personal interest
and friendly curiosity in the railway. It has taught them
many things which they did not know before, things which
will be useful to themselves in their own social life. It has
brought previously hostile tribes together into the same
trench, effacing tribal barriers and burying old feuds. It
has largely increased the use of silver coinage, and stimu-
lated commercial activity. The same system is being
followed in the construction, now proceeding, of the branch
line towards the tin-fields ; but many more railways will be
required to develop the commercial potentialities of
Northern Nigeria, and the fact constitutes one more
argument to those already given in favour of an
199
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
amalgamation of the two Protectorates, and the evolution
of one set of governing ideas.
I cannot leave the question of railway construction in
the Nigerias without expressing regret that in authorizing
the construction of the new line, the Colonial Office should
have been led to break the gauge, and to decide upon a
2 feet 6 inch line instead of the 3 feet 6 inch standard.
Apart from other objections, which can be urged more
fittingly by experts, it is obvious that this departure
necessitates a complete equipment of new rolling stock,
and the erection of special engineering shops to deal with
it. Every freshly constructed line is bound to have a
surplus of rolling stock. The Baro-Kano railway is no
exception to the rule, and its surplus stock could have been
utilized on the new branch line. It is a penny wise and
pound foolish policy, and, in all probability, the ultimate
result will be that this 2 feet 6 inch line will cost very little,
if at all, less than a 3 feet 6 inch would have done.
200
CHAPTER XIX
AN UNAUTHORIZED SCHEME OF AMALGAMATION
An effort was made in the previous chapter to depict some
of the disadvantages and drawbacks arising, and hkely to
become accentuated with time, from the dual administra-
tive control now obtaining in Nigeria. For the following
suggestions as to the character amalgamation could
assume, the writer claims no more than that they may,
perhaps, constitute an attempt, put forward with much
diffidence, to indicate a few constructive ideas which might
form the basis for expert discussion.
The objects an amalgamation might be expected to
secure, apart from the inconveniences needing removal,
would, in the main, be four in number, (a) Financial
management directed not only to meeting present needs
but to making provision for the future. (6) The right
sort of man to fill the important and onerous post of
Governor-General, (c) The division of the territory into
Provinces corresponding as far as possible with natural
geographical boundaries and existing political conditions,
involving as few changes as possible, {d) A comprehen-
sive scheme of public works.
These various points can, in the limits of a chapter, be
best examined collectively.
In the accompanying map Nigeria is divided into four
great Provinces. I. The Northern or Sudan Province,
comprising the regions where a Mohammedan civilization
has existed for many centuries, and where the majority
201
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
of the people, except in Kontagora, are Muslims, The
ruling families in Kontagora are, however, so closely
related with those of Sokoto that it would probably be
found expedient to incorporate the former into the same
Province, which would, therefore, consist of Sokoto, Kano,
Bornu, the Zaria Emirate and Kontagora. Its head-
quarters would be Kano. II. The Central Province, com-
prising the pagan section of the present Zaria province,
i.e. Zaria outside the limits of the Emirate proper, and the
Nassarawa, Bauchi, Niger, Yola, and Muri (north of the
Benue) provinces. It is not quite easy to forecast where
the centre of gravity of the Central Province will ultimately
fall, but if, as is possible, the Bauchi highlands become in
time a second Simla for the Central Executive, the head-
quarters of the Central Pfovince would presumably be
fixed at Zungeru, the present capital of the Northern
Protectorate. III. The Western Province, comprising all
that is now incorporated in the existing western province
of Southern Nigeria, plus — to the north — Kabba, Ilorin
and Borgu, while the right bank of the Forcados and Niger
would form the eastern boundary, the boundaries of the
Province following natural lines. Its headquarters would
be Oshogbo, or its immediate neighbourhood. IV. The
Eastern Province, comprising what is now the eastern
province of South Nigeria, but with its western frontier
coterminous with the left bank of the Niger and Forcados
and its northern frontiers pushed up to the south bank of
the Benue, embracing Bassa and part of Muri, Yola,
however, being left, for political reasons, in the Central
Province, as noted above. Its headquarters would be Old
Calabar, the starting-point of the future eastern railway
(see map).
Each of these great provinces would be ruled by a
Lieutenant-Governor, with Residents and Assistant Resi-
dents under him, and, wherever possible, the present poli-
tical boundaries of what are now provinces, but would
202
UNAUTHORIZED SCHEME OF AMALGAMATION
become known as districts and sub-districts, would be
retained. Thus in the Northern or Sudan Province
nothing would be changed in this respect, save the separa-
tion of Mohammedan Zaria from pagan Zaria ; nothing
would be changed in the Central Province, so far as the
units remaining within it were concerned, except the
division of Muri, which would offer no political embarrass-
ments. The enlargement of the Eastern Province as
proposed, would in some respects facilitate the work of
administration and would not cut across any ethnic
divisions. In the Western Province the principal altera-
tion would be the re-grouping of the different Yoruba
sections in their old state form {vide Part II.) under a
Resident who would reside at Oyo ; Ilorin, Kabba, and
Borgu would remain under Residents as at present.
Warri (the capital of the existing central province of
Southern Nigeria) would become the seat of a Residency
for the Bini, Sobo, I jaw and Jekri speaking peoples.
Lagos town would continue to be what the expenditure
of much money, and the enterprise of the Yorubas, have
made it, the commercial emporium of at least the western
portion of the Protectorate, and the headquarters of the
small surrounding area known as the " Colony " {vide
Part II.), administered by a " Lagos Council," which
would replace the present " Lagos Legislative Council,"
and be composed of much the same elements as the latter
now consists of, presided over by a Resident. The func-
tions of the Lagos Council would be confined to the Colony.
The headquarters of the Governor-General and the
central seat of Government would be the high plateau
immediately behind Lokoja, known as Mount Patte,
situated in the very centre of the Protectorate, com-
manding the Niger and the Benue, within easy steam of
Baro the starting-point of the central railway, and linked
up with the western railway by a branch line to Oshogbo
as indicated on the map. The Governor-General would
203
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
be assisted by an Executive and Legislative Council. Of
the former the Lieutenant-Governors and Senior Residents
would be ex officio members, together with the Chief
Justice, the Colonial Secretary, the Financial Secretary,
and the ofi&cer commanding the troops. The official
members of the Legislative Council would include the
Directors of rail and river transport, of public works, of
agriculture, of forestry and of commercial intelligence ; the
Director of mining ; and the Principal Medical Officer.
The unofficial members would include selected representa-
tives of the educated native community, and, later on,
one or two distinguished Mallams, and selected represen-
tatives of the European commercial and mining communi-
ties.
Possibly, in course of time, the work of the Council
could be carried out in conjunction with periodical Dur-
bars attended by all the important Emirs, but in no case
would the functions of the Council be allowed to conflict
with the Native Administrations of the Mohammedan
Provinces.
The method of handling the finances of the Protectorate
would depend to a large extent upon the capacity of the
Home Government, in conjunction with the potential
Governor-General and other advisers, to map out ahead a
considered scheme of railway construction and improve-
ment of fluvial communications, which would proceed
from year to year and for which provision would be made.
The whole problem of communications, both rail and
river, ought to be placed under a special department,
subject to periodical inspection by an independent expert
sent out from home by the Colonial Office, and the services
of consulting engineers in England disposed of if possible.
The situation financially lends itself, in a general sense, to
a certain boldness of treatment and departure from ordi-
nary British West African precedent. Two distinct
classes of budgets might with advantage, perhaps, be
204
SKETCH MAP OF NIGERIA,
SHOWING SUGGESTED EEAEEANGEMENT OF PROVINCES.
UNAUTHORIZED SCHEME OF AMALGAMATION
evolved, viz. a Colonial budget and the Provincial
budgets. In other words, there would be a central budget
and four local budgets, one for each Province. The
Colonial budget would be fed by the customs revenue, the
whole of which would be credited to it. (It may be
estimated that two or three years hence the total customs
revenue collected in Nigeria will amount to £2,500,000.)
It would be augmented by the profits on the railways, the
mining royalties, harbour dues, and pilotage fees (there
should be a system of public pilotage on the waterways) .
The Protectorate could be authorized to raise a loan on its
own recognizances of £5,000,000 redeemable in a term of
years. This loan would be expended in a succession of
public works — some of the necessary lines of rail are
indicated in the map — in accordance with the scheme of
construction mapped out as previously suggested. The
Colonial budget would determine the successive instalments
of expenditure out of loans, and would provide the interest
on the new loan and on the existing loan of £5,000,000
contracted by Southern Nigeria (for public works in
Southern and Northern Nigeria). The revenues of the
Colonial budget from whateve source derived, other than
from loans, would be distributed by the Governor-General
in council for the administration of the four Provinces in
accordance with their respective needs. These needs
would show marked variation for some years to come.
For instance, the hypothetical Northern and Central
Provinces {i.e. the territory which now comprises the bulk
of Northern Nigeria), relying upon the increasing regularity
and juster assessment of internal direct taxation, the
nature of which may roughly be termed a graduated
property tax, might be expected to advance steadily
towards the self-supporting stage. When that stage had
been reached, the surplus would be set aside under the
Provincial budget for extending the system of fixed salaries
to native officials, for expenditure on provincial public
205
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
works and economic research, improvements in sanitation,
and so on, in collaboration with the native authorities of
its various sections. A portion of my hypothetical
Northern or Sudan Province is already self-supporting,
viz. Kano. Indeed, but for the military establishment
the whole of that Province would be showing to-day a
handsome surplus and, apart from the public works to be
met out of loans, would require — even if it continued to be
debited with the military establishment — very little assist-
ance from the Colonial budget. The hypothetical Central
Province would require more assistance for a time, but,
as in the Northern Province, the basis of an expanding
land revenue is securely laid and a not inconsiderable
mineral development bringing revenue, apart from royal-
ties, is assured to it. On the other hand, most of the
hypothetical Western Province and almost the whole
of the Eastern Province — i.e. in combination, Southern
Nigeria of to-day — ^produces no internal revenue whatever
except licences, the amount derived from which will
assuredly grow but will not become really large for many
years. Therefore, until and unless the delicate problem
of introducing direct taxation among peoples — the majority
of whom we have been in touch with for years without
requiring of them the payment of any form of tribute —
were approached, the Colonial budget would have to
furnish these Provinces with most of their administrative
revenues.
An alternative scheme would be to abandon the idea
of a Central Legislative Council for the whole Protectorate
and of a new administrative headquarters, the Governor-
General spending a certain time at the headquarters of
each Province. Lagos would, under such a scheme,
become the capital of the extended Western Province (see
map), and the action of the Lagos Legislative Council
would extend to the whole of that Province. A Legis-
lative Council would be created for the extended Eastern
206
UNAUTHORIZED SCHEME OF AMALGAMATION
Province. The administrative machinery of the new
Central and Northern Provinces would be left as it is
now. On the finance side the alternative scheme to the
one I have sketched would be to let each Province con-
tribute to the Colonial budget in accordance with its
capacities upon a definite proportionate basis, the sums
thus accruing to the Colonial budget, plus the loan
funds, being utilized in the creation of public works on
the lines already sketched. This alternative scheme,
amalgamation on federation, would possess some advan-
tages over the first, and compares unfavourably with it
in others.
It will be objected that these suggestions do not take
into account the present military expenditure of the
Protectorates and are dumb with regard to the Imperial
grant to Northern Nigeria. I have left a consideration of
these two questions until now because they can, I think,
be taken together. The military establishment of Southern
Nigeria costs £100,000 per annum. That of Northern
Nigeria costs £160,000 per annum. Neither is excessive
in itself, although in the latter case it amounts to no less
than 33 per cent, of the total expenditure of the Protec-
torate ! It is not one penny too much, and to reduce the
number of troops would be folly, having regard to the
immensity of the country and the kind of political problem
facing us. And yet could anything be more topsy-
turvey ? Here is a financially struggling Protectorate
urgently in need of the most vital necessities ; incapable
even of building decent houses for its over-worked and
short-handed staff ; forced to deprive the latter of even
their travelling allowances, and to sacrifice considerations
of reasonable comfort and, therefore, of health for its
personnel ; in a position to pay so little for posts of
enormous responsibility that the entire political expendi-
ture is only some £70,000 per annum ; able to devote but
a miserable £1300 a year upon economic forestry, but
207
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
saddled with this incubus of £160,000 upon a military
establishment which has already been called upon (in the
case of the last Ashanti war) to provide contingents for
service outside the Protectorate, which would infallibly
happen again, in the by no means remote contingencies
of a further outbreak in Ashanti or disturbances in the
Sierra Leone hinterland. This situation needs to be
examined in conjunction with the Imperial grant about
which so much fuss is made.
The nation imagines that Northern Nigeria is costing
the Imperial Treasury something like £250,000 to £300,000
per annum. Nothing of the kind. The grants in aid from
1906 to 1909, inclusive, amounted to £1,220,000, or an
average of £305,000. But against this must be set the
direct profit to the revenues of the United Kingdom
derived from the profit which the Mint makes upon the
silver coin exported, in ever increasing quantities (and the
process will go on extending), to the two Nigerias. The
average yearly cost of silver in the last nine years has, I
believe, varied between 2S. o^d. and 2S. 6|^. The coin
at par value is issued at 5s. 6d. an ounce, and I am credibly
informed that the profit to the Mint is considerably more
than half the net import by Nigeria, seeing that half the
face value of the coinage is greater than the cost of minting,
plus maintenance of gold reserve and provision for re-
mitting. The net export of coinage, virtually the whole
of it silver, to the two Nigerias {i.e. the total exported minus
the coin returned) amounted from 1906 to 1909 to £981,582.
If the profit of the Mint is taken at only 50 per cent., it will
thus be seen that the nation is making a direct average
profit of nearly £125,000 a year out of the two Nigerias,
against an average of £305,000 paid to Northern -Nigeria
by way of a temporary grant in aid. To say, therefore,
that Northern Nigeria is costing the British taxpayer a
quarter of a million a year or more, is to make a state-
ment which is not in accordance with fact. What
208
UNAUTHORIZED SCHEME OF AMALGAMATION
the nation advances directly, it recoups itself for directly
in part ; without counting that these grants are in
the nature of a capital investment. Let this grant
under amalgamation be cancelled, and let the Imperial
Government, on the other hand, foot the bill for the
military expenditure (which, as we have seen, amounts to
;f 260,000), looking upon it, say, for the next ten years as
Imperial expenditure. Nothing would so alleviate the
whole situation, while at the same time simplifying it,
and, as has been shown, the actual disbursement of the
nation on this item would be considerably less, even now,
than what it would appear nominally to be, owing to the
profit made by the Mint on the silver coin sent out.
As already explained, the above proposals, illustrated
in part by the accompanying map, are put forward merely
as a basis for the discussion of a problem of some difficulty
but of great urgency. I claim for them nothing more than
that, and no conceivable scheme of amalgamation could
be set down which would not lend itself to copious criti-
cism. But that the mush of anomalies now obtaining
cannot be perpetuated without increasing detriment to
Imperial interests in Nigeria, I am fully persuaded. The
existence of two public policies side by side in a single
territorial area, where internal peace is rapidly fusing the
indigenous communities, divided by an imaginary line
which does not even correspond to natural boundaries and
exhibiting multiple differences of aim and method^n
some cases, acutely antagonistic interests — presents many
obvious inconveniences and paves the way for future
embarrassments of every kind. If these remarks can in-
fluence in any way an early and serious examination of
•the problem by the Colonial Office, they will not, however
open to criticism, have been made in vain. Amalgama-
tion must come. All realize that. Unforeseen events might
very well, at a given moment, compel decisions of far-
reaching moment being precipitately reached without due
209 p
NIGERIA: ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
consideration being given to all the features of the case,
such as characterized the amalgamation of the Lagos
Colony and Protectorate with old Southern Nigeria in
1899. The advantages of clear thinking out ahead, and
of taking the inevitable step before the situation has got
tied up into more knots than it already contains, with
calm deliberation, after a full and serious study of all the
facts, surely needs no emphasizing. As to the man, a last
word. The responsibility of selecting the official to be in
supreme control over the amalgamated Nigerias is no
hght one. The task confronting a Governor-General,
especially in the first five years, will be replete with
difficulties. The post will need heavy calls upon tact,
patience, and a peculiarly high type of constructive
statesmanship. The only remark I would venture to
make on the point is this. Any serious administrative
error perpetrated in handling affairs in the north would be
attended with consequences of exceeding gravity. That
is a proposition I think no one will be inclined to dispute.
It suggests either that the Governor-General himself
should be personally acquainted with the political condi-
tions of what is now known as Northern Nigeria, or, at
least, that the Lieutenant-Governors of the hypothetical
Northern and Central Provinces should be chosen from
among the most experienced of the existing Senior
Residents.
210
PART IV
ISLAM, COTTON GROWING, AND
THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC
CHAPTER I
CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM IN SOUTHERN NIGERIA
I HAVE referred to Christian missionary propaganda in
Mohammedan Northern Nigeria. There has now to be
considered the question of Christian missionary propa-
ganda in Southern Nigeria, and the corresponding growth
therein of Mohammedanism. The relative failure of the
one and the admitted success of the other are at present
the subject of much debate and give anxious thought to
the heads of the Church. The fundamental cause appears
to lie in a disinclination to face the fact, however obvious,
that a religion which took centuries upon centuries to
take root in Europe, owing, very largely, to its ethical
demands upon man, cannot hope to establish itself in the
now accessible tropical forest regions of West Africa in a
few decades, while a religion embodying a distinct advance
upon paganism but not involving the complete structural
change in native society which the Christian Church
exacts, has every chance of doing so. Then, too, there is
another question which the ecclesiastical authorities may
never, it is true, find it possible frankly to confront, but
which laymen, it seems to me, are bound to do — ^those, at
any rate, who are persuaded that the African race is one
of the great races of mankind, not intended by the Al-
mighty Architect to disappear from the scene of human
affairs. I refer to the physiological requirements, in the
present age, of the Nigerian forest peoples in their struggles
with the forces of primeval Nature.
213
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
All that remains of the Portuguese attempts to Chris-
tianize the deltaic region of Nigeria in the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries are a few names and the addition of
crucifixion to native punishments of criminals or happy
despatch of sacrificial victims. The chief obstacle to the
modern efforts of the Anglo-Saxon in Southern Nigeria
and the real explanation of the successful modern efforts
of the African Muslim, are to be sought in the appeal
respectively made by Christianity and Islam to the
patriarchal communities to which they are addressed, and
in the methods and character of the respective propaganda.
Christianity in West Africa either cannot be divorced, or
cannot divorce itself, from Europeanism and the twentieth
century. It remains for the people of Nigeria, and of all
West Africa, an alien religion taught by aliens who cannot
assimilate themselves to the life of the people. Islam, on
the other hand, has long ceased to be an alien religion. It
is imparted by Africans. It is disseminated by Africans.
It has its roots in the soil. It has become a religion of the
people, losing much of its rigidity and fanaticism as it
works down to the coast absorbing the true negro.
Everything is against Christianity as presented to the
Nigerian (I venture to emphasize this), and everything is
in favour of Islam, although Christianity, in itself,
contains more that should appeal to the Negro character
than does Mohammedanism. The conditions of Southern
Nigeria are the conditions of the Old Testament. The
crying need of the country, as of all western tropical
Africa, is the need which is proclaimed in, and stamps
itself upon, every page of the book of Genesis, the Divinely
ordained requirement — population. Vice plays only a
microscopic part in the relationship of sex in Nigeria.
Race propagation is the motive force which regulates
sexual relationship. The Nigerian, incessantly striving
with the destructive agencies of Nature, responds to the
instinctive and mysterious call of racial necessity. Infant
214
CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM
mortality is terrible. With the Nigerian the reproduction
of the species is the paramount, if unanalyzed and, no
doubt, uncomprehended obsession. It must continue to
be so for a period whose limit will be determined by the
rate of his progression in coping with these destructive
agencies.
This is not the place to discuss what the attitude of
the Christian missionary should be to this paramount
racial need, but it is obvious that his insistence upon an
acceptance of a sex relationship contrary to the promptings
of Nature must present a barrier — one of the greatest, if
not the greatest — to the acceptance of the Christian faith,
or, perhaps, it would be better to say, of orthodox Christi-
anity. One might be permitted, perhaps, to suggest that
those who are disposed to regard the condition of the
Nigerian forest-dweller in these matters as calling for
hard and rigid regulation, are too prone to forget what
Lecky describes as the " appalling amount of moral evil,
festering uncontrolled, undiscussed and unalleviated under
the fair surface of a decorous society," in civilized Europe,
monogamistic social laws notwithstanding. Sex relation-
ship, whatever its character and whatever the conditions
of society or climate, is never, and can never be, free from
abuses. West African polygamy contains many ugly sores,
and so does the European system.
Family bonds are equally threatened by Christianity,
as propounded to the Nigerian, for it trains the child, whether
deliberately or otherwise, to look upon his parents as living
a life of sin, thus introducing a subversive element into the
household. Those who assert the absence of affections and
sanctities in Nigerian family life assert that which is untrue.
Native authority is likewise menaced, for how can the con-
vert entertain his former respect for rulers whom he has been
taught to regard as morally and spiritually his inferiors ?
These are some of the reasons why Christianity, as pro-
pounded to the Nigerian, at the opening of the twentieth
215
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
century, presents itself to him in the Ught of a hurtful and
disintegrating influence. And this creed is proffered either
by aliens between whom and the inner life of the people
there yawns an unbridgeable gulf, or by denationalized
Africans who have become in the eyes of the people,
strangers well-nigh as complete as the alien himself, part
and parcel of the alien's machinery. As if these did not
constitute sufficient deterrents to the permanency of its
footing, the alien race which tenders to the Nigerian this
creed — ^this creed claiming for all men equality before God
— is the conquering, controlling, governing race that scorns
to admit — because, being an Imperial race, it cannot —
equality of racial status with the Nigerian whom it sub-
jugates and controls. Between the race of the converter
and that of the would-be convert there gapes an abyss of
racial and social inequality which does not lessen, but, if
anything, widens with conversion — the colour line.
Finally, there is the lamentable intolerance displayed by
Christian proselytizers towards one another. Only the
other day I read in a West African newspaper the address
of a white American Protestant Bishop, whose sphere of
work lies in Africa, to his flock. This episcopalian inter-
preter of the Gospel of Christian charity to the benighted
African is concerned in his address with the downfall of
the Portuguese Monarchy and the accession of the
Republic which, he says, " opens wide every door leading
to Christian work among millions of native Africans."
He proceeds : "Of course Rome howls. On October 13,
1910, among weeping Jesuits, speaking of the new nation,
the Pope said ' A cursed Republic ! Yes, I curse it ! '
The curse of Balaam against the people of God was turned
into a blessing by Jehovah ; and so, too, will this
blasphemy be turned into a blessing to the struggling
people of Portugal."
Islam, on the other hand, despite its shortcomings, does
not, from the Nigerian point of view, demand race suicide
216
CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM
of the Nigerian as an accompaniment of conversion. It
does not stipulate revolutionary changes in social life,
impossible at the present stage of Nigerian development ;
nor does it undermine family or communal authority.
Between the converter and converted there is no abyss.
Both are equal, not in theory, but in practice, before God.
Both are African ; sons of the soil. The doctrine of the
brotherhood of man is carried out in practice. Conversion
does not mean for the converted a break with his interests,
his family, his social life, his respect for the authority of
his natural rulers. He is not left stranded, as the Christian
Church, having once converted, leaves him, a pitiful,
rudderless barque upon a troubled sea. He does not
become, through conversion, an alien in thought, in
custom, and in outlook ; a foreigner in his own land, a
citizen of none. He remains African, attached to his
country, looking for inspiration inwards, rather than to-
wards an alien civilization across thousands of miles of
unknown seas. No one can fail to be impressed with the
carriage, the dignity of the Nigerian — indeed, of the West
African — Mohammedan ; the whole bearing of the man
suggests a consciousness of citizenship, a pride of race
which seems to say : " We are different, thou and I, but
we are men." The spread of Islam in Southern Nigeria
which we are witnessing to-day is mainly social in its
action. It brings to those with whom it comes in contact
a higher status, a loftier conception of man's place in the
universe around him, release from the thraldom of a
thousand superstitious fears. It resembles in its progress
the annual overflow of the Niger diffusing its waters over
the land. The extensive ramifications of internal trade,
now greatly fostered by the construction of additional
roads and railways and rendered wholly safe by the pax
britannica, leads to the multiplying of facilities for human
intercourse among the various peoples of the Protectorate.
The Hausa pushes ever further south his commercial
217
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
operations. The Delta, and still more the Western
Province, yearly attest to the widening area of his activi-
ties. Not to be outdone, his trading rival the Yoruba taps
in additional numbers the markets of the north. Railway
construction finds the Mohammedan labouring side by side
with the pagan in the same trench. A sense of security
and the increasing circulation of a portable medium of
exchange in the shape of silver and nickel coinage attract
to the great native markets of the Central Province, such
as Onitsha, for example, the tattoed pagan Ibo and his
pagan colleagues the Anams, Katundas, and Kukurukus,
where they rub shoulders with the Mohammedan Hausa,
Nupe^ and Igarra. In and around Ibadan, Oyo, and Lagos
you meet the Kano and Sokoto trader with his donkeys
and pack-bullocks, and even the Tuareg with whom you
parted company months before in the far north, travelling
on the roads or camping for the night near some local
village. The road is at once the club-house and public
rendezvous for Nigerian humanity. A vast commingling,
a far-reaching fusion unexampled in the history of these
peoples is taking place. The expansion of an African
religion which, somehow, succeeds in investing the convert
with a spiritual and social standing that at once raise him
among his fellows, follows as a matter of course. The
Mohammedan teacher wanders over the face of the
country visiting the centres of human activity, haunting
the roads and market-places, unattended, carrying neither
purse nor scrip, making no attempt at proselytizing beyond
saying his prayers in public, not in a manner to cause
obstruction, but quietly in some corner ; waiting until
people come to him, literally fulfilling the command,
" Take nothing for your journey, neither staves, nor scrip,
neither bread, neither money, neither , have two coats
apiece." The Mohammedan trader or agriculturist settles
in a pagan village, marries pagan women, enters the family
and social circle of the community and imparts to it his
218
CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM
faith, the women making even readier converts than the
men.
This is why and this is how Islam is propagating itself
and taking root in pagan Nigeria without financial outlay,
without doles and collecting boxes. One of the oldest of
Christian missionaries in Nigeria, a man of venerable ap-
pearance and saintly character, who for twenty-five years
has laboured with hands as well as with heart and head
for moral and material improvement, not of his converts
only, but of their unconverted relatives, confessed to me
his fear that nothing could stop Islam from absorbing in
course of time the whole of West Africa. He was almost
disposed reluctantly to allow that in the providence of
God, Islam might prove to be intended as the half-way
house through the portals of which it was necessary the
West African negro should pass in order to lift him out of a
sterilizing paganism and make him a fitter vessel to receive
in course of time the nobler ideals of the Christian faith.
Sir Harry Johnston is right, I think, when he says that " to
Negro Africa," Islam has come " as a great blessing,
raising up savages to a state, at any rate of semi-civiliza-
tion, making them God-fearing, self-respecting, temperate,
courageous, and picturesque." But Islam does more than
this ; it preserves racial identity. In West Africa,
Christianity destroys racial identity. It should not : as
taught it does.
" Picturesque," says Sir Harry Johnston, and there
speaks the artist. But the word covers a profound truth.
A great deal of the denationalizing or Anglicizing process
which is going on and which makes bad Africans and bad
Christians, is attributable to the discarding of the national
dress. Why cannot the Administration and the mission-
ary societies combine in some practical, positive form, to
combat this curse of alien dress ? There is absolutely
nothing to be said in its favour. The West African looks
better in African dress, the robe of the Mohammedan and
219
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
of many pagan Africans. It is much healthier for him.
It is preservative of his racial identity ; and that is,
perhaps, the most important of all pleas which can be
put forward for its retention. With very slight modifica-
tion — such as one sees among the native staff, and personal
servants in many parts of Northern Nigeria — ^it can be
made suitable for any form of labour, literary or otherwise.
Clad in his national dress the African has a dignity which
in most cases he loses almost entirely when he attires
himself in a costume totally unfitted for the country, and
hideous at best. Nothing to my mind is more pitiable
than to visit school after school in West Africa, filled with
little boys and girls and big boys and girls in an alien
dress, to see the denationalizing process going on day after
day and nothing whatever done to stop it. In the case of
the women it is not only dignity and nationalism which
are concerned, but decency as well. The national dress
of the women in West Africa is classical and graceful, and
although leaving more of the body exposed than is usual
at home (except in the ballroom) it lacks suggestiveness.
It does not accentuate the figure. It emphasizes that
racial difference — not inequality, but difference — ^which it
is so essential to emphasize. With the substitution of
European dress, especially of the prevailing fashion, the
West African woman loses much of what she need never
lose, and acquires that which is of no profit to her. These
things cannot be altered in a day, nor would it be possible
in some cases for the present adult generation to go back
to African costume. But it would in many cases, and the
reform could be at once taken in hand so far as the children
are concerned. Government could do much. The
missionary societies could do more. The anglicised native
community could do most. I believe that if some popular
Government official, known and trusted, could be led to
appeal, in private conference to the native staff and win
them over, the movement once started would spread and
220
CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM
have enormously beneficial results. That many members
of the anglicised community would be hostile goes without
saying — that is the fault of the wretched system every-
where at work. That a body of thoughtful men would
not, I am satisfied by the many representations on this
very subject personally made to me. I shall always
recollect, in particular, the private visit paid to me in one
of the great Yoruba towns by one of the leading merchants
of the place. A magnificent specimen of an African,
dressed in African costume and speaking our language
fluently, he came with the usual touching words and gifts,
and begged me very earnestly to take up the question of
dress with his compatriots.
And, in conclusion, there is another and a very serious
handicap upon Christianity in West Africa, in Southern
Nigeria especially. Under the native social system, religion
and politics — the religious organization and the political
organization — ^go together. It is inconceivable to the
native mind that they should be separate or antagonistic.
Islam, again, preserves this ingrained conviction. But in
West Africa the political and religious organizations of the
white man are separate and distinct. The religious
organization itself is split up into countless opposing
sections. And in Southern Nigeria the section specially
identified in the native mind with the white over-lord has
for some years past played a discordant note in that white
over-lord's political organization. Its representatives are
almost everywhere, and upon many subjects persistently
hostile critics of the Administration, begetting unrest and
disloyalty to Government. The mass of native opinion
concludes there is something rotten in the system pre-
sented to it, and the Islamic wave rolls on.
221
CHAPTER II
THE COTTON INDUSTRY
Is Nigeria a cotton-growing country ? Is an export
trade in cotton, of any large dimensions, a possibility —
early or remote ? I will endeavour to answer these
questions to the best of my ability. I am not, however,
an expert on cotton-growing, and I am in general sympathy
with the work the British Cotton-growing Association is
trying to carry out, although, as will be seen, I am not
entirely in agreement with aU its methods, either here or
in Nigeria. To that extent it will be possible for any
one who wants to do so to discount the views here
expressed.
One of the earliest impressions one forms out there
is the contrast between the presentation of the case at
home and conditions on the spot. The view at home
— somewhat modified by recent events — ^has seemed to
be inspired by the idea that if the number of square
miles which Nigeria covers is totted up in one column
and the number of inhabitants it supposedly contains
in another and these totals compared with conditions in
the cotton belt of North America, then you arrive at a
conclusion which enables you to speak of the " huge
possibilities " of Nigeria, and even to forecast that
Northern Nigeria alone " at some future date " will be
able " to supply the whole of the requirements of Great
Britain and to leave an equal quantity over for the
other cotton-consuming countries." Four years ago a
222
THE COTTON INDUSTRY
prominent British statesman declared publicly that
" once the fly belt near the river was passed . . . cotton
would be grown under exactly the same conditions as
it was grown under on such a great scale in America."
He went so far as to say that the native of Northern
Nigeria was " beginning to cease to grow cotton " because
he could get British manufactured goods in lieu of his
home-grown article. Well, between these statements
and actualities there is a " huge " gulf fixed. In the
first place it can be said of Nigeria that in a part of it
only is cotton now grown, and that in a part of it only
will cotton ever be grown. To talk of Nigeria, as a
whole, being a cotton-growing country par excellence,
either now or potentially, is absurd. Three-fourths of
Southern Nigeria and a third, probably more, of Northern
Nigeria are quite unsuitable for cotton-growing, and this
for many reasons. To talk of Nigeria supplying the
whole requirements of Great Britain (to say nothing of
the promised surplus) is tantamount to saying that some
day " Pleasant Sunday Afternoon " excursions to the
moon will be a regular feature of the national life. Both
may become possible " at some future date," but there is
so much future about the date that such flights of rhetoric
might well be left to the compilers of gold-mining pro-
spectuses. These extravagances have not helped the
Association. The sincere and sober persons connected
with that body are merely hindered by them. As to
cotton being produced in Northern Nigeria under the
" same conditions " as in the States, and the natives of
the country " beginning to cease " to grow cotton, one
can only remark that they are too silly to deal with.
In Southern Nigeria, the deltaic region, the Eastern
Province, virtually the whole of the Central Province, and
a considerable portion of the Western Province — i.e.,
four-fifths of the whole Protectorate — ^may be ruled out
of account as a cotton field. The deltaic region will not
223
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
produce cotton. The forest belt behind it, passing (with
occasional breaks) from dense to secondary growth and
fading away into open country, no doubt would. But
only if you cut down the forest first. To destroy the
West African forest to any extent in order to grow
cotton would be economic madness. Indeed, the Ad-
ministration is working hard to preserve the forests from
the ignorance and improvidence of primitive man, and
to build up for the native communities, and in the public
interest, a source of future revenue from the methodical
exploitation of its inexhaustible wealth. With trifling
exceptions the whole of this region is the home of the
oil-palm, the most beneficent tree in the world, and such
activities as the inhabitants can spare from their own
requirements are given over, in the main, to the palm
oil and kernel trades. It is the home of valuable cabinet
woods, of vegetable oils, gums, and rubbers, and in time
is likely to become a great natural nursery for the cultiva-
tion of plantation rubber and such a moisture-loving
plant as the cocoa ; never, I think, of cotton.
In the Western Province large areas of forest have
been destroyed ; the population is, in a certain measure,
more enterprising, and a fair amount of cotton for
export may reasonably be expected, especially, I venture
to suggest, if certain methods now prevalent are modified.
The Egba district (1869 square miles, with a population
of 260,000), the capital of which is Abeokuta, a town of
about 100,000 inhabitants, is the principal but not the
only centre for cotton-growing in the Western Province,
and here the Association has a large and well-equipped
ginnery, as it has at Ibadan and Oshogbo. Out of
2,237,370 lbs. of lint cotton exported from Southern
Nigeria in 1908, Abeokuta and neighbourhood was
responsible for 722,893 lbs. The Egbas are good farmers
and not strangers to cotton-growing for export. The
industry owes its origin there to a Manchester man, Mr.
224
THE COTTON INDUSTRY
Clegg, who introduced it at the time of the American
Civil War. In 1862 the export amounted to 1810 lbs.,
rising in 1868 to over 200,000 lbs., and continuing, I
believe, at that figure or thereabouts for some years.
Cotton then began to fall heavily in price, and the Egba
farmer, finding no profit in growing it, turned his attention
to other crops. The industry was revived on a much
larger scale by the Association in 1905. The exports
of cotton lint from Southern Nigeria from 1906 to 1910 —
i.e. since the Association came upon the scene — ^have
been as follows : —
1906
1907
1908
2,695,923
4,089,530
2,237,370
1909
1910
4,929,646
2,399,857
The total value of these five years' output amounts
to something like £350,000. It is entirely creditable to
the Association that it should have been instrumental
in reviving a decayed industry in one district and creating
one in others, and in five years to have fathered an
export of cotton to so considerable an amount. I found
the best-informed opinion in Southern Nigeria imbued
with the belief that the 191 1 crop will be a poor one,
though better than last year's, but that the prospects
for the crop of 1912 are good. The newly opened ginnery
at Oshogbo is said to be doing well. The ginnery at Oyo,
however, is apparently lying idle. At any rate, it had
done nothing, I was there informed, ever since it was put
up, some four years ago. A good deal seems to have
been spent upon the experimental plantation at Ibadan,
with indifferent results. It has now been taken over
by the Government, whose officers, I was informed, found
it in a very neglected condition.
Personally, I do not attach, in a sense unfavourable
to the growth of the industry, much importance to the
drop in the output. The field, it must always be remem-
bered, is small, the entire Western Province being only
225 Q
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
27,640 miles square, and much of it, as already stated,
covered with forest. In West Africa new industries are
always liable to violent fluctuations. The drop in the
maize export is much more considerable than the falling
off in cotton. Unfavourable seasons, too much rain or
too little, late sowing, and other considerations play a
determining part in these matters. Things move very
slowly in West Africa as a ride. The cotton crop is not
the easiest to handle. Compared with ground nuts, for
instance, it entails a great deal more time and trouble.
All kinds of obstacles have to be encountered and over-
come which people at home have difficulty in fully appre-
ciating. The experimental stage of any enterprise,
especially in a place like West Africa, is bound to leave
openings for error, and error in West Africa is a costly
luxury. The Protectorate is under considerable obliga-
tions to the Association for the good work it has done
and is doing.
It seems to me that the British Cotton-growing
Association may perhaps find it advisable, so far as the
Western Province of Southern Nigeria is concerned, to
reconsider two aspects of its policy. Fundamentally
that policy is without question sound — ^viz. the recogni-
tion that agricultural development in West Africa can
only be possible on any scale worth mentioning when
undertaken by the natives themselves. A policy of large
plantations run under white supervision by hired native
labour will not pay in West Africa, and, politically speak-
ing, is virtually impossible. The Association should
receive public support in resisting any pressure which
might be placed upon it to alter its fundamental pohcy
by those of its supporters who may be impatient of a
comparatively slow advance — slow, i.e., in comparison
with the unwise optimism displayed by some of the
Association's friends upon public platforms. I doubt,
however, if an export trade in cotton will ever reach
226
THE COTTON INDUSTRY
substantial proportions — ^let us say 100,000 bales per
annum twenty years hence — in the Western Province
unless the element of competition is introduced. Hither-
to, by combining with the merchants, the Association
has established a fixed buying price. In the initial
stages this was a good thing. The native farmer wanted
the certainty that his crop would be purchased if he were
induced to grow it. Now that the industry is well on in
its stride it may be seriously questioned whether the
Yoruba farmer, the certainty of sale notwithstanding,
will be content with the prices offered him under the
monopoly agreement now obtaining. He has always
the oil palm to fall back upon ; but he has, in addition,
cocoa and maize. Cocoa is rapidly increasing, and the
profit realized by the cultivator is a good one. The
timber trade, too, is growing slowly, and the forest is
always yielding fresh elements of trade. The bulk of
the cotton produced in the Western Province to-day is
roughly similar to " middling American," which is now
quoted, I believe, at 8d. a pound, but some of the Yoruba
cotton fetches up to ^d. above " middling American."
It is asserted by the Association that 4 lbs. of seed cotton
are required in the Western Province to produce i lb.
of lint. The native cultivator is (now) supposed to get
from the combine — i.e. from the Association and the
merchants, as the case may be — from id. to i^d. per lb.
of seed cotton. I say " supposed," because I was in-
formed that the actual producer had not always got the
amount which he was understood to be getting. As
regards Northern Nigeria, until the close of last year the
native had never been paid id. a lb. cash, and I was given
to understand that conditions had been much the same
in the Southern Protectorate, except at Ilushi, where it
was proved to my satisfaction that the amount of id.
cash had actually been paid.
The Association reckons, I understand, that at this
227
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
rate every pound of lint landed in Liverpool costs the
Association 6ld. I cannot check that figure. I merely
quote it. But one may point out, that in addition to
the profit at the present price of " middling American "
disclosed by this estimate, there must be a considerable
profit to the Association on the seed, which, upon arrival
in England, is worth, I believe, between £$ and £6 per
ton. Moreover, as already stated, some of this Yoruba
cotton is fetching a higher price than " middling Ameri-
can," and I do not think it is beyond the mark to say
that, but for the fact that the Association's ginneries are
not continuously employed, the Association's profits on
Southern Nigerian cotton to-day would be substantial.
It must be fairly obvious from what precedes that if the
industry were placed upon an ordinary commercial
footing like any other, with merchants competing on the
spot for the raw material, the Yoruba farmer would have
no difficulty in obtaining very much more than he gets
at present for his crop. Cultivation, under those circum-
stances, would become proportionately more profitable
and a greater acreage would be laid out in cotton. No
doubt it would cut both ways, the native restricting his
acreage when the price fell, but it may be fairly argued
that no special reason now exists for treating the cotton
industry on an artificial basis, that it must take its chance
like any other, and like any other become subject to
ordinary economic ups and downs. We cannot expect
the native farmer to concentrate upon one particular
crop if he can make a greater profit in cultivating another.
No industry can develop healthily on artificial lines. If
this suggestion were thought worthy of consideration,
the Association's role could be confined to ginning, and, if
asked to do so, selling on commission, or that rdle might
be combined with buying and selling in cases where the
producers preferred to deal with the Association, or
found it more convenient to carry the cotton direct to
228
THE COTTON INDUSTRY
the various ginneries. That, no doubt, would force the
Association into competition with the merchants, and the
merchants, bringing out their own gins (if it paid them to
do so), might cause the Association's position to become
precarious. The first alternative would, therefore, appear
the most desirable, the merchants being the buyers
and the Association, the ginners, and, if necessary, sellers
on commission. Each force would then be operating
within its natural orbit, and an unnatural alliance would
cease, unnatural in the sense that one price means one
market, and that one market is not an inducement to
economic expansion, especially when the price of other
tropical products produced by the Yoruba farmer with
an open free market to deal in has been steadily rising
during the last few years. The Association has always
contended that its primary object is not money making,
but the establishment in our oversea dependencies of an
Imperial cotton industry calculated in the course of time
to relieve Lancashire, in whole or in part, of her dangerous
dependence on American speculators.
The other point which those responsible for the
management of the Association might conceivably think
over, is one that impressed me in Northern Nigeria when
inspecting the beautifully kept cotton plantations in the
Kano and Zaria provinces. I was later on to find that it
was one upon which very strong, though not unanimous,
opinions were held by persons of experience and judgment
in the Southern Protectorate. A great deal of energy,
and doubtless money too, is apparently expended by
the Association in experimenting with and distributing
seeds of non-indigenous varieties of cotton. Now, al-
though one cannot say without careful cultivation,
speaking of the north, one can at least say without per-
petually improving scientific cultivation extending over
a century, Nigeria is able to produce indigenous cotton,
fetching to-day i^d., 2d., and even 3^. per lb. above
229
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
" middling American." Does not this fact constitute
the strongest of pleas for concentrating upon the im-
provement of the indigenous varieties instead of distri-
buting effort by worrying about the introduction of
exotics ? If these indigenous plants, without a century's
scientific care, can produce cotton superior in value to
" middling American," what could they not do with a
tithe of the attention which has been lavished upon the
industry in the States ? I know the experts will argue
that the indigenous varieties make a lot more wood, and
that an acre planted with American varieties will yield
much more lint than an acre planted with a Nigerian
variety. Not being an expert I would not venture to
dispute this. All that I would make bold to query
would be whether experiments tending to prove it have
in Nigeria been sufficiently continuous and carried out
under conditions of fairness to the indigenous cotton
sufficiently conclusive to place the matter beyond the
pale of discussion. Even if this were so, I am not sure
that it could be taken as an irrefutable reply to the con-
tention I have ventured to put forward. For, on the
other side, must be reckoned the diseases which invariably
attack all exotics, animal, vegetable, and human, intro-
duced into the West African forest region. At every
halt on my trek from Riga-Chikum to Kano, a matter
of twelve days, wherever I saw cotton plantations, and
often enough at points on the road, I made it my business
whenever practicable to put a number of questions to
the Sarikis (chiefs) and to individual farmers on the
subject of cotton-growing. I always prefaced these
questions with an assurance that I did not belong to the
Government and that I was not a commercial man, but
merely a Mallam (I believe my interpreter sometimes
inserted on his own account the word " wise " before
Mallam), who travelled about and wrote " books," and
that my friends could therefore feel satisfied that they
230
THE COTTON INDUSTRY
would not be causing me any pleasure at all by answering
my questions in any particular manner — ^that, in short,
I did not care a row of yams what their answer might be.
One question I never failed to ask was whether the
Government had distributed seed to that particular
village or in that particular area, and if so, what result
had followed the sowing of it ? Sometimes the answer
was in the negative. When it was in the affirmative it
was invariably the same. The Government seed had
come. It had been sown. But it was " no good." Now,
I disclaim all attributes of wisdom in this matter of cotton.
But I beg you to believe me when I say that the Hausa
farmer is no fool.*
* It is only fair to state that Mr. W. H. Himbury, of the British Cotton
Growing Association, has since pointed out, in regard to the prices fetched by
indigenous Southern Nigerian cotton (p. 227), that the prices here given only
refer to small samples and cannot be taken as indicative of the general selling
value of Southern Nigerian cotton. The official report of the Commercial
Intelligence officer of Southern Nigeria, from which the figures here given are
quoted, is thus somewhat misleading. But the correction does not appreciably
affect my general line of suggestion. Referring to the cotton grown in the
Bassa and Nassarawa provinces of Northern Nigeria, Professor Wyndham
Dunstan in his recent report states that in making a comparison of the lint for
the Liverpool market the standard employed is " Moderately rough Peruvian,
which is a grade of higher price than Middling American."
231
CHAPTER III
THE COTTON INDUSTRY — Continued
Cotton is grown extensively in parts of Northern Nigeria,
not for export — outside the Hausa provinces — ^but for
home consumption. In Kano province — 28,600 square
miles in extent with 2,500,000 inhabitants, more than
one-fourth of the total population of the Protectorate — its
cultivation is accompanied by what can, without exagge-
ration, be termed a national industry of weaving, manu-
facturing, embroidering, and dyeing the garments, both
under-garments and over-garments, which the Kano
people wear. But not the Kano people alone. For many
centuries, for nearly 1000 years probably, the Kanawa
have been famed throughout the great region comprised
between the bend of the Niger and the ocean as the expert
cotton manufacturers of Africa ; the most interesting
region in all the Dark Continent, where divers races have
ceaselessly intermingled, attracted thither by its fertile
soil and abundant pastures ; Libyan and Berber, Egyptian
and Semite, and the mysterious Fulani. Three-fourths of
the " men of the desert," too, the fierce-eyed, black-
lithamed Tuareg, descendants of the Iberians, who roam
over the vast spaces between Tripoli and the Chad,
replenish their wardrobes from the Kano looms. Through-
out Bornu, Wadai, and Baghirmi, in the northern German
Cameroons as far east as Darfur, Kano cloths hold un-
questioned sway. The Kanawa are not the only Nigerians
who manufacture cotton goods ; but they are the only
232
Wf^:-
•%
-^i^^iA:
WOMEN COTTON SPINNERS.
MEN WEAVING.
THE COTTON INDUSTRY
people among whom the industry may be truly called a
national one. Aa carried out in Kano province this in-
dustry adds dignity, interest, and wealth to the life of
the people, assists their inventive faculties, intensifies
their agricultural lore, and sustains several other branches
of industrial activity, binding in close alliance of material
interest the agriculturist and the artisan. It gives a
healthy, attractive employment to many thousand homes
— employment carried on in the free air of heaven,
beneath the bright sunshine of Africa. It has become a
part of the national life, the pride and profit of the people.
Men, women, and children participate in it, the men
clearing the ground, hoeing and sowing, the women and
children doing the picking, the women cleaning the lint
of the seeds (on flat stones), teasing, the men weaving,
tailoring, and usually, but not always, embroidering.
Woven in long, narrow strips, the manufactured article is
of remarkable durability and firmness of texture. The
predominating dye is the blue of the indigo plant, exten-
sively cultivated for the purpose, dyepits being common
all over the province. The embroidery, both in regard to
design and execution, is astonishingly handsome, and the
colours harmoniously blended. A fine specimen of a
finished riga — the outer robe covering the shoulders, with
an aperture for the head and neck, and falling in folds to
the knee — is a work of art of which any people in any
country might be proud. It is a very heavy garment,
and it is costly. But it is suitable for the cold nights and
chilly mornings, and it lasts for years.
It is impossible to separate the cultivaition of cotton
from the agricultural pursuits of the people generally.
Cotton, like cassava, onions, ochro, pepper, ground nuts,
and beans, takes its place as one of the secondary crops.
The people are primarily a people of agriculturists, raising
vast quantities of cereals year after year for home con-
sumption and export to other districts — guinea-corn and
233
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
millet, yams, maize, a little wheat. In the Kano Emirate
or division — as distinct from what is known as the Kano
province — the population is exceedingly dense, and vir-
tually the whole land is under cultivation. I have seen
nothing more remarkable in the way of cultivation either
in France or Flanders. And it is all done with the galma,
a peculiar kind of short-handled hoe, which would break
the back of an English labourer to use, but which the
Hausa will wield for hours together. The pattern of the
galma is of great antiquity. It came from ancient Egypt,
with the original inhabitants probably ; the plough,
which was used in Egjrpt when intercourse was frequent
between the valleys of the Nile and Niger, never seems to
have penetrated so far West — a curious and unexplained
fact.
Long, deep, broad, parallel ridges cover the surface of
the land, dotted here and there with magnificent specimens
of the locust-bean tree, the shea, the tamarind, and many
other varieties, under whose shade it seems a favourite
device to grow a catch crop of pepper. How does the soil
retain, year after year, its nutritive properties ? That is
the secret of the Kanawa, who from generation to genera-
tion have studied it in conjunction with the elements, as the
Niger pilots have learned to read the face of the waters and
can steer a steam launch where no white man could without
running his craft upon a sandbank, especially at low water.
That they have acquired the necessary precise knowledge
as to the time to prepare the land for sowing ; when to
sow and how to sow ; how long to let the land lie fallow ;
what soils suit certain crops ; what varieties of the same
crop will succeed in some localities and what varieties in
others ; how to irrigate the land situate in the vicinity of
the waterways and planted with secondary crops in the
dry season ; how to ensure rotation with guinea-corn,
, millet, ground nuts, and beans ; when to arrange with the
Fulani herdsmen to pasture their cattle upon the land —
234
THE COTTON INDUSTRY
so much at least the outsider interested in agricultural
problems can gauge to some extent. For miles and miles
around Kano city one passes through a smiling country
dotted with farms, riven by fine, broad native roads lined
with hedges of euphorbias and other plants.
Great care is lavished upon the cotton and cassava
plantations — ^the two chief secondary crops. When the
cotton fields are in the neighbourhood of a road, and very
often when they are not, they are surrounded by tall
fencing, eight to ten feet in height, usually composed of
reeds and grass or guinea-corn stalks, to protect them from
the depredations of cattle, sheep, and goats, all of which
abound. In April and May, with the advent of the early
rains, the land is cleared and hoed into furrows and ridges.
Along the ridges drills are made at a distance of two and a
half to three feet apart, the seed dropped in, and the ridge
hoed up. In some districts, however, this custom is
varied by the ridges being made after the sowing. The
water lies in the hollows between the ridges, prevents the
seeds from being washed away by the torrential downpour,
and allows air to circulate freely, thus keeping the plants
in a healthy state. A month later, when the plants have
grown to a foot or more, the ground is again hoed. That
is the first sowing. With variations according to localities
there are successive sowings up to July and even August.
The success of these late sowings depends very much upon
the extent to which the land has been previously manured.
Conditions are slightly different with the variety of cotton
grown, but as a rule the plants are in a fit condition for
picking about five months after sowing. December,
January, March, and April appear to be the months when
cotton is most abundant in the markets. In November
and December of last year I observed that while in some
of the fields the pods were bursting well and picking
beginning, in others they were still in full flower ; in others, ,
again, they had not reached the flowering stage. Speaking
235
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
generally, the plantations were in excellent condition, and
the absence of weeds would have done credit to an up-to-
date British farmer. But the difference in vigour of plant
growth was very marked — affected, doubtless, by locality
and manuring or the lack of it. One of the finest planta-
tions I saw was at Gimmi, to the north of Zaria province,
and the intelligent sariki (chief) of that village informed
me that his people not infrequently treated the plant as a
perennial up to the third year, when it was plucked up. I
subsequently ascertained that in the Hadeija division of
the Kano province, where the soil has a good underlying
moisture, the perennial treatment is carried on sometimes
for no less than seven years. After the third year the
annual crop decreases. When so treated the plant is
invariably manured.
I found it exceedingly difficult to obtain reliable
figures as to the average yield of cotton per acre in any
one district, or the average acreage under cultivation ;
and the Residents share the view that only continuous
residence in the country by a Hausa-speaking (that is
essential) European expert in constant and close touch
with the farmers will permit of anything approaching
exact information being acquired on the point. In the
Katagum division of Kano province an acre is said to
produce an average of 266 lbs. The average annual
acreage under cotton in Katsina is said to be 16,000 acres.
In Zaria province the soil, which is a sandy clay, the
subsoil being reached at six inches, is generally rather
poor, and the farmer is not so great an expert as his Kano
colleague. In some places it is so poor that one hundred
plants are said to be required to produce a single riga.
In the true cotton-farming districts of the northern part
of the province — such as Soba, Gimba, and Dillaya — the
soil is, however, very much better, obtaining more
moisture than the higher ground of Kano province and
producing even finer cotton. Broadly, the problem
236
THE COTTON INDUSTRY
which faces the native farmer in Zaria province is how
to increase the fertiUty of his land. Artificial chemical
manuring is out of the question ; the rains would wash
it all out of the soil. Green manuring is well understood
but might be improved. The introduction of one or two
shallow ploughs might work wonders by showing the
farmers how the subsoil could be broken up, but the
experiment would have to be carefully demonstrated.
The native is only affected by actual demonstration, and,
so far, demonstrations inspired by Europeans designed
to show the Hausa farmer how to improve his agricultural
systems have done little more than provoke a smile.
The white man has failed where the black man has
succeeded, because the white man thought he knew
local conditions and did not. A Government experimental
farm was started at Maiganna rather late last year, the
sowings being made in July, if I remember rightly, seven-
teen miles from Zaria city. This is an excellent initiative
which it is to be hoped will be maintained. It is really
Government work. The British Cotton-growing Asso-
ciation should be spared all expense of this kind. Two
varieties indigenous to the southern provinces (Bassa and
Ilorin) and " Nyassaland upland " were planted. I was
told last November by the official in charge that the
indigenous varieties were doing fairly well, but that the
" Nyassaland " was suffering from red-leaf. The British
Cotton-growing Association was then about to put up
a large and costly ginnery at Zaria. The operation is
proceeding, and a substantial quantity of cotton has
already been bought. I will refer to that later on.
Meantime I cannot help thinking that it might have been
.better to have waited a little and set up the ginnery at
Kano. However, this is merely a personal opinion.
The chief varieties of indigenous cotton grown in
the Kano province are three in number. The first is
known under the four following names — gundi, hagwandara.
237
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
lutua, or mailaushi ; the second as chukwi or lahai.
These two are the best kinds, their quaUty being about
the same. The third is called yerkarifi or yergeri. It is
of an inferior quality with a shorter staple, usually but
not always grown where the soil is not naturally rich
enough to support the other kinds. It is the yerkarifi
variety, I gathered, which is more often used as a perennial.
It fetches a lower price on the local markets and takes a
month longer to mature. Cotton plants are fairly free
from insect pests, but the following are identified :
the cotton boll worm [tsutsa), what is described, doubt-
fully, as an ant which attacks the root {zago), and two
species of blight [makau and madi). The native remedy,
apart from constant hoeing, is to light a fire to windward,
upon which the dried leaves of a certain plant, and also
dried fish, are thrown. The question of indigenous
versus exotic varieties here crops up again. One hears
talk of flooding the country with exotic seed and doing
away altogether with the indigenous varieties. I refer
to Zaria, where some five hundred bags of exotic seed —
or at least non-local seed — were distributed this spring
after a palaver with the Emir and his principal headmen.
No doubt it may be all right. From the non-expert point
of view it seems dangerous. As already stated, African
insect life fastens with relentless savagery upon exotic
plant life, just as it revels in nice fresh blood out from
Europe. One season's failure with an exotic or non-
local variety, sown by instructions of the Emir's headmen
in lieu of the indigenous kind, might create a prejudice
in the native's mind that it would take years to remove.
Concentration upon improving the fertility of the soil,
and therefore the quality and quantity of the local
varieties (combined, of course, with seed selection)
would be a slower process. It is just possible that it
might be a wiser one.
The distribution of the cotton now grown in Zaria
238
THE COTTON INDUSTRY
and Kano provinces is as follows : Zaria is visited by
the weavers (or their representatives) of Kano and of
French territory — from the neighbourhood of Zinder
principally. They buy up between them virtually the
whole crop, importing live stock and manufactured goods,
which they dispose of in the markets for silver coin,
buying with that coin the cotton. What is not taken
by the Zinder people is taken by Kano. The Kano
division of the Kano province consumes all the cotton
it grows. So does the Katagum division. The Katsina
division exports a percentage to Kano and consumes the
rest. The soil of this division compares unfavourably with
that of Kano, except in the southern district, where it is
even better than in Kano. In this district cotton-growing
forms the principal means of livelihood of the inhabitants.
The total annual output of the Kano province is estimated
at about 5200 tons — 3500 from the Kano division, 1000
from the Katsina division, 700 from Katagum- Hadeij a.
But these figures are mere estimates, and not over-
reliable at that. The country is too extensive and the
British occupation too recent to permit of accuracy in
such matters at present. I was unable to obtain even
an estimate of the Zaria output, which is, of course, very
much lower — probably about one-fifth, or less than that
at Kano.
As already remarked, the whole of the crop now grown
is used by the local industry (except the Association's
purchases this year, which I will refer to in a
moment). So far this industry not only shows no signs
of decreasing, but the demand, especially from the
southern markets is, I was told, steadily increasing.
The advent of the railway may, apart from the
activities of the Association, modify the situation ap-
preciably through the increasing influx of Manchester
goods. As well-being increases — and up to a certain
point it is doing and will do so as the result of
239
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
our occupation — the consumption of Manchester goods
will doubtless increase, but it does not altogether follow
that the output of the native looms will decrease. It
is curious that the Kano weavers themselves think that
the railway will enlarge their market. I was informed
that the natives of the south, who have been in touch
with Manchester cotton goods for many years, very much
prefer the Kano cloths, which although dearer, are much
more durable. In the north I heard frequent complaints
of the quality of the Manchester goods imported. Many
of them, so I was told, were much too thin, and so heavily
starched that on the first washing they became thread-
bare and useless. I saw nothing on sale in the markets
from Manchester suited for the early and late hours of
the day. Cheap prints are all very well for the hot
hours of the late morning and afternoon. But the people
require warmer garments than that. I used to strike
camp when trekking at about 5 a.m. or 5.30 a.m., and at
that time, and for a couple of hours afterwards, I was
glad of two sweaters over a khaki shirt, riding. When
the sun goes down it is equally chilly. The robes worn
by the better-class natives are of a consistency and weight
which would astonish us here.
I am persuaded that the British Cotton-growing
Association is in every way worthy of support, that its
ideal is a fine one and a patriotic one, and that the West
African dependencies of Southern and Northern Nigeria
are very much indebted to it. At the same time I should
not be giving honest expression to the views I have
rightly or wrongly formed if I did not enter a caveat
against any Government action calculated to undermine
or destroy the weaving industry of the Kano province.
That industry may disappear as the result of natural
causes. But nothing should be done by the Adminis-
tration to assist its decay. Frankly, I am compelled to
state that from the standpoint of the happiness and
240
THE COTTON INDUSTRY
welfare of these Hausa people, our wards, the disappear-
ance of their national industry would be deplorable. It
would lower their outlook and stunt their development,
and send them down in the scale of civilization. Their
intelligence is of an order which would enable them under
tuition to advance their methods of production beyond
the hand-loom. While the duty of the Administration
to lend its moral support, as it is doing, from the Governor,
Sir Henry Hesketh Bell (who is most interested in this
question) downwards, to any legitimate effort directed
at increasing the area of cotton under cultivation, in-
creasing the yield per acre by improving the fertility of
the soil, facilitating communication and the accessibility
of markets, is unquestioned, I submit that there is an
equally clear call of duty on its part to encourage rather
than discourage an indigenous industry of great antiquity,
of wonderful promise, which is at once a source of profit
to, and an elevating influence in, the life of the people of
the land.
I have now endeavoured to sketch the chief factors
to be considered in estimating the possibilities of a
substantial export trade in raw cotton from Northern
Nigeria. There remains to be examined the question
of price and of competing articles of production. The
British Cotton-growers Association's debut at Zaria has
been attended with no little success. They bought this
season, I believe, something like 60,000 lbs. of cotton, a
considerable proportion of which, I am informed, came from
the Katsina division of Kano. Whilst the Association's
buyers, lent to its representative by the authorities,
could not compete in price with the Kano and Zinder
buyers in the big markets, they competed successfully
with them in the remoter small markets of the province
which buyers from the native weaving interest do not
usually visit.
I hope I shall not be thought desirous of " crabbing '*
241 R
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
the Association's efforts or minimising what they have
accomplished if I venture to point out that there would
be some danger — of which the Association is doubtless
aware — in drawing too definite conclusions from these
first and satisfactory results. The taxes fell due in Zaria
province at the time of the maturing of the crop, and the
growers were anxious for cash to meet them. The Emir
of Katsina is a very intelligent man and wishful of en-
couraging in every way he can any desires he deems the
Government to entertain. His influence would be di-
rected to giving a tangible proof of his interest and good-
will. This desire would be shared by his people, by whom
he is personally respected. It would be unwise, however,
to imagine that Katsina farmers will permanently be
willing to send their cotton all the way to Zaria for xd.
per lb., when in the ordinary run of things they can get
as much, if not more, than id. from the native weaving
interest. If the cotton were bought on the spot the
farmers might be willing to sell at id. The question of
price is bound to play an important part in the interesting
developments which have now begun. Taking year in
year out, the local price of cotton in Zaria and Kano
varies from i^d. to 2d. per lb. in the seed. In Zaria last
November and December it varied from i|i. to 2d. In
Kano it kept at 2d. throughout November, December,
and part of January, having fallen from 2^d. in September.
In the latter part of January it fell temporarily to id.
It went up again to 2d. in February. The bright side
consists in the possibility — the probability, perhaps —
that the knowledge of a permanent and unlimited market
at a fixed price, albeit a low one, in their midst will incline
farmers to patronize that market (and increase their
acreage), assuring them as it does of an immediate sale.
Personally, I cannot but think that the Association will
have to put up its price if it is to obtain substantial
quantities. Competition here, as in Southern Nigeria,
242
THE COTTON INDUSTRY
would undoubtedly tend to increase production, but I
believe that the advent of the European merchant to
Zaria and Kano is to be characterized by the same
arrangement as I have already commented upon in
Southern Nigeria. There is, of course, what there is not
in Southern Nigeria, an element of competition in the
Northern provinces — viz. the native weaving interest —
and the play of these two forces, if both are allowed a
fair field, will, no doubt, have a stimulating effect in
itself.
Another element comes in here which is worthy of
note. I refer to the price of foodstuffs. Everywhere
the price of foodstuffs is growing with our occupation
of the country. Round the main highways and large
markets it has risen enormously in the past eighteen
months. In one part of the Niger province the native
farmer now reckons upon getting, I was informed, ;^8 to
£io per acre out of yams. Cotton at id. per lb. would
bring him in from £3 to £4. That is rather an extreme
case, I admit, nor does the whole country produce yams,
and the farmers generally do not appear yet to have
fully grasped the economic importance for them of the
increased demand for foodstuffs. On the other hand,
it is, of course, true that the sowing of cotton between
the ordinary food crops is not uncommon.
I have thought it well to describe the position just as
I read it, and to make certain suggestions, the outcome
of personal observation and discussion on the spot. It
may well be that in certain respects I have read the
situation wrong and that the suggestions made are faulty.
Prediction at the present time, I am convinced, must be
largely made in the dark, and they are no friends of the
British Cotton-growing Association who describe the
outlook in Nigeria in " high falutin' " terms. It is too
soon to say how matters will develop. That development
will in any case be slow may be taken for granted. The
243
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
Administration is in urgent need of a properly equipped
agricultural department with at the head of it the very
best man that money can secure.
Reviewing the whole situation, the only definite
conclusions I have been able to arrive at in my own mind
are — ^first, that all attempts at giving an artificial basis
to cotton production in the Nigerias will, in the long run,
defeat its own ends; secondly, that by some means or
other the price paid to the native farmer must be raised
if any extension of the industry worth talking about is
to be looked for. Everywhere in Northern Nigeria,
whether the personal view inclines to optimism or pessi-
mism, I found the officials without exception deeply
interested in and anxious to assist in every way the effort
to build up an export industry in cotton, and fully per-
suaded of the great importance and value of the work of
the Association.
244
CHAPTER IV
THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC IN SOUTHERN NIGERIA
Apart from religious questions there is probably no sub-
ject upon which it is more difficult to secure reasonable
discussion and study than the subject of drink ; none
upon which it is more easy to generalize, or which lends
itself more readily to prejudice and misunderstanding of
the real points at issue. That moral reformers in England
and elsewhere should feel strongly about drink is natural
enough. A considerable proportion of the population of
this country, of France, Germany, Belgium, and other
European States live wretched and unhealthy lives.
They are over-worked, under-fed, herded in insanitary
tenements with insufficient space, ventilation, and light,
under conditions which preclude decency and breed moral
and physical diseases. Their horizon is one dead, uniform,
appalling greyness from birth to death. Who can feel
surprise that people thus situated should seek momentary
forgetfulness in drink ? The drink problem in Europe is
not a cause but an effect. The cause lies deep down in the
failure-side of our civilization, and statesmen worthy of
the name are grappling with it everywhere. Those of us
who think we see beyond an effect, are striving to prevent
the reproduction in tropical Africa of this failure-side of
our civilization. We are striving to maintain the economic
independence of the West African ; to ensure him a
permanency of free access to his land ; to preserve his
healthy, open-air life of agriculturist and trader, his
245
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
national institutions, his racial characteristics and his
freedom. We are endeavouring to show him to the people
of Europe, not as they have been taught by long years of
unconscious misrepresentation to regard him, but as he
really is. We feel that if we can protect the West African
from the profounder economic and social perils which
encompass him on every side ; from the restless individual-
ism of Europe ; from unfair economic pressure threatening
his free and gradual development on his own lines ; from
the disintegrating social effects of well-meaning but often
wrongly informed and misdirected philanthropic effort ;
from political injustice — ^that if we are able to accomplish
this even in small measure, the question of drink, while
requiring attention, becomes one of secondary importance.
The West African has always been a moderate drinker.
From time immemorial he has drunk fermented liquors
made from various kinds of corn, and from different kinds
of palm trees. It is not a teetotal race, as the North
American race was. It is a strong, virile race, very
prolific.
Unfortunately this question of drink has been given a
place in the public mind as regards Southern Nigeria alto-
gether disproportionate to the position it does, and should,
hold. It has been erected for many sincere, good people into
a sort of fetish, obscuring all the deeper issues arising from
the impact upon the West African of civilization at a time
when civilization has never been so feverishly active, so
potent to originate vast changes in a few short years. The
temperance reformer in England strikes, often blindly, at
" drink " anywhere and everywhere on the same principle,
utterly oblivious to physiological and climatic differences ;
he cannot see beyond or behind the subject which specially
interests him and which has become his creed. The use
of intoxicants of some kind is common to humanity all
over the world. It responds to a need of the human body.
Christ Himself did not condemn its use, since He Himself,
246
THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC IN SOUTHERN NIGERIA
the Sacred Writings tell us, changed water into wine at a
marriage feast. Excessive indulgence in liquor, like in-
dulgence in any other form of human appetite, is a human
failing. It is not the drink which is an evil, but the abuse
of it. The abuse of liquor nine times out of ten is the
outcome of social discomfort and unhappiness, a way of
escape, like a narcotic, from the pangs of conscience, or of
misery. People who concentrate merely upon effects are
unsound guides when constructive measures are required.
The temperance reformer in England approaches the
question of drink in West Africa from the subjective point
of view which characterizes the home outlook upon most
questions lying outside the home latitudes. Saturated
with his home experience, the English temperance re-
former places the West African in the same economic and
social setting as the European and argues on parallel lines.
To that mode of reasoning, three-fourths of the evils which
civilization has inflicted upon coloured races may be
traced. Nothing is more curious or more saddening to
observe than the unfailing success of such methods of
thought translated into public action, in their effect upon
home sentiment. Consumption sweeping through the
ranks of a coloured people as the consequence of the
educationary and religious processes of Europeanism may
make a holocaust of human victims. The public remains
indifferent. European marriage laws ; European ethics,
or nominal ethics, in the matter of sex relationship ; the
European individualistic social system grafted upon the
communal life of a coloured people — these things may
produce widespread human misery and immorality. The
public is cold and unconcerned. European interference
and innovation in social customs and usages essential to
the well being, to the political and racial needs of a
coloured people in one stage of development, but repug-
nant to European twentieth-century notions, may cause
social disturbance and widespread anarchy which those
247
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
who are responsible for such interference can never them-
selves witness, let alone suffer from. It is virtually im-
possible to arouse popular interest. For these and kindred
disasters are very largely brought about by the unin-
structed zeal of God-fearing, Christian men and women in
Europe who judge other countries by their own, other
peoples by their own people, other needs by their own
needs, with the best of intentions and with the purest of
motives ; and outside a small band of students, ethno-
logists and experienced officials, the public mind is
scandalized and even incensed if any one ventures to doubt
the excellent results necessarily flowing from disinterested
action. It is disinterested : therefore it must be right.
That is the popular belief and the general fallacy.
Poor Mary Kingsley, who knew her West Africa as few
have ever known it and who had the true scientific mind,
fought hard against this ingrained characteristic of the
Anglo-Saxon temperament. But she fought in vain.
Despite her charity, the geniality and the humour in which
she clothed her truths, she had against her the whole
weight of what is called the philanthropic school of home
opinion, responsible for so much good and yet for so much
unconscious harm.
" The stay at home statesman," she once said, " think that Africans
are all awful savages or silly children — people who can only be dealt
with on a reformatory, penitentiary Une. This view, you know, is
not mine . . . but it is the view of the statesmen and the general
public and the mission public in African affairs."
And again : —
" The African you have got in your mind up here, that you are
legislating for and spending millions in trying to improve, doesn't
exist ; your African is a fancy African. . . . You keep your fancy
African and I wish you joy of him, but I grieve more than I can say
for the real African that does exist and suffers for all the mistakes you
make in dealing with him through a dream thing, the fiend-child
African of your imagination. Above all, I grieve for the true negro
people whose home is in the West Coast ....
248
THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC IN SOUTHERN NIGERIA
1
No, you cannot excite public interest in these matters.
But niention the Hquor trade, describe the Nigerian as an
infant in brain, incapable of self-control, down whose
throat wicked merchants are forcibly pouring body and
soul destroying drink which a wicked Administration
taxes in order to raise revenue. PubUc sentiment responds
with alacrity. It becomes at once a popular cry, and the
most inconceivable distortions of native character and
native life pass muster. Oppose that view and it will be a
miracle if you emerge with any shred of reputation you
may once have possessed. Stones from episcopal cata-
pults will whistle round your ears. Scribes, utterly
ignorant of the country whose inhabitants they portray in
an absurdly false light, and who make their living by going
shuddering around in professional temperance circles, will
hint darkly that somewhere in the dim back of beyond
your attitude is dictated by personal interest. A certain
type of missionary will denounce you from the housetops,
ransack the Bible for quotations to describe the extent
of your fall from grace, and end up by praying the Almighty
for the salvation of your soul. You will be described as a
man who cynically ministers to the degradation of the
negro. People who believed in you will ponder sadly over
your moral declension. You may consider yourself lucky
if your best friend does not cut you in the street. To
disparage the Administration, to describe the English
gentlemen who serve it in Nigeria as callous onlookers
while a people sinks down before them in ruin and decay ;
to paint the sober Nigerian as a drunken brute — all this
is permissible. But the deafening clamour which arises,
the protesting and outraged indignation which obtains if
a humble voice is heard to deny the accuracy, and to
resent, in the public interest, these sweeping charges
against White and Black alike, beggars description. You
find yourself denounced to the whole world as a cruel
libeller of godly men, and much else besides. It would be
249
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
humorous if it were not pathetic, because amidst all this
froth and fury the vital problems arising out of European
contact with West Africa are obscured, and a force which,
instructed and directed in the right way, might be of
untold benefit is wasted on a sterile issue.
The onslaught upon Southern Nigeria in the matter of
the liquor traffic carried on by that sincere, but tactless,
misinformed and pugnacious cleric. Bishop Tugwell, and
the bulk of his assistants in West Africa, aided by the
Native Races and Liquor Traffic United Committee at
home, is a typical example of the harm which lack of
perspective and muddle-headedness can do to a good
cause. The liquor traffic is common to the whole of West
Africa and requires constant and vigilant attention. For
more than a century, long before the bulk of the coast line
was occupied by the Powers in a political sense, spirits had
been exported to West Africa from Europe together with
cotton goods, woollen goods, beads, ironware, hardware,
haberdashery, perfumery, salt, tobacco and a host of
other articles. At first the trade was untaxed. As
European political influence extended, the various Ad-
ministrations found it necessary to control the traffic by
placing an import duty upon spirits at the port of entry.
In this policy Great Britain has always led ; the other
Powers have always lagged. When interior penetration
from the coast began and the scramble for Western Africa
was well on its way. Great Britain's influence was respon-
sible for the proposal that the import should be prohibited
beyond a certain geographical limit interiorwards. Thus
Northern Nigeria was excluded from the accessible zone of
European spirit import. By general consent the trade
has been looked upon as a potential danger, if unregulated,
and nowhere has the determination to prevent it from
becoming an active evil been so clearly recognized as in
Southern Nigeria ; by successive increases of duty, and,
as I shall show, by so adjusting taxation as virtually to
250
THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC IN SOUTHERN NIGERIA
penalize spirits of high potency in favour of spirits of
weak strength. The Governor-General of French West
Africa, M. Ponty, told me only last autumn at Dakar, how
he desired to bring the French duties up to the British
level, and what difficulties he was experiencing in doing so.
Now the existence of a permanent, outside influence,
whatever its origin, directed at encouraging the Adminis-
tration in this course could only be to the good. While
differences of opinion must exist as to the relative impor-
tance of the matter compared with other problems of
administration, I have met no one who would not regard
a policy of letting in spirits free, as wrong. I have met
no one who is not convinced that it is right to tax the trade
just as high as it can be taxed, up to the point, that is,
when people will still buy and not be driven to illicit
distilling, which in the West African forest could not be
suppressed. If Bishop Tugwell and his friends had con-
centrated upon the potentiality of the danger, and had
given every help and assistance to the Administration to
cope with it, supplying the Administration with such infor-
mation as they might possess of a specific, controllable,
accurate character, it would have been difficult to over-
estimate their usefulness from this particular point of
view.
But the course they have been pursuing for the last
few years has been quite different. It has been so illogical,
so lacking in judgment and sobriety, and so pronouncedly
foolish and unjust, as to disgust every fair-minded man
who has looked into the facts for himself. Instead of
common -sense and reasonable debate, there has been
violent and senseless denunciation accompanied by the
grossest misstatements. The Administration, urged per-
petually to increase the tax, has been cursed with bell,
book and candle for the automatic result in swelling the
proceeds of revenue derived from these increases. What
was demanded as a moral duty has, in its inevitable result,
251
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
been stigmatized as a crime, and the very men who
clamoured for more taxes, have denounced the effect of
them. A trade forming from time immemorial, as already
stated, part of the general barter trade of the West Coast
has become identified in the public mind with a particular
British dependency, the very one where ofl&cial vigilance
has been specially exercised. A difficult and complicated
economic and fiscal problem has been handled in so unin-
telligent a manner that it has degenerated into systematic
and silly abuse of British officials, who have no more to do
with the existence of the traflftc than has the Duke of West-
minster who presides over the Native Races and Liquor
Traffic United Committee. These officials of ours, some
of whose difficulties I have attempted to portray, have
actually been accused — nay, are still being — of encourag-
ing the trade in every possible way, of forcing it upon the
people, of thriving on the drinking habits of the native.
Fanaticism has even gone the length of stating that they
are " financially interested " in the trafftc, as though they
received a percentage from Government on the revenue
derived from taxing the article ! The very Commission
which Lord Crewe sent out to investigate the charges
persistently brought, has been assailed with unmeasured
vituperation for the crime of having rendered a truthful
report on the evidence produced, and the public at home
has been asked to believe that these Commissioners, the
Political and Judicial Staff of the Protectorate, the Medical
Staff, the Roman Catholic missionaries * — the most numer-
ous in the Protectorate — together with prominent natives
and independent outside witnesses as well, are either
deliberate perjurers or incompetent observers ; although
the accusers' testimony was hopelessly, even pitifully,
inadequate when brought to the test of public examination
and inquiry. In an official pamphlet issued by the Native
* And some of the Wesleyans — notably the Superintendent of the Wesleyan
Missions in Southern Nigeria, the Rev. Oliver Gritten.
252
THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC IN SOUTHERN NIGERIA
Races Committee the statements of Sir Mackenzie Chal-
mers, the Chairman of the Commission, as recorded in the
minutes of evidence, have been reproduced in mutilated
form, presumably in order to carry conviction of his bias
with the public. Those who can stoop to such methods
do irreparable injury to a good cause. What in its origin
was undoubtedly a movement of a genuine philanthropic
character, has been converted into an agitation which has
so incensed authorized Native opinion, that Mr. Sapara
Williams, the leading Native member of the Legislative
Council of Southern Nigeria and a fearless critic of the
Government, found it necessary to voice the feelings of the
community in the following vigorous language uttered in
the Legislative Council itself : —
" I must say that I believe every unofficial member and every
member of the community of these countries feel bound to say that
the majority of the statements made by Bishop Tugwell are untrue.
It is a slander on the Administration, a slander on the gentlemen who
sit here, and a slander on the general public ; and for a man in Bishop
Tugwell's position as the head of the Church here — namely, a Church
which always makes it a boast amongst the native communities of its
connection as being in communion with the great Church of England —
to go before the British pubUc and endeavour, by means of gross
misrepresentations and statements which are absolutely incorrect
and palpably false on the face of them, to enlist their sympathy and
induce them to support a noble cause, is not only detrimental to the
good cause itself, but also to the progress of Christianity and missionary
work in these countries. ... If Bishop Tugwell will talk of something
else, instead of this persistent indulging in calumny and malignity
simply to promote the movement against the Liquor Traffic it would,
perhaps, be better for the interest of this Colony and Protectorate,
and the welfare of the Church, and of the mission work in Western
Equatorial Africa under him. I say that, to my thinking, these mis-
statements are made deliberately with a view to influence subscriptions
towards the various branches of his many diocesan funds, a course
clearly opposed to the true principles of Christianity, inconsistent with
the high purpose and professions of his caUing and the dignity of his
office."
I am not concerned with Mr. Williams' views, but nothing
could be more significant than this speech — and it is not
the only Native protest which has been made in the
253
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
Southern Nigeria Legislative Council — coming from a
native in Mr. Williams' position, a Christian and a total
abstainer. The Native Races Committee has been singu-
larly ill led. It has identified itself completely with
extremists whose looseness of statement, whose persistency
in statistical and other errors, and whose extraordinary
lack of judgment were so painfully apparent when they
testified before the Commission of Inquiry. It is matter
for regret that divines of high position in this country and
Members of Parliament have plunged into the fray without
exercising sufficient caution before allying themselves to
a campaign conducted on lines inconsistent with accuracy
and fair play.
The literature on this subject is enormous, and several
chapters would be needed to follow it in any detail. I
propose, however, to summarize certain points.
First. The statements as to race demoralization and
deterioration, of decrease of energy for labour ; of decrease
in other branches of trade ; of an increase in crime and
decrease of population as the result of the spirit trade,
have been totally disproved. They have, indeed, been
officially dropped by the Native Races Committee.
Secondly. The allegations as to the evil quality of the
liquor imported have also been disproved and dropped by
the Committee. Thirdly. By a system of sur-taxes upon
the higher forms of alcohol initiated by Sir Walter Egerton,
the character of the Southern Nigerian spirit trade has
been revolutionized for good in the last six years. The
system inaugurated in 1905 imposed, over and above the
general duty, a sur-tax of ^d. for every degree or part of a
degree in excess of I2'4 under proof. This sur-tax was
successively raised until it reached its present figure of 2^d.,
with the result that while five years ago nearly 60 per cent,
of the total spirits imported varied in strength from
between 45 degrees and 55 degrees Tralles, to-day some-
thing like 90 per cent, of the total spirits imported are
254
THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC IN SOUTHERN NIGERIA
just under 40 degrees Tralles, i.e. 28 per cent, under
proof.
Fourthly. Not only is the general trade {i.e. the trade
in cotton goods, hardware, etc.) increasing at a far greater
ratio than the spirit trade, but the amount of alcohol
imported into the Protectorate is actually decreasing,
notwithstanding the enormous development of general
trade and the steady opening up of the country to which
the former is largely due. Here are the figures. They are
official and their accuracy has been endorsed by the Secre-
tary of State —
Gallons of Alcohol
Years
Totals
Annual average
1902-04
8,947,000
2,982,332
1905-07
8,746,000
2,915,333
1908-10
8,626,000
2,875,333
Fifthly. The population of Southern Nigeria, according
to the 191 1 census, is 7,750,000. It is believed to be, and
probably is, much greater. Thus on the basis of estimated
population the consumption of alcohol per head works out
at a fraction over one quarter of a gallon. It is, of course,
not nearly so great, and this for several reasons. The
alcohol imported is not all drunk, to begin with. A great
deal of it is stored, sometimes for years, as banked wealth.
A great deal of it, in the Central Province and to some
extent in the Eastern Province, circulates continuously as
a sort of barter currency. This system, a purely native
one (in certain regions cloth and tobacco are also used as
currency) will gradually fade away with the increased
circulation of silver coin. Then, again, a good deal of it is
wasted, poured out on the ground as libations to the gods ;
how much it is impossible to say.
I will now conclude with a consideration of what other
steps may be possible to adopt with a view to further
controlling the traffic. The policy of the Native Races
Committee and of Bishop Tugwell and his friends has
apparently changed. Up to the time of the Commission
255
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
of Inquiry they alternated between a demand for higher
duties, and prohibition. Some years ago a deputation
waiting upon Mr. Chamberlain put forward a request for a
4s. duty per Imperial gallon. The duty to-day is 5s. per
Imperial gallon, apart from the sur-taxes already referred
to. " Total prohibition " was officially demanded by the
Native Races Committee shortly before the Commission
was appointed. The Committee has now dropped the
demand for total prohibition, which does not prevent
Bishop Tugwell's friends and coadjutors from continuing
to denounce the Administration and describe the ravages
of the traffic in lurid terms up and down the country.
That the demand for prohibition has been abandoned is
significant. Coupled with a cessation of the abusive
tactics it would indicate the beginning of wisdom. That
the latter continue suggests the possibility that the demand
for prohibition will be or may be revived. The only
concrete demands now put forward by the official spokes-
men of the Committee {vide the deputation to Mr. Harcourt
in July) are (i) an international conference ; (2) what is
described as a system of local option. That is the some-
what feeble conclusion to the raging, tearing propaganda
of the last ten years.
How the Native Races Committee can reconcile it
with the furious attacks upon all and sundry in which they
have indulged is not my affair. At any rate, it is a con-
fession of constructive impotence. And for this reason.
International conferences on this subject are held regu-
larly every few years, and much portentous talk is indulged
in by grave gentlemen sitting round a table. As a matter
of fact, Britain, as already stated, leads in the matter of
high duties and adjustment of duties to strike at spirits of
higher potency. We have difficulty, which is perennial,
in getting the other Powers to agree to our level. At the
present moment the duty levied in the French territory of
Dahomey, which borders Southern Nigeria, is much lower
256
THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC IN SOUTHERN NIGERIA
than ours, and smuggling is the result. Therefore, what-
ever good a Conference may do, that good will affect
foreign territory, not Southern Nigeria. As a practical
policy the international conference is, thus, devoid of
import so far as Southern Nigeria is concerned. " Local
option " is largely a catch word which appeals to the
public — always influenced by the subjective point of view.
What is really meant by it is that a native community
should be given the option of not buying spirits. But it
has that option now ! The native community of Ibadan
and of Abeokuta stopped buying spirits three years ago
for several months on end, because the people objected to
a licensing duty, which naturally put up the price of
spirits and was an innovation entirely foreign to the native
mind. Any native community in Southern Nigeria is
free, to-day, to buy or not to buy spirits, or cotton goods
or tobacco or anything else. But a native community
consists not of one Chief, but of a Paramount Chief or
King (when the native state form has developed to that
extent which, in the Eastern Province, for example, is not
yet the case), a number of ordinary Chiefs with their
councillors, and the people. It is one thing for a Native
community to make up its mind not to buy spirits. It is
quite a different thing for a Chief to impose his caprice,
which may be purely temporary in its action, upon his
people. If, for example, we suppose a Chief desirous to
please the missionaries in his locality, or objecting to the
present high price of imported spirits and wishing to pull
it down, or for some other reason, forbidding his people to
buy spirits ; then the Administration would be clearly in
the wrong in supporting that Chief if his views did not
coincide with the views of his people. Such action would
amount to coercion and interference with the liberties of
the people themselves. The Chief so acting would be
violating native law and assuming the powers of a dic-
tator, which in Southern Nigeria under the native system
257 s
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
of rule he does not possess. He could only do so
backed by the British Administration, and in back-
ing him the British Government would be making
native rule impossible and inciting to disturbance and
turmoil.
The Native Races Committee's suggestions carry us
then no further. The alternative line of action I suggest
is the following : —
The liquor traffic in Southern Nigeria (as everywhere else in Western
Africa), must be carefully watched.
It is not now an active evil in Southern Nigeria. It need never
become one if certain things are done.
Those things are —
A. Frequent analyses of the imported article. Severe punishment
if bad stuff is going in.
B. Continuation of the legislation, consistently followed since
1905, of taxing, over and above the general tax, higher
degrees of alcohohc strength 'pro rata. Perhaps pursuing
that still further by prohibiting altogether the importation
of liquor above a certain strength.
C. Keeping duties to the level of safety, raising them whenever
possible, but never so highly that the population will altogether
cease to buy, and take to distilling, which by the pot-still
process is the easiest thing in the world.
D. Not permitting the proportion which the spirit trade now
bears to the general trade to increase — that means watching,
and increasing the duty when possible. At every sign of
the present proportion being increased, another increase of
duty should be made.
E. Restricting, if possible, the present proportion, by degrees
either by the policy of successive increases of duty ; or by
an arrangement with the merchants (very difficult to bring
about, owing to the advent of new firms ; but not, perhaps,
impossible), whereby they would be precluded from exceeding
in the spirit branch of their trade a certain fixed proportion
to their general trade turn-over — the imports of each firm
being calculated on a basis which would establish a decrease
in the total volume of the spirit trade. This arrangement,
if it were possible, would have, really, the same effect as
judicious increases of duty, by making the imported article
dearer.
F. The creation of a sitting committee in Lagos — sitting and
permanent — the members of which would be gazetted and
paid a small salary : with two branches, one in the Central
and one in the Eastern Province, and (if necessary) with
258
THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC IN SOUTHERN NIGERIA
corresponding members in several of the more important
centres — ^with the object of creating in each province a sort
of bureau of information on the spirit trade to which every
one would feel free to communicate.
G. Standing instructions to every medical officer to give attention
to the subject from the physiological point of view, within
his area and to furnish a half-yearly report to the Principal
Medical Officer. These reports would be annotated by the
P. M. O., who, reviewing the whole evidence, would give
his report. Specific instances raised by any medical officer,
might if necessary be referred to the permanent committee
above mentioned.
H. A yearly report to be furnished by the Chairman of the per-
manent committee, and by the P. M. O. respectively, to the
local Government, and published in the Official Gazette.
/. Maintenance of the prohibitory line under amalgamation ; and
its deflection southwards in the Eastern Province in order to
keep from the influence of the trade, the northern portions
of the Eastern Province where the trade has, up to now, not,
or barely, penetrated.
/. Gradual, very gradual, introduction of direct taxation in the
Central and Eastern Provinces, working upwards from the
coast Une — preceded by full explanations, and the calling
together of District Chiefs and Heads of Houses for purposes
of discussion. In the Western Province, where direct taxation
by the British Government would be a violation of Native
law and of Treaties and Arrangements, a poUcy (sketched
in Part II.) of re-constituting according to native law, the
old Yoruba Kingdom, and reviving through the Alafin, the
tribute which in native law is due to him, and eventually
controlling the expenditure of the proceeds through the
Alafin and the heads of the various Yoruba States. These
respective proceedings being taken with the object ot gradually
making us independent, or virtually independent, of taxation
on spirits as a source of revenue.
That is, broadly, the constructive policy I venture
to recommend. It might have to be modified here
and there. But in its main lines I believe it to be
sound.
On the main issue I would say this. The Southern
Nigeria Administration stands for high ideals and good
government, sound native policy, preservation of native
authority and land tenure. In my belief the untruthful
and malignant charges brought against it are weakening
259
NIGERIA : ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
that for which the Administration stands. This is a
grave danger, and one's sense of justice revolts at allega-
tions made against an Administration the bulk of whose
officials are doing good work under many difficulties.
It is bad for the Empire and for the forces making for
just native government within the Empire, that public
opinion should be led to believe that Southern Nigeria
is a thing to be ashamed of rather than to be proud
of — which ought legitimately, on the facts, to be the
case.
It is bad for public policy and the integrity of public
life that a Commission of Inquiry should be dragged in
the mud when it has recorded the truth.
It is Imperially foolish, and essentially unjust in
itself, that the natives of Nigeria should be represented
as degraded and demoralized, helpless creatures, when they
are nothing of the kind. They resent it, and it is untrue.
The propagation of continuous untruths about a native
race will sooner or later lead that native race to be held
in such low estimation, that it will be persecuted and
unjustly dealt by. This picture drawn of this race,
strengthens, in public opinion, the various forces which
are bent upon perpetuating the legend of the African
half-child and half-devil, which is so great an obstacle to
sane public views at home, and, therefore, in the ultimate
resort to sane policy in Africa.
If the Colonial Office is driven to prohibition or any
violent step of that sort, direct taxation must immediately
follow in order to raise revenue, and that will mean the
massacre of thousands of innocent people. It will also
lead to the destruction of palm trees, which will impoverish
the country and lower trade ; to the stoppage of all
export in cereals, the surplus crop being used to produce
fermented liquors, and thus, again, to the impoverishment
of the country and possibly to the shortage of crops,
with the resultant scarcity of food supply ; to the creation
260
THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC IN SOUTHERN NIGERIA
of illicit stills and the production of a crude liquor full
of impurities, and, consequently, very harmful in effects.
The Nigerian population of the south must have liquor
of some sort. It requires it, like every race does, that
is not naturally a teetotal race, which the Nigerian race
has never been. To stop drinking is impossible — nor,
perhaps, is it desirable if it were possible, especially in
the forest zone which is more or less under water for six
months in the year. Anyway, it cannot be done. The
Nigerians do not over-drink. They are much more
sober than we are — that is incontestable. They occasion-
ally drink more than is good for them at weddings, etc.
(just as many people do in this country), and at their
reUgious feasts. But they did that (since feasting and
drinking has always been part and parcel of the rehgious
stage of humanity the Nigerians are now in — ^part of the
cult of the fertilizing spirit of nature) long before we knew
they existed.
The danger of increasing over-indulgence in drink by
" educated " natives is a very real one. But " trade
spirits " have nothing to do with this. The secret of
this tendency is to be found in the false ideal of Christianity
which is propagated by many of the missionaries and the
denationalizing tendencies which appear to be inseparable,
on the present system, from our religious and educationary
influences.
The establishment of the European licensing system
away from the chief towns of the coast is, I consider,
impossible for at least a generation — and undesirable if it
were possible.
As an antidote to any dangers of over-indulgence in
drink among the mass of the people which may exist,
the spread of the Mohammedan religion is automatically
the most effective, from the purely social standpoint ;
and this, not because of any special virtue attaching to
Islam, but because Islam in West Africa has become an
261
NIGERIA: ITS PEOPLES AND ITS PROBLEMS
African religion which does not denationalize, and does
not produce the social unhappiness which denationaliza-
tion brings in its train.*
* It may, perhaps, be well to emphasize, in view of the printed statements
describing the writer as the " champion of the liquor traffic " and so forth,
which are so freely made in certain quarters, that the above remarks are con-
cerned solely with the liquor traffic in Southern Nigeria — not in West Africa
as a whole. They deal with specific facts affecting a specific area of West
Africa and with specific circumstances surrounding those facts which have
formed the subject of public controversy.
262
INDEX
Abeokuta, city of, 78, 79, 80, 84, 224
Alake of, 79
Alkalis, their functions, 149
Amalgamation of the Protectorates, 46,
187, 209. (See under British poUcy.)
Anthropological research, British in-
difference to, 185. {See under British
policy.)
Ants, white, 29
Arab traders in Kano, 166.
Baikie, Dr., 46
Baro, 91, 195, 203
Barth, Dr., 123, 152
Bassa, 117, 202, 231
Bauchi, people, plateau and Province
of, 4, 19, 127, 138. 171, 177,
179-186, 192, 202
a nnique ethnological field, 185
(See also under Mining and Tin.)
Beecroft, John, 45
Bees, 29, 114
Beit-el-mals, the, 147, 148, 149
Bell, Sir Henry Hesketh, Preface, 136,
172, 241
Bello, Emir, 99, 100
Benin, country and people of, 65, 68-70,
140, 203.
Benue, river and region of the, 94, 170,
171, 180, 183, 202-203
Bida, city of, 29, 31, no, 119, 128
Blyden, Dr. E. Wilmot, Preface, Intro-
duction
Borgu, 118, 138, 177, 202, 203
Bornu, 99, loi, 126, 127, 138, 170, 177,
202, 232
British Cotton Growing Association,
222, etc. (See under Cotton.)
British policy, its ultimate effects, 6-7,
102-105, 171
danger of interference with social
life, 20, 151-154
in Nupe, 29-30
a tour de force, 41
absence of constructive views from
home, 46, 189-190
towards Mohammedanism, 47, in,
112, 133-135. 152-153. 164
lack of home interest in, 48
as to forest development, 58-61
British policy — continued.
towards domestic " slavery," 62-
63
in the Central and Eastern Pro-
vinces of Southern Nigeria, 64,
65
in Benin, 68-69
in Yorubaland, 7&-80. 82-88
neglect of the Niger river, 93-94
towards land tenure, 117
towards European trade in the
Hausa towns, 133, 135
of indirect rule, its character and
objects in Northern Nigeria; its
enemies ; arguments for its
retention, 136-139, 145-150
consequences of direct rule, 139-
140, 154
in connection with native law and
custom, 140-144
in connection with the preserva-
tion of national hfe, 151-154, 159
towards Christian Missions in
Northern Nigeria, 153
towards the national weaving in-
dustry of Kano, 152, 240-241
towards education, 160-165, 188
towards European trade, 172-174
towards mining enterprises, 180-
183
towards ethnological research, 185
in Southern and Northern Nigeria
compared, 188-189
position of a West African Gover-
nor, 189-190
position of officials, 190-193
in connection with officials' wives,
192
opposing views regarding. Preface
(See also under Amalgamation,
Christianity, Islam, Railways,
Education, etc., etc.
Bukuru, 179, 183
Butterflies, 32, 33, 56
Carrieh, the, 14-17, 23
Cattle, 12, ro8. (See under Nigerian.)
Cerebro-spinal meningitis, 9
Chad, Lake, 124, 179
Chalmers, Sir Mackenzie Dalzell, 252
263
INDEX
Chamberlain, Right Hon. Joseph, 256
Chirol, Mr. Valentine, 160, 165
Christianity, character of mission work,
26-28
in Yorubaland, 77
an untouched field, 96
and indirect rule, 138
in the Mohammedan provinces, 153
in Kano, 133-135
- ' ;and Islam in Southern Nigeria,
* 213-221. {See under Islsna, a.nd
British poUcy.)
CiviUzation, failure side of, 245
Clapperton, Commander, 100, 123
Clegg, Mr., 224
Cocoa, export of, 57, 224
Cotton, cultivation, manufacture and
export of, 57, 114, 115, 119, 127,
152, 168-169, 222, 224. (See under
Hausas, Nigerian, Kano.)
Crewe, Earl of, 252
Cross, river, 51
Delimi, river, 119, 180
Dennett, Mr. R. E., 61
Dress, question of, 219-220
Drum, the Nigerian, 32
Eaglesome, Mr., Preface, 194
Educational policy, 72-76, 154, 158-
159, 160-165, 188. (See under Nas-
sarawa, British policy.)
Egba, district of, 224. (See under Yo-
rubas.)
Egerton, Sir Walter, Preface, 11, 74,
254
Emigration, Fulam, 170
Finances of Northern Nigeria, 207-
208. (See under Amalgamation and
British policy.)
Fireflies, 34
Firmin, Mr., Preface
Food supplies, 58, 142, 171, 179, 182,
191. 243
Forcados, port and river of, 45, 49, 73,
91, 93, 202
Forest belt in Southern Nigeria, 56-61,
224, 251
forestry resources in Northern
Nigeria, 170
Forestry Department in Southern Ni-
geria, 58-61, 69, 84
need of one in Northern Nigeria,
170
Foulkes, Captain, 185
Fulani, women, 19, 21, ii'g .,,
as rulers, 2"^, 30, 4*7, 98, 118, 137,
140-142. • ^ ■ ,
as herdsmen, 29, 118, 119, 169-170
Fulani women — continued.
place in West African history,
9^-59 .. .
conquest of Hausa, 99, loi, 124
as a spiritual force, 155-159
in Bauchi, 1S6
(See under Othman, Bello, British
policy, Nigerian.)
GiROUARD, Sir Percy, 94, 137, 142, 143
198
Gober, country of, 124, 157
Goldie, Sir George, 45, 166
Gombe, Emirate of, 184
Gummel, Emirate of, 130
Gwarris, the, 116
Hadeija, division of, 236
Harcourt, Hon. Lewis, 256
Harmattan, the, 8, 9, 11
Hausas, the, and their country, 19, 21,
45-47, 98-101, 108, 156, 169, 217,
231, 232, 237. (See under Kano,
Nigerian British policy.)
Henna, 30
Himbury, Mr., Preface, 231
Holt, Mr. John, Preface
John & Co., Ltd., Preface, 166
House-rule, in Southern Nigeria, 62, 63
Ibadan, 78, 80, 81, 85, no, 196, 218, 224
Idah, 96
Ilorin, 99, 127, 177, 202, 203
Islam, in Nupe, 29
in Zaria, 35-41
as a political and social force, 47,
48, 111-112
in Lagos, 72
in Yorubaland, 77
Othman's jihad, 99
formative of Nigerian civilization,
103, 140-141, 149
morning prayer in Hausaland, 1 1 1-
112
etiquette at Mohammedan Cou rts,
130
Emir of Kano's views, 133-135
inadvisability of interference with,
153
as a reforming force, 156-157
as a spiritual influence, 164-165
and Christianity in Southern Ni-
geria, 213-220
as a preservative to national life,
213-220, 260
Kabba, province of, 202, 203. (See
under Mining.)
Kaduna, river, 31, 180
Kakandas, the, 171
264
INDEX
Kano, Province and Emirate of, 115-
116, 130, 138-139, 145, 147, 153,
167, 177, 192-193, 202-206, 229,
232, 236, 239, 241
city of, 45, 91, 121, 123-129, 133,
146, 163, 166, 191, 195
Emir of, 45, 130-135, 148, I53. 164
native administration of, 145-150
Katagum, Emirate of, 130, 236, 239
Katsina, city. Emirate and Province of,
123, 124, 130, 153, 236, 239, 241-242
Kingsley, the late Miss Mary, Dedica-
tion, Introduction, 248
Kitson, Mr., 176
Kontagora, 138, 202
Lagos, 51, 63, 71-75, 76, 83, 84, 91,
no, 195, 203, 218
Land, Nigerian tenure of. Introduction,
83-84, 117, 140-I44. (See under
British policy.)
and Natives' Rights Proclama-
tion, 143
legislation in Northern and
Southern Nigeria, 188
Lander, Richard, 45
Lever Bros., Ltd., 54
Life, preservation of national, 151-154
Lignite, 175-176
Liquor traflSc, problem of, 66, 245-261
Liruei-n-Delma, 177
Liruei-n-Kano, 121, 177, 178
Loko, 183
Lokoja, 46, 94, 97, 110. 163. 171. 203
Lugard, Sir Frederick, 46, 123, 131, 134,
136, 142
MacGregor Laird, 46
Merchants, British, 95, 96, 153, 172-174,
227, 243
Mining Development, 175-183. (See
under Tin and Bauchi.)
Minna, 195
Moor, Sir Ralph, 58
Mungo Park, 45
Muri, Province of, 138, 170, 177, 202-
203
Naraguta, 180, 183-184, 191
Nsissarawa, Province of, 138, 177, 231
national schools at, 161-165. {See
under Education.)
Native Races and Liquor Traffic United
Committee, 254, etc. {See under
Liquor.)
Niger, delta of, 49-54. 218, 223
river, 51, 75, 91-97. 124, 180, 195,
202, 203
Province, 138, 167, 202, 243
old civilizations of, 155
Niger — continued.
company, 166, 172, 178, 179, 181,
183, 186, igi
Nigeria, importence of, 47
size of, 47, 49, 63, 138
need for pubhc interest in, 48
flora of, 10, 29, 36, 50, 51, 52, 113,
114, 170
history of, 98-104
self-sufficing character, 119, 171
a land of contrasts, 72, 184
anomalous position of Northern
Protectorate, 190
comparison with American cotton
belt, 222
Nigerian, perils which beset him. In-
troduction, 245-248
false ideas about, 247-249, 260
his alleged callousness, 13
as a carrier, 14-17
his modesty and courtesy, 19-23
his dancing, 31-32
as a fisherman, 34
as a trader, 50-52, 107-110, 125-127
his capacity for labour, 57-58, 181-
182
his spiritual side, 24, 28, 67, iii-
112, 155-159
as an agriculturist, 112, 113, 118,
120, 172, 185, 224, 228, 231,
233-237
as a cotton manufacturer, 121, 127,
185.
as a dyer, 121
as a tanner, 121, 127, 163-164
as an artisan, 119, 120, 121
as a smelter, 6, 120-121, 177-178,
185
as a potter, 128
as a herdsman, 118-119
his law-abiding character, 146-147
his probity in Kano, 147
as an inUllectuel and reformer,
157-158
his capacity for self-government
on indigenous lines, 130-159
{See under British poUcy, Trade,
Kano, Railways, Education,
Islam, Cotton, Tin, Hausa,
Fulani, Yoruba, Othman Fodio,
etc.)
Ningi, country and people of, 184
Nupe, people of, 29-31, 126, 171, 218
soap, 129
Officials, labours of British, 6, 7, 30,
31, 41, 65-66, 104, 137, 143, 154,
190-191, 244
Oil palm and its products, 52-55. (See
under Trade.)
265
INDEX
Old Calabar, 51, 73, 202
Onitsha, 176, 218
Oshogbo, 202-203, 224-225
Othman Fodio, 99-101, 118, 157, 159
Oyo, city of, 78, 203, 218, 225
Alafin of, 80, 81, 87
Railways and railway policy, 91, 167,
183, 194-200, 239
Rat-catchers of Kano, 146
Religions, African, 24-28, 35, 67-68,
218. {See under Islam.)
Revenue, method of distribution in
Northern Nigeria, 147-148. {See
under British policy and Amalgama-
tion.)
Road, the great white, 7, 8-13, 28
the Riga-Chikum-Naraguta, 182,
183
its r6le in social life, 218
Roman Catholics, 11, 27, 252
Ross, Mr. W. A., 84
Rubber, in Bauchi and in the Binue
region, 170-185
in Benin, 69
SAtARiES of ofScials in Northern Ni-
geria, 192
Sallah, the, at Zaria, 35-41
Sarbah, the late John Mensah, Intro-
duction
Shuwas, the, 170
Sokoto, 12, 100, 116, 126, 138, 153, 170,
177, 203, 218
Songhay, Empire of, 156
Taxation, Hausa and Fulani system
of, 120, 140. {See under British
policy and Fulani.)
Jangali or cattle tax, 169-170
Temple, Mr. Charles, Preface, 147
Thompson, Mr. H. N., 61
Thomson, Mr. Joseph, 45
Tin, 124, 127, 128, 166, 232. {See
under Mining.)
Trade, internal, 12, 107-110, 120-122,
127-128, 217-218
external, 50-53. 121-122, 154, 166-
174 -
Trees, destruction of, 10-12, 59, 84
Tripoli, 124, 127, 128, 166, 232
Tugwell, Right Rev. Bishop, 250. {See
under Liquor traffic.)
Udi, district of, 176
ViscHER, Mr. Hanns, 164. {See under
Education and Nassarawa.)
Wallace, Sir William, 150, 178
Warri, 51, 203
Wesleyan Missionaries, 252
Williams, Hon. Sapara, 253
Women, European, in Nigeria, 192
Wyndham Dunstan, Professor, 150, 178
YOLA, province of, 138, 163, 202
Yorubas, the, and their country, 74-88,
99, 140, 171, 203, 218, 221, 227, 229.
{See under Abeokuta, Ibadan, Oyo.)
Young, Mr., 79
Zaria, Province and Emirate of, 167,
202-203, 229, 236, 237, 241
city of, 35, 46, 127, 237-238
Emir of, 39, 40
Court fool of, 38
learned families of, 100
old pagan customs of, 157
missionaries in, 153
Zinder, 239, 241
Zungeru, 148, 191, 195, 202
THE END
FRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AKD SOHS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLBS.