NIGERIA: Federalism, the Constitution and Resource Control

IN the beginning, there was no Nigeria. There were Ijaws, Igbos, Urhobos, Itsekiris, Yorubas, Hausas, Fulanis, Nupes, Kanuris, Ogonis, Gwaris, Katafs, Jukars, Edos, Ibibios, Efiks, Idomas, Tivs, Junkuns, Biroms, Agnas, Ogojas and so on. There were Kingdoms like, Oyo, Lagos, Calabar, Brass, Itsekiri, Benin, Tiv, Borno, Sokoto Caliphate (with loose control over Kano, Ilorin, Zaria etc) Bonny, Opobo, etc. Prior to the British conquest of the different nations making up the present day Nigeria, these Nations were independent nation states - and communities independent of each other and of Britain.
Prelude to the Creation of Nigeria
The bulk of what is now Nigeria became British Territory between 1885 and 1914, although some autonomous communities were not conquered and incorporated in the protectorate until the early twenties. Between the 15th and 19th Centuries, European relationship with West African States were trade/commercial, with little or no political undertones. The Europeans depended on the coastal rulers not only for securing trade, but also for the safety of their lives and property. Thus European traders went out of their way to ensure they were in the good books of Native rulers.
It should be noted that the main commodity during this period were human beings. This was the era of slave trade. It was in a bid to protect the lives, properties and trade of British traders that the British Prime Minister, Palmerston appointed John Beecroft as British Consul in Nigeria in 1849. This was the beginning of piecemeal British colonisation of the independent nations of what later became Nigeria.
This was followed by:
* Gunboat diplomacy for the enforcement of one-sided agreements for the protection of interests of British traders and
* The signing of the notorious 'protection treaties' which led directly to colonialism
A typical 'protection treaty' would contain the following clauses:
* "The British majesty hereby undertakes to extend to them (Protected Peoples) and to territory under their authority and jurisdiction her gracious favour and protection."
* 'Protected' people were prohibited from entering into any correspondence, agreement or treaty with any foreign power or nation except with the knowledge and sanction of Britain.
* Britain had exclusive jurisdiction, civil and criminal over British and British protected subjects in the protected territory and authority was exercised by the British Consul.
* Any disputes between the 'native' chiefs themselves or between them and British or foreign traders had to be submitted to the British Consul.
* Native chiefs were bound to act on the advice of the British officers in matters relating to the administration of justice, the development of the resources of the country, the interests of commerce or in any matter in relation to peace, order and good government and the general progress of civilisation.
* Meanwhile, the European colonists organised the Berlin Conference, 1885. A conference in which Africa was carved into spheres of influence amongst the powers. The aim was primarily to eliminate friction amongst them in their commercial and colonising activities in Africa. The Nations in the territory now called Nigeria were parceled off to Britain at the Conference. Based on the protection treaties and the Berlin Conference, the British in 1885 proclaimed the establishment of a protectorate of the Oil Rivers, which later became the Niger Delta Protectorate.
As various quarrels and disputes arose between British traders or British officials on the one hand, and the Rulers of the States of the Niger Delta on the other hand, the latter territories were invaded, conquered and colonised, individually.
* Jaja's kidnapping -1886
* 1894 - Nana War - The fall of the Itsekiri (Benin River and Warri) Kingdom
* 1894-1914 - Push and control of Urhobo and Isoko country; Efunrun (1896), Orokpo (1901), Etua 1904; Ezeonum (1905), Iyede (1908); Owe, Oleh, Ozoro (1910)
* Igbo and Ibibio lands were taken over without war between 1890 and 1905 and only Okrika (1895) Aboh (1896), Aro 1901-2, Ezza (1905), gave the British any resistance.
* Lagos fell in 1861; Ijebu, 1892; Egba, 1914;
Much of the North was under the Sokoto Caliphate in the 19th Century, with the exception of Borno and Middle Belt.
* The Royal Niger Company operated in the North until 1899 when their charter was abrogated and a protectorate of Northern Nigerian was proclaimed in 1900 to forestall German and French occupation of those territories.
* The British now engaged in the progressive conquest of the Northern states.
* Lord Frederick Lugard was made High Commissioner of Northern Nigeria in 1899 and British conquest followed thereafter, in the following order;
* Bida -1901, Adamawa - 1901, Bauchi and Gombe - 1902, Zaria - 1902, Kano - 1902, Sokoto - 1903.
* The fall of Sokoto meant the effective end of the independence of the states of the present North-Western Nigeria.
* 1903 -1906 was a period of British consolidation in the present North. In fact the protectorate of Northern Nigeria had been proclaimed before the Northern states were conquered. The Protectorate of Southern Nigeria was proclaimed in 1900.
* In 1906 the Protectorate of Southern Nigeria was amalgamated with the Colony of Lagos. And in 1914 - the Colony and Protectorate of Southern Nigeria, was merged with the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria.
The Pre-Independence Constitutions
Governor as the sole Executive and Legislature
During the period 1900 to 1906, the Governor of the Protectorate of Southern Nigeria, exercised full executive powers and was also the legislature. This applied to the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria from 1900 to 1914. The Governor in each case made laws by proclamation. Such proclamation was, however, subject to approval by the British Government. In 1900 the Southern Protectorate and the Colony of Lagos were amalgamated under the title "The Colony and Protectorate of Southern Nigeria." In the same year, a Legislative Council was created for the protectorate. At this sage, the Legislative Councils were, however, constituted by officials of government.
In 1914, the Colony and Protectorate of Southern Nigeria, and the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria, were amalgamated, and ruled by one Governor-General, Lord Lugard. The Legislative Council of the Colony was restricted to making laws for the Colony alone, whilst the Governor-General made laws for the whole country.
The 1922 Constitution - The Clifford Constitution
In 1922 a new Constitution revoking the 1914 Constitution was promulgated under Governor Clifford. Under this Constitution, a Nigerian Legislative Council was constituted, but its jurisdiction was limited to the Southern Provinces, i.e. the Colony of Lagos and the Protectorate of Southern Nigeria. The Governor continued to be the legislative authority for the Northern half of the country. Also an executive council was established for the whole country.
The 1946 (Richard) Constitution
In 1946, Governor Arthur Richards promulgated a new Constitution which came into effect on 1st January, 1946. Prior to this Nigeria had been divided into three Regions in 1939, the Northern, Western and Eastern Regions. The following features of the 1946 Constitution are worth noting:

• The new Council was composed of the Governor as President, 16 officials and 28 unofficials (the latter including the four elected persons). This meant that for the first time the non-officials were more in member than the officials.

• The majority of the non-officials were elected or nominated by the Regional Legislatures which the 1946 Constitution also brought into being. This meant that the unofficial majority were not subject to the Governor's control.

• The Regional Houses were not competent to legislate, even for their own Regions. They could only consider bills affecting their regions, and make recommendations or pass resolutions for the central legislature in Lagos to consider. It was the latter only that could pass legalisation.

The 1951 (MacPherson) Constitution
The 1951 Constitution was the one that really introduced fundamental changes into the Imperial/Native relationship and the relationship between the Native Nigerian groups themselves. The following points need to be noted:

• The 1951 Constitution came into being after an unprecedented process of consultation with the peoples of Nigeria as a whole. In accordance with the directives of the Legislative Council, meetings and consultations were held at (a) village (b) district (c) divisional (d) and provincial levels before the (e) regional and finally (f) the national conference.

• The reports of each region from village to the regional level were then submitted to the Legislative Council. These reports and recommendations were published in October 1949 and reviewed by a drafting committee of the Legislative Council.

• On 9 January, 1950, a General Conference of representatives from all parts of Nigeria started meeting in Ibadan to map out the future system of Government in Nigeria with the recommendation of the Regional Conference as the working documents.

• The General Conference was composed of 25 unofficial members drawn from the earlier regional conferences as representatives of the three regions, 25 unofficial members from the Northern Legislative Council, 3 official members and the non-voting Chairman who was the Attorney-General of Nigeria. The Conference rose on 29 January, 1950 with recommendations which were accepted and implemented by the Governor of Nigeria.

• The new Constitution represented a major advance on the existing state of legislative competence of Nigerians by (i) introducing elected majorities in the Central Legislature and (ii) in the Regional Houses of Assembly (iii) endowing the Legislative Houses with independent legislative power in many areas of state activity (iv) and establishing a Federal System for Nigeria for the first time.

• The elected majorities in each Regional House were as follows: North - elected 90, non elected -14, West - elected 80, non-elected - 7, East - elected 80, non-elected 8.

• The modes of election were a combination between direct and indirect elections. The Central Legislature had 136 elected members and 13 nominated members. Of these, 68 were from the North and 34 each were from the East and West. The representatives of the Regions in the Central Legislature were elected by the Regional Legislatures from amongst themselves.

• This marked the first formal introduction of Federalism into Nigeria. Thus the Conference noted that: "We have no doubt at all that the process already given constitutional sanction, and fully justified by experience, of devolution of authority from the Centre to the Regions should be carried much further so that a Federal System of Government can be developed." And that:

"The Central Legislature and Executive must retain both residual and overall powers, but since the Central Legislature and Executive will themselves be made up of representatives of the Regional Legislatures and since the policy of greater regional autonomy is so widely accepted, we do not fear that there will be any desire at the Centre unnecessarily to interfere with purely regional legislation or administration".
In his book, "History and the Law of the Constitution of Nigeria", Dr. Udo Udoma noted that for the first time in the history of the foundation of British-Nigerian relationship and the establishment of Nigeria's regions by the Richard's Constitution of 1946, Regional Legislatures were granted powers to legislate over a variety of subjects within the Region. These included: Local government; town and country planning; agriculture and fisheries; education; public works for the region; public health in the region; forestry; veterinary services; land; welfare; local industries; native courts; (subject to central legislation regarding appeals to courts outside the regions); direct taxation (other than income tax and companies tax).
The General Conference was of the view that over-centralisation would be a grave error "in this vast country with its widely differing conditions and needs", and that the policy which had received enthusiastic support throughout the country was the policy of achieving unity at the Centre through strength in the Regions. It was confidently expected that when the Regions felt that they had wide powers to run their own regional affairs, they would be more likely ready to co-operate with the other Regions through their representatives in the Council of Ministers and the House of Representatives in serving the interest of Nigeria as a whole".
The Period 1954-60
Between 1954 and 1959, all officials in the House of Assembly and the Central Legislature, were progressively withdrawn. In 1954, there was, for the first time, direct elections into the Federal Legislature. In 1958, all modes of indirect elections were abolished and throughout Nigeria, all elections from then on were by direct polls. The Governors ceased to preside over the Executive Councils in the East and West by 1957 and in the North, in 1959.
In 1954, the office of Premier was created in the Regions and the office of Prime Minister was established at the Centre in 1957. Subsequent changes were not fundamental, but merely in further preparation for full independence. For example, the Western and Eastern Regions attained self-government (with the Regional Governor becoming a mere titular figure) in 1957 and in the North in 1959.
Irresistible Inferences
From the very brief account given of the background of the establishment of the State called Nigeria, the following inferences are irresistible.

• Contrary to the assertions of some scholars with mischievous motives and intentions, the Federal Structures of Nigeria did not operate from the 'top' to the 'bottom', but from the 'bottom' to the 'top'.

• In other words, it was not a question of a country that was originally unitary, being broken into federating units, but of formerly totally independent Kingdoms, Empires, Nations and Autonomous Communities being forcefully brought together, and ending up in a Federal Union. With due respect, Fatayi-Williams, then a Judge of the Supreme Court, was wrong when he stated at a conference in 1976 that "unlike most of the older federations, what we did in Nigeria was like unscrambling scrambled eggs. We started as a Unitary State and then opted as a Confederation afterwards".

• Fatayi-Williams' fundamental error was the assumption that the Nations consisting Nigeria did not exist until the British came and conquered them. This gross fallacy forms the grundnorm of the Bala Usman thesis of public deceit.

• In the second place, it is also clear that it is the coming together of these Autonomous Communities that gave rise to a Federal Government. In other words, the Federal Government is an agency of the Nigerian Nationalities which make up the various States. The subsequent "creation" of States by Federal Military Governments must be discounted as part of the distortions and mutilations of the true political order, brought about by unlawful military usurpation of power. Nigeria is, therefore, a Federation of former Kingdoms, Empires, States, Nations and Autonomous Communities.

• It is an irony that in the enlightened age of late 20th and early 21st centuries, when the right of self-determination and freedom from colonialism has been proclaimed and established, Bala Usman and his gang of predatory intellectuals hungry for the oil of the Niger Delta, are advocating the everlasting legitimacy of British colonial legacy for Nigerian Communities.

• The diabolical objective is obvious: 

(i) establish that Nigerian Communities have no identity outside the British colonial legacy
(ii) show that the Nigerian Federal State is the successor of the British colonial master
(iii) it follows that the Federal State is now the colonial master of Nigerian Nationalities and Communities
(iv) since the Federal State was handed over to the Hausa-Fulani, it further follows that the Hausa-Fulani are the current colonial masters of the Nations of Nigeria, and therefore, like any other slave master, the owner of the resources of his slaves. For slaves insert Southern Nigeria, with special emphasis on the Niger Delta.
Federalism
We have seen at the end of the First National Conference in 1950 held by the representatives of Nigerian Nations and Communities, the delegations opted unanimously for Federalism. Why?
Let us seek an answer from the most consummate student of federalism Nigeria has ever known - Chief Obafemi Awolowo (see 'Thoughts on Nigerian Constitution', pp.48-49). "From our study of the constitutional evolution of all the countries of the world, two things stand out quite clearly and prominently. First, in any country where there are divergences of language and of nationality - particularly of language - a unitary constitution is always a source of bitterness and hostility on the part of linguistic or national minority groups. On the other hand, as soon as a federal constitution is introduced in which each linguistic or national group is recognised and accorded regional autonomy, any bitterness and hostility against the constitutional arrangements as such disappear. If the linguistic or national group concerned are backward, or too weak vis-à-vis the majority group or groups, their bitterness or hostility may be dormant or suppressed. But as soon as they become enlightened and politically conscious, and/or courageous leadership emerges amongst them, the bitterness and hostility come into the open, and remain sustained with all possible venom and rancour, until home rule is achieved.
Secondly, a federal constitutional is usually a more or less dead letter in any country which lacks any of the factors conducive to federalism. From the facts and the analysis thereof which we have given and made in this section, the following four principles or laws can be deduced:

• If a country is unilingual and uni-national, the constitution must be unitary;

• if a country is unilingual or bilingual or multi-lingual, and also consists of communities which, over a period of years, have developed divergent nationalities, the constitution must be federal, and the constituent states must be organised on the dual basis of language and nationality;

• if a country is bilingual or multi-lingual, the constitution must be federal, and the constituent states must be organised on a linguistic basis;

• any experiment with a unitary constitution in a bilingual or multilingual or multinational country must fail, in the long run".

More well known of course is Awolowo's famous or notorious (depending on your view) statement in "Path to Nigerian Freedom" (Faber & Faber, 1947, page.48) wherein he said: "Nigeria is not a nation. It is a mere geographical expression. There are no 'Nigerians' in the same sense as there are 'English', 'Welsh', or 'French'. The word 'Nigerian' is merely a distinctive appellation to distinguish those who live within the boundaries of Nigeria from those who do not. There are various national or ethnical groups in the country. Ten such main groups were recorded during the 1931 census as follows: (1) Hausa, (2) Ibo, (3) Yoruba, (4) Fulani, (5) Kanuri, (6) Ibibio, (7) Munshi or Tiv, (8) Edo, (9) Nupe, and (10) Ijaw. According to Nigerian Handbook, eleventh edition, 'there are also a great number of other small tribes too numerous to enumerate separately, whose combined total population amounts to 4,683,044.
"It is a mistake to designate them 'tribes'. Each of them is a nation by itself with many tribes and clans. There is as much difference between them as there is between Germans, English, Russians and Turks, for instance. The fact that they have a common overlord does not destroy this fundamental difference.
"The languages differ. The readiest means of communication between them now is English. Their cultural backgrounds and social outlooks differ widely; and their indigenous political institutions have little in common. Their present stages of development vary."
This view, though popularised by Awolowo, was the almost universally held view about the best form of government for Nigeria. In 1953, during the debate on the famous motion for independence by Chief Anthony Enahoro, Sir Ahmadu Bello, Premier of the North and leader of the ruling NPC, made one of the most eloquent cases for true federalism when he said:
"Sixty years ago there was no country called Nigeria. What is now Nigeria consisted of a number of large and small communities all of which were different in their outlook and beliefs. The advent of the British and of Western education has not materially altered the situation and these many and varied communities have not knit themselves into a composite unit.... Whatever Nigerians may say, the British people have done them a great service by bringing all the different communities of Nigeria together."
Thus not only was Awolowo's statement absolutely correct, it is even more accurate about today's Nigeria than the Nigeria of the '40s. Inter-ethnic intolerance which has become chronic, confirms that we are a country of many mutually distrustful nations, as is evident from the clashes we have experienced since the return of civil democratic rule in 1999. There is clearly a need for the Nigerian nationalities to enjoy separate and autonomous existence as states, whilst uniting with each other through a Federal Government exercising some basic powers, and running some common services.
Federalism is, therefore, an arrangement whereby powers within a multi-national country are shared between a federal or central authority, and a number of regionalised governments in such a way that each unit, including this central authority, exists as a government separately and independently from the others, operating directly on persons and property with its territorial area, with a will of its own and its own apparatus for the conduct of affairs and with an authority in some matters exclusive of all others. In a federation, each government enjoys autonomy, a separate existence and independence of the control of any other government. Each government exists, not as an appendage of another government (e.g. the federal or central government) but as an autonomous entity in the sense of being able to exercise its own will on the conduct of its affairs free from direction by any government. Thus, the Central Government on the one hand and the State Governments on the other hand are autonomous in their respective spheres.
As Wheare put it, "the fundamental and distinguishing characteristic of a federal system is that neither the central nor the regional governments are subordinate to each other, but rather, the two are co-ordinate and independent." In short, in a federal system, there is no hierarchy of authorities, with the central government sitting on top of the others. All governments have a horizontal relationship with each other. Thus, there can be no federalism under military rule.
Nwabueze has identified the following additional characteristics in a federal system:

• The power sharing arrangement should not place such a preponderance of power in the hands of either the national or regional government to make it so powerful that it is able to bend the will of the others to its own.

• Federalism presupposes that the national and regional governments should stand to each other in a relation of meaningful independence resting upon a balanced division of powers and resources. Each must have powers and resources sufficient to support the structure of a functioning government, able to stand on its own against the other.

• From the separate and autonomous existence of each government and the plenary character of its powers within the sphere assigned to it, by the constitution, flows the doctrine that the exercise of these powers is not to be impeded, obstructed or otherwise interfered with by the other government, acting within its powers.

The Independence and Republican Constitution (1960 and 1963)
In view of the above, it is hardly surprising that the 1960 and 1963 Constitutions epitomised true Federalism. The 1950 National Conference had been followed by others in 1953, 1954, 1957 and 1959, in which the practice of true federalism were perfected.
It can thus be said that the period 1950 to 1959 represented a 10-year period of negotiations between the major stakeholders in the Nigerian project and that what they finally arrived at in the form of 1960 Constitution was, subject to minor, non-structural modifications, the only legitimate basis of association of all the different nationalities in Nigeria.
One important feature of the 1960 Constitution is the extensive powers granted the Regions, making them effectively autonomous entities and the revenue arrangements which ensured that the regions had the resources to carry out the immense responsibilities.
Under the 1960 and 1963 Constitutions, a true federal system made up of strong States or Regions and a Central or Federal 'state' with limited powers, was instituted. Both the 1960 (Independence) Constitution and the 1963 (Republican) Constitution were the same. The only differences were the provisions for ceremonial President (1963) in place of the Queen of England (1960) and the judicial appeals system which terminated with the Supreme Court (1963) rather than the Judicial Committee of the British Privy Council (1960).
The following features, which emphasised the existence of a true federal system composed of powerful and autonomous Regions and a Centre with limited powers are worth noting:

• Each Region had its own separate Constitution, in addition to the Federal Government Constitution.

• Each region had its own separate Coat of Arms and Motto, from the Federal State or Government.

• Each Region established its own separate semi-independent Mission in the U.K. headed by 'Agents-General'.

• The Regional Governments had Residual Power, i.e., where any matter was not allocated to the Regions or the Federal Government, it automatically became a matter for Regional jurisdiction.

Thus, apart from items like Aviation, Borrowing of moneys outside Nigeria, Control of Capital issues, Copyright, Deportation, External Affairs, Extraction, Immigration, Maritime Shipping, Mines and Minerals, Military Affairs, Posts and Telegraphs, Railways, all other important items were in the Concurrent List, thus permitting the Regions equal rights to legislate and operate in those areas. The most significant of these included; Arms and Ammunition, Bankruptcy and Insolvency, Census, Commercial and Industrial Monopolies, Combines and Trusts, Higher Education, Industrial Development, the Regulation of Professions, Maintaining and Securing of Public Safety and Public Order, Registration of Business Names, and Statistics.
It is important to observe once more that anything outside these two lists was exclusively a matter for Regional jurisdiction. Other features indicative of the autonomous status of the Regions included:

• Separate Regional Judiciaries and the power of the Regions to establish, not only High Courts, but also Regional Courts of Appeal.

• The Regions had their own separate electoral commissions for Local Government elections. However, the Chairman of the Federal Electoral Commission was the statutory Chairman of the State Commission.

• The Revenue Allocation system under the 1963 Constitution was strictly based on derivation.

It will be observed that Mines, Minerals, including oil fields, oil mining, geological surveys and gas were put in the Exclusive Legislative List in the 1960 and 1963 Constitutions. This was a carry over from the provisions of the 1946 Minerals Act, under which the Colonial Government gave itself the exclusive ownership and control of all minerals in Nigeria. This was understandable under a Colonial Regime whose objective was the exploitation of the colonised peoples, but certainly not acceptable in an independent country constituted by autonomous (Federal) Regions. It is, therefore, not surprising that what was lost by placing mines, minerals, oil fields, etc., in the Exclusive Legislative List, was regained by the very strict adherence to the principle of derivation in the revenue allocation formula, particularly the allocation of the proceeds from mineral exploitation.
Resource Control
No one has given the term "resource control" an official definition. Indeed it is the very recent coinage of the Southern Governors, particularly Governor James Ibori of Delta State. However, I believe we all know what the term means, because we are all involved in the situation that brought it into existence.
Resource control in my view involves three major components:

• The power and right of a Community or State to raise funds by way of tax on persons, matters, services and materials within its territory.

• The exclusive right to the ownership and control of resources, both natural and created within its territory.

• The right to customs duties on goods destined for its territory and excise duties on goods manufactured in its territory.

Resource control, which in certain circumstances can be referred to as fiscal federalism (in a federation), goes hand in hand with true federalism. This was recognised and implemented faithfully in the Independence and Republican Constitution (1960 and 1963).
The Regional Constitutions, in the 1960 and 1963 Constitutions, described each Region as "a self-governing Region of the Federal Republic of Nigeria." To buttress the self-governing status of each Region, adequate provision were made to guarantee the economic independence of the Regions, thus avoiding the hollowness of a declaration of self-governing status totally undermined by economic dependence. Moreover, consistently with the Federal character of the country, i.e. country of many nations, the basis of revenue allocation was strictly derivative.
Section 140 which made provision for the sharing of the proceeds of minerals, including mineral oil, stated that: "There shall be paid by the Federal Government to a Region, a sum equal to fifty per cent of the proceeds of any royalty received by the Federation in respect of any minerals extracted in that Region and any mining rents derived by the Federal Government from within any Region." For the purposes of this section, the continental shelf of a Region was deemed part of that Region. This is totally consistent with international law which characterises the continental shelf as a seaward extension of the land of the coastal state.
By Section 136(1) 30 per cent of general import duties were paid into a distributable pool for the benefit of the Regions. With regard to import duties on petrol, diesel oil and tobacco, the total sum of import duty collected less administrative expenses, were fully payable to the Region for which the petrol or diesel oil or tobacco was destined. A similar provision was made for excise duty on tobacco.
With regard to produce, i.e. cocoa, palm oil, groundnuts, rubber and hides and skin, the proceeds of export duty were shared on the basis of the proportion of that commodity that was derived from a particular Region. As noted above, the derivative bases of the allocation of revenue and the proportionate share of such proceeds that went to the Region it originated from, clearly buttressed the operating base of
Until the discovery of oil in the Niger-Delta and its increasing role as a major income earner, the North was always a reluctant partner in the Federal Republic of Nigeria. It will be recalled that at the National Conference at Ibadan, the Northern delegates declared adamantly that they would not be part of Nigeria, unless they were allocated at least 50 per cent of the seats in the Federal Legislature. In other words, they demanded and got not less than the combined number of seats of both the Eastern and Western Regions.
After the acrimonious debate on Chief Anthony Enahoro's motion for independence in 1956 which pitched the Northern and Southern Legislators sharply against each other, the Northerners issued an 8-point demand as a condition for remaining in Nigeria as follows:

• This region shall have complete legislative and executive autonomy with respect to all matters except the following: defence, external affairs, customs and West African research institutions.

• That there shall be no Central Legislative body and no Central Executive or policy making body for the whole of Nigeria.

• There shall be a Central Agency for all Regions which will be responsible for the matters mentioned in paragraph one and other matters delegated to it by a Region.

• The Central Agency shall be at a neutral place preferably Lagos.

• The composition and responsibility of the Central Agency shall be defined by the Order-in-Council establishing the constitutional arrangement. The Agency shall be a non-political body.

• The services of the railway, air services, posts and telegraphs, electricity and local mining shall be organised on an inter-Regional basis and shall be administered by public corporations. These corporations shall be independent bodies covered by the statute under which they are created. The Board of the Coal Corporation shall be composed of experts with a minority Representation of the Regional Government.

• All revenue shall be levied and collected by the Regional Government except customs revenue at the port of discharge by the Central Agency and paid to its treasury. The administration of the Customs shall be so organised as to assure that goods consigned to the Region are separately cleared and charged to duty.

• Each Region shall have a separate Public Service!

Even Nigeria's much praised first Prime Minister, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, stated in 1947 that "Nigeria has existed as one Country only on paper, and that it was still far from being considered as one country, much less think of it as united."
After the counter-Coup of 29 July, 1966, the original intention of the Northern mutineers was to withdraw from Lagos and the rest of the South and secede from Nigeria. As Ahmadu Kurfi recounts in this book, "The Nigerian General Elections 1959 and 1979", (Macmillan 1983, pp.38-39):
"The original intention of the July 29 counter-coup leaders was to seize the reigns of government and then announce the secession of the Northern Region from the rest of the country. This was in line with the general mood of the people of the North whose clarion call during the May 29 disturbances in the North, which claimed many Igbo lives, was Araba or Aware (Hausa word for 'secede'). As soon as the success of the insurgency was apparent, the leaders of the coup who were based at the Ikeja Garrison informed Northern elements resident in Lagos to leave the metropolis for the North, giving a deadline within which to comply. At the expiry of the deadline, the coup leaders planned to dynamite, if not sink, the whole of Lagos. So serious was the threat that many senior Federal Government officers in Lagos actually trooped to Ilorin, Kaduna and other Northern towns. The families of the coup leaders had earlier been airlifted in a hijacked VC 10 plane of a British airline."
Only wise counsel that the North could not survive without the South, persuaded the rebels to jettison the plan. But they insisted that a relatively junior officer, Lt. Colonel Gowon, should supercede many senior Southern officers to become the new military Head of State.
Even during the conferences that followed the July 29 coup, the Northern Delegation submitted a memorandum, demanding a Confederation as the basis of association of the Regions, including the right to secede. When they subsequently modified this position, their proposals still clearly revealed their half-hearted commitment to Nigerian Unity. They called for Regional Commands for the Army, made up only of people from that Region and controlled by a Regional Commander. They also called for a Rotational Presidency and Prime Ministership and each state was to contribute an equal number of members to a unicameral Federal Legislature.
Why then have the same Northerners become the advocates of a powerful Central Government controlling all the country's resources and weak client states fully dependent on the Centre for survival? The answer is simply the enormous wealth that is being generated from the Niger Delta's petroleum resources. Even in the midst of the crisis brought about by the bloody counter-coup of July 29, 1966 and the pogrom that followed, the Northern Delegation, with one foot outside Nigeria and halfway into secession, had started craving for the wealth of the Niger Delta's oil. On mines, minerals, including oilfields, oil mining, natural gas, etc., the Northern Delegation took the following clear position which they have held onto, till this day:

• "The right to all mines and minerals was, before the handover of power in that regard, vested in the Crown. This right was derived from the Crown's prerogative of being the owner of all minerals attaching to the land. The right was accentuated by the provision in our laws laying down that entire property in and control of all minerals and mineral oils in, under or upon any lands in Nigeria and of all rivers, streams and water-courses throughout Nigeria, was and should be vested in the Crown.

• Upon handover of power the right was transferred to the Federal Government which has to date been exercising it. In this regard, the Federal Government continues to hold the right, among other things, to legislate on mines and minerals, including oilfields, oil mining, geological surveys and natural gas as provided in the Constitution. This right, of course, is being exercised for the benefit of the country as a whole. The Constitution of the Federation, for example, provides for a fair distribution of revenue obtained from mining royalties and rents between the Regions in so far as such revenue is in respect of minerals obtained from inland.

• In these circumstances the Northern Delegation does not see how this item can be removed from the Federal to the Regional Legislative List. It is noteworthy that at one time the country's main sources of revenue from mines and minerals came from tin and columbite of the North. And throughout such time there was never an objection raised from any quarter as regards Central and later Federal control of mines and minerals.

• It is interesting to note that now that we have, for the meantime, the main sources of revenue coming from oil from East, Mid-West and possibly West the other delegations at the Conference should raise an objection to what has in effect been the usual practice purely and simply in order to enrich their respective regional governments at the expense of the overall national interest.

• On the other hand, since it agreed that Nigeria should have an 'effective Federal Government', it is vital that the Federal Government should have an independent source of revenue."

It is obvious that as has already been noted, the Northern position is predicated on their permanent right of control over a predatory Federal Government, that expropriates the resources of a weak Niger Delta. Let us now scrutinise the mechanism used for this permanent control of government and power which are supposed to be a common patrimony of all Sectors and Nationalities of Nigeria.
Origins and Methods of Permanent Northern Sovereignty over Southern Nigeria's Resources.
In his seminal expose on the events of June 12, 1993, entitled, The Tale of June 12: Betrayal of Democratic Rights of Nigeria, Professor Omo Omoruyi went to the British Archives and earthed a can full of worms on the British machinations and manipulations which have resulted in the enslavement of Southern Nigeria.
The position can be summarised as follows:

• Lord Lugard started his career in what became Nigeria from the North as an agent of the Royal Niger Company;

• by a process of coercion, persuasion and force, he obtained a series of treaties from the Northern traditional rulers and was appointed the High Commissioner for the Northern territories by the company. He welded the North together as one unit;

• he was later appointed Governor of the Northern and Southern Protectorates of Nigeria, which were still totally separate entities, with the mandate to amalgamate the two totally foreign territories together as one country. The intention was to unify the administrations of the two protectorates and not its peoples;

• the reason for the decision of the British Government to amalgamate the two incompatible territories was purely financial or economic. The Northern Protectorate was not economically viable. It had become a great drain on the British tax payer. On the other hand, the Southern Protectorate was not just economically buoyant, it was producing surpluses every year. The British design was, therefore, to remove the Northern financial burden from its own neck and hang it on the neck of the hapless Southern Protectorate;

• according to Lord Harcourt, the British Colonial Secretary, unification of Nigeria demanded both "method" and "a man". The man was to be Lord Lugard and the method was to be the "marriage" of the two entities. According to Lord Harcourt:

"We have released Northern Nigeria from the leading strings of the Treasury. The promising and well conducted youth is now on an allowance on his own and is about to effect an alliance with a Southern lady of means. I have issued the special license and Sir Frederick Lugard will perform the ceremony. May the union be fruitful and the couple constant".
Thus, in this "marriage", the North, right from the beginning, was to be "man" and "husband" and the South, the "woman" and "wife".
The use of the term, "Youth" (man) for the North and "Lady" (woman) for the South was not an accident, nor an exercise in humour. It was a deadly serious matter, with the game plan being to bring the two parties together in order to give the North political power over the South and permanent control over Southern resources.
In the England of the time of Lord Harcourt, married woman had no independent existence outside their marriage. All the women's property and resources automatically became the husbands'. The woman could not enter into a contract in her own right. Her husband had to conclude all her contracts on her behalf.
Although this position altered by the Married Women's Property Act of 1882, Lord Harcourt had the Common Law position in mind when he decided to marry the young man without means, to the young lady of means. That latter was to provide the wherewithal for the former to live well and be master of the house for the rest of their lives. Omo Omoruyi has lamented as follows, regarding the devastating consequences of this marriage on the Southern lady of means:
"Today, the "Southern Lady of Means" is richer and the bridegroom "the well conducted youth" from the North is poorer and poorer over the years, a situation not even anticipated in 1914. Hence the "husband" in the typical Nigerian fashion would ensure that the relationship is maintained at all cost, even if it means killing the bride in order to take over her wealth. This is the situation the oil producing part of the South finds itself in today. According to Alhaji Gambo Jimeta, the North (husband) will go to war over oil".
The Northern politicians understood the plan perfectly and have implemented it faithfully and fervently since then. They are well focused on how to cling to power, for they know that that is the route to Southern resources. How have they retained power? The formula has been an amazingly simple one: Control of the Army and manipulation of the Census figures. All this, combined with help from British Administrators of Nigeria right up till independence, have assured the North of permanent political power and control of Southern resources.
British Manipulation of Access to Power
Having installed the North as 'husband' of the South and Master of Nigeria in 1914, the British Colonial Master did not let matters rest there. At every stage they ensured that the reins of power would remain in the hands of their beloved proteges.
Thus, in preparing the North for its future role as the Rulers of Nigeria, the British rigged the very first Nigerian-wide population Census conducted in 1931, in favour of the North. The Figures awarded by the British were as follows:
Northern Region -11,434,000; Western Region - 3,855,000; Eastern Region - 4,641,000; Total = 19,930,000. Plurality in favour of the North = 2,938,000.
Thus, from the very beginning, a permanent majority in population which was intended to translate into a permanent majority in the future Central Legislature and consequently a permanent control of power, was programmed for the Northern Ruling class.
It will be recalled that at the 1950 National Conference, the North demanded at least 50 per cent of the seats in the Central Legislature, as a condition for being part of Nigeria. That demand was based on the Census figures that had been rigged in their favour. The Colonial Masters quickly granted the Northern demand and distributed the seats in the 1951 Central Legislature as follows: Total Number of Elected Members =136; North - 68, East - 34, West - 34.
In the 1952 Census, the balance of 1931 in favour of the North was again meticulously maintained by the British. The increase of population in the 21 years between 1931 and 1952 was doctored so carefully that the birth rate in the three Regions was virtually the same and the difference between the population of the North and that of the South remained virtually the same. The figures this time:
Northern Region - 16,840,000; Western Region - 6,369,000; Eastern Region- 7,971,000. Total = 31,180,000. Plurality in favour of the North = 2,500,000.
Finally, in the last Federal elections before independence, which was organised by the British Masters, the Governor-General, Sir James Robertson, was so anxious for the Northern Peoples Congress to retain power, that he called on Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa to form a new government whilst the votes were still being counted and results were being announced. When the final results were announced, the NPC did not have a simple majority in the House of Representatives, an it is clear that on the basis of the results, the NCNC (89 Seats) could have successfully established a coalition government with the Action Group (73 Seats) and put the NPC (134 Seats) in the opposition benches. Omoruyi explains the hasty action of Sir James Robertson in the following way:
"Sir James Robertson was the shrewd implementor of Northern rule earlier fashioned by Lords Harcourt and Lugard. Sir James was especially recruited by the British Government in 1955 because of his experience in the Sudan with an identical situation to Nigeria. He is on record as confessing that he did not handle this phase to the satisfaction of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe and Chief Obafemi Awolowo. Sir James confessed that he called Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa to form the government in 1959 'by persuading some of the Southern members to support him and Sir Abubakar assured him he would get a Southern group to work with him. Sir James did this before the results were released in full. He confessed that he did this to appease the Sardauna of Sokoto, the Leader of NPC, to stop him from taking the North out of Nigeria'. The question is: Why was he more interested in the feelings of the Sardauna of Sokoto and not in the feelings of Dr. Azikiwe and Chief Awolowo? Was this not in furtherance of the design of the Colonial Government? We shall come to this again.
"The 'Model' of a free and fair election sold to the successor regime, the North, was another issue which we should recognise. The way the 1959 election was handled taught the successor regime that the result of any election must be tailored to suit the anticipated outcome. What General Babangida did in preparation for the June 12 election was vehemently opposed by the former Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Ibrahim Dasuki, on behalf of the Northern leadership because the North was not able to determine its outcome in favour of the North. Alhaji Ibrahim tried to prevail on the President to cancel the presidential election as early as May 19, 1993 because the plan was seen as capable of reversing the British design. What could Britain have done in 1959? The three parties should have been allowed by Sir James to negotiate and if he wanted to help, that would have been an opportunity for Sir James to pressurise them to form a Government of National Unity that would have ushered in independence in an atmosphere of intergroup trust. But Sir James was too much in haste to formalise a succession and formally named a Northerner as the Prime Minister who was to be the successor to his executive power at independence."
The British predilection for the North, particularly the Arewa North, can be summarised in the following views expressed by Sir James Robertson about the differences between Northerners and Southerners. In his assessment, he referred to "the differences in ordinary custom and behaviour between the dignified, polite and rather aloof Northerner and the uninhibited, vociferous Southerner, who noisily showed his disagreement in Council and Parliament without good manner and restraint."
Arewa Implementation of the British Legacy
The Arewa North has remorselessly sustained and adamantly implemented this British legacy of permanent Northern rule. When the very first post-independence challenge of Northern control arose, in the form of the 1964 Federal elections, the Northern Peoples Congress moved fast to put the election results beyond doubt.
The strategy was simple. Prevent the candidates of the UPGA from filing their nomination papers, and NNA candidates would be returned unopposed. It was a simple scheme and it was successfully implemented. In the North alone, 78 NPC candidates out of a total of 167 constituencies were unopposed. The tactic was repeated in the West, although the proportion of un-opposed NNDP candidates was smaller, only 15 out of about 94 seats. The UPGA boycotted the election and the country was precipitated into a crisis that nearly ended in violence and country-wide anarchy.
The matter did not end there. When for a period of 4 days, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, the President, refused to endorse the fraudulent elections and therefore refused to call Abubakar Tafawa Balewa to form a new government, the NPC hierarchy concluded plans to declare Zik medically unfit, install Sir Adetokunbo Ademola to form a government. There were also plans to call on the Military hierarchy not to recognise Azikiwe as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces.
These desperate measures designed to ensure the continued Northern hold on power were recently revealed by the former President, Alhaji Shehu Shagari as follows:
"In the evening that same day, Senator Dr. Majekodunmi and I visited Sir Adetokunbo Adegboyega Ademola, the Chief Justice of the Federation, at his residence, where we also met Dr. Taslim O. Elias, the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice. Both told us that there were strong indications the Army might intervene very soon at the instance of the President, and advised that something be done immediately. They had already asked Dr. Majekodunmi to advise the PM to instruct the Service Chiefs to disoblige any orders from the President. They now wanted me to help persuade Balewa to act instantly. I proceeded to Balewa's residence and urged him to accept their advice, or the one earlier offered by Sir Ahmadu. Balewa refused both but after continuous urging he decided to summon the Service Chiefs the following morning rather than that night as I insisted.
"Meanwhile, Sir Adetokunbo and Dr. Elias took a new initiative. They requested Sir Vahe Bairamian, a British-Cypriot and Justice of the Supreme Court, to speak to his fellow British national, Major-General Sir Christopher E. Welby-Everard, the General Officer Commanding (GOC), to dissuade him from taking any precipitate action which might implicate and embarrass the British Government. Justice Bairamian accordingly advised Major-General Welby-Everard on his constitutional position, pointing out that the office of the President was ceremonial; and that it was the PM who had the constitutional power to issue orders to the Armed Forces.
"Sir Adetokunbo also took another initiative. He contacted Dr. Azikiwe's intimate, Sir Louis Mbanefo, the Justice of Eastern Region, and persuaded him to use his influence on the President to defuse the crisis. Sir Louis, assisted by Mr. Dan Onoura Ibekwe, the Eastern Region Attorney-General (both of whom also shared Justice Bairamian's view), got busy working on the President as well as on the PM. Simultaneously, Dr. Okpara, leading other UPGA figures and sympathetic trade union leaders, continually pressed Dr. Azikiwe to stand fast.
"Alhaji Muhammadu Rabidu, the Minister of Defence, later arrived from Yola and immediately began intensive consultations with all the relevant groups, including the Armed Forces chiefs. When Dr. Azikiwe appeared unnecessarily difficult, Ribadu called an emergency meeting of NPC Ministers to reappraise the situation. After considering various options, it was decided that the Constitution be utilised if the President remained unreasonable.
"Clause 39(1)(b) of the Constitution provided that during 'any period while...the President is absent from Nigeria or is, in the opinion of the Prime Minister, unable to perform the functions of his office by reason of his illness...' the Senate President would act on his behalf. But if the latter was unavailable, the Constitution also allowed the Federal Chief Justice to act as President. Incidentally, Dr. Azikiwe had since May 1964 been spending a great deal of his time at his Nsukka country home during which period it was announced that he was unwell and required specialist medical attention.
"Now, the idea was that since the Senate presidency was vacant following the dissolution of Parliament, the President's professed illness would be officially recognised and proclaimed to enable the Federal Chief Justice to stand in for him. Thereupon, the Federal Chief Justice would ask Balewa to form a Federal Government. Somehow, this plan rapidly leaked to Dr. Azikiwe late on Sunday night, 3 January, 1965. Within hours, the State House issued a statement, which the press carried the following morning. It said that Dr. HI Idehen, the President's physician, had announced that Dr. Azikiwe 'who was recently indisposed, is now quite fit and fully recovered and capable of fulfilling all his engagements both inside and outside the State House'. This frustrated our plans".
As we all know, an unsatisfactory compromise was eventually reached under which elections were to be repeated in the East alone and a broad based Federal Government was to be formed. The NCNC was invited to join this broad based Government and the gathering storm and the hurricane behind it was averted for some time. It still came in January 1966.
Of course, the story of the 1963 census, which was again doctored to favour the North, was no different. The Eastern Region in particular challenged the results and the country was almost brought to its knees by the fierce controversy that followed.The matter was taken to the Supreme Court which typically, held the census figures valid. Shagari recalls this episode in his memoirs:
"But the new census, held between 5th and 8th November, 1963, provoked even fiercer controversy after the results were declared on 24th February, 1964. Four days later, Dr. Okpara branded the exercise as "worse than useless." His harsh denunciations actually focused on the northern aspect, even though the North showed the least percentage increase while the East had maintained its previously inflated total-one, which Okpara had defended. After meeting with NPC leaders on 2 March, Sir Ahmadu reacted in equally vitriolic terms; alleging malpractice by visiting eastern census inspectors in the North. Sir Ahmadu, like Chief Akintola whose region recorded about 100 per cent rise, said his party accepted and would stand firm by the results.
"When Dr. Okpara delivered a riposte on 9th March, he accused the NPC of reckless attacks and threats on the Igbo. Revealing his true worry, he deplored, reported the Morning Post the next day, the alleged situation in which 'mere publication of the census figures precludes a leader of a major political party from aspiring to the leadership of the nation' and determines in advance the outcome of a general election. Northern and eastern legislatures too entered the brawl, while the dispute split the western NCNC many of whose figures joined with UPP and some AG politicians to form the NNDP."
The 1991 Census, the very latest in this country, was conducted to maintain the carefully designed colonial programme. Out of a total population of 88,504,477, the North was awarded 47,261,962 and the South 41,242,512. Thus, the colonial margin is still being maintained. The most absurd aspect of the announced figures is the attempt to equate Kano State with Lagos State. Thus, Lagos State is given a figure of 5,685,781 and to march that Kano is given a figure of 5,632,040. Any honest observer knows that the Lagos population cannot be less than 15 million. But by the legacy of colonial manipulation, the most populous state in the South must not be allowed to have a higher population than the most populated state in the North. 
That is not all. Having kept the population of Lagos State down to just over 5 million, the State is allocated only 20 local governments whilst Kano and Jigawa States (officially with a combined population slightly less than Lagos), are allocated a total of 71 local government councils. Again, whilst Lagos State has only 24 members in the House of Representatives, Kano and Jigawa (with a smaller combined population) have a total of 35 seats.
It is clear that NO BILL CAN PASS THROUGH THE HOUSE WITHOUT THE CONCURRENCE OF THE NORTHERN STATES. But bills will sail smoothly through the House, even if the whole of the Southern representatives oppose them. That is permanent power, installed by a combination of the colonial master, the Arewa political oligarchy and the Northern Military organisation.
What all this means is that effectively, the South is the object of internal colonialism; that the British merely handed over colonial authority to the Arewa North, and the Arewa North is determined to sustain this colonial relationship with the South indefinitely.
Control Through the Military
As Omoruyi and many other Scholars and Writers have noted, the Arewa North has always ensured that it controlled the Military, particularly the Army, as an insurance of its retention of power. The 1966 coup was a devastating blow against the Arewa North - the beneficiaries of the colonial legacy. Their shock and pain did not arise from the death of Balewa, Ahmadu Bello and their military officers - no. Their main grievance was loss of power to the Ibos. That is how they perceived Ironsi's rise to power.
Therefore, the carefully orchestrated uprisings in the North in May 1966, and the violent and bloody coup that followed it in July were not reactions to Decree 32 of 1966, abolishing the Regions and unifying the civil services of the country. The Decree was a convenient excise for the Northern bid to seize back power.
For as we have seen, soon after power was restored to the North through Gowon and those behind him, they (the Northerners in powers) introduced a level of unitary government this country had never known and embarked on a deliberate programme for dismantling all federal structures in the country as we saw earlier in the series of Decrees transferring State resources to the Federal Government. The truth of the matter was power, raw power. It is also interesting to recall that the attempt of the North to secede after the counter-coup of July 1966, was halted when it was pointed out to them that in seceding, they were in effect divorcing the young lady of wealth, with her oil, seaports, etc.
The whole saga of June 12, 1993 is merely a manifestation of the belief religiously held by the Arewa North that power was transferred to them as a right by the colonial masters. Omoruyi recalls that Alhaji Ibrahim Dasuki, the Sultan of Sokoto, vehemently opposed General Babangida's preparation for the June 12, 1993 elections on behalf of the Northern Leadership because the North was not able to decide the outcome in favour of the North before hand. He then prevailed on Babangida to cancel the presidential election, because the result was a reversal of the British legacy. So much then for Dasuki's characterisation of the event as Allah's will.
Current Programme for the Sustenance of Northern Control.
It is true that a Southerner, General Olusegun Obasanjo, is currently the President of Nigeria. No one doubt's the President's capacity to fight for his independence from Northern control. But that is neither the main nor the central issue in the power game. Some points should be borne in mind:
Obasanjo was the Southern candidate of the Northern traditional and political elite and significantly of the retired Northern Generals. He was forced down the throat of the South.
Through the 1999 Constitution, General Abdulsalami Abubakar installed a permanent Northern majority in the National Assembly by the lopsided manner the seats in the House of Representatives have been allocated.
In the same manner, the number of local governments per state, have been so structured, as to give the North a permanent majority in local governments. The major implication of this is that the direct funding of local governments from Abuja, means that the bulk of the 20% of the Federation Account that goes to local governments, ends up in the North.
The statistics are interesting. Whilst the Southern States have a total 357 councils, the Northern States have 419 councils out of a countrywide total of 776. On the issue of representation in the House of Representatives, the North has 182 seats as against the South's 154. It was, therefore, no surprise that the courageous bill for resource control, brought by Hon. Temi Harriman on Wednesday, 9th May, 2001 was defeated by the permanent Northern majority by 81 votes against the 64 in favour. The bill merely sought to amend the 1969 Petroleum Act, praying that oil producing states, local governments and communities be granted ownership and control of the resources thus "reversing the present situation where the Federal Government exercises excessive control over oil". According to a newspaper report:
"Those opposed to the bill were mostly northerners who sat the left of the public gallery, and wore babaringa with straight caps. The proponents of the bill predominantly southern legislators in their agbada with bent caps (fila), sat to the right. When eventually the Clerk of the House, Yomi Ogunyemi, took the counts, the Southern group's 64 votes were inferior to the 81 votes of their Northern counterparts who roared thunderously to celebrate the "killing" of a bill the sponsors had hoped would bring the deprived and the dehumanised peoples of the Niger Delta and adjoining states succour".
Until these structural imbalances of representation are corrected or a new basis is created for representation and other unfair but in pro-Northern factors redressed, Nigerian nations cannot enjoy a harmonious relationship with each other.
It is obvious that only a Conference of Nigerian Nationalities and Communities, plus some special interest groups can resolve our problems and bring lasting peace that will really ensure that this country will remain "indivisible" and "indissoluble" (Section 2(1) of the 1999 Constitution).
Recommendations
We have clearly seen that the future of this country lies in only one direction - true federalism, together with fiscal federalism and resource control by the owners of the resources.
In making specific recommendations for structural changes which will create an atmosphere of enduring peace, harmony and progress, I willingly and happily adopt the text of the Aburi Agreement of 4th January, 1967 between the Military Governors of the then Regions and the Head of the Federal Government, with regard to the control of the Nigerian Armed Forces.
"The Supreme Military Council now meeting in Ghana has agreed on the following reorganisation of the Army:
The Army is to be governed by the Supreme Military Council the Chairman of which will be known as Commander-in-Chief and Head of the Federal Military Government.
There will be a Military Headquarters on which the Regions will be equally represented and which will be headed by a Chief of Staff.
In each Region there shall be an Area Command under the charge of an Area Commander and corresponding with the existing Regions.
All matters of policy including appointments and promotions of persons in executive posts in the Armed Forces and Police shall be dealt with by the Supreme Military Council".
Police administration and operation should come under the same arrangement.
Division of Powers and Functions
As already noted, in a true federal system, the Federal State or Government, exercises exclusive power in certain basic matters of general relevance and importance, leaving the bulk of the subject matter to the State, with a few in the concurrent list. A Federal Government should exercise powers exclusively only in the following areas: National Defence, Foreign Relations, Currency, Exchange Control, Telecommunications, Immigration, Customs & Excise, Copyright, Patents and Designs, Citizenship and Naturalisation, Shipping in external waters.
And other matters currently in the Exclusive Legislative List (Federal) should be in the Concurrent List (Federal and States). The States and the Federal State should exercise their powers in these matters in a manner that does not interfere with the jurisdiction of other authorities.
As Soyinka has accurately observed: "Centralisation, in short, has been the bane of the nation - on any level you choose - and nothing will answer the necessity of a harmonious relationship and development of its parts other than a severe curtailment of the control of the Centre over the functioning of its parts. How, I ask you, can an individual sitting in Abuja arbitrate the boundary differences in Kontagora, in Okitipupa, Port Harcourt or even Makurdi close by? These are simply no areas of competence for the Centre, and any re-designing of the nation's internal portrait must depend absolutely on strategies that emanate from the people themselves".
Exclusive State Matters
In the following areas, the State must have exclusive authority except that the Federal Government could lay down standards and guidelines and perhaps make grants towards some of these subject matters. Agriculture & Fisheries, Education, Health, Labour, Housing, Local Government, Forestry, Town and Country Planning, Lands, State Judiciary, Vetinary Services.
Revenue Allocation
As already noted, the States have to be given the economic power to carry out their increased political, social and economic responsibilities. A system of revenue allocation to meet this has been suggested already. This may be summarised as follows:
Minerals - Oil & Solid
50% of the proceeds should be paid to the State from which it is produced. Such States territory includes 200 miles continental shelf.
Customs & Excise
50% should go to the State to which the goods are going or in the case of excise duty, the State in which the goods are produced.
Value Added Tax (VAT)
Only States should collect value added tax. The Federal Government should have no such power. States should retain their VAT for their own use.
The VAT is a tax on the consumer of goods and services within the territory of the States. The Federal Government may only collect VAT in the Federal Capital Territory. Thus, all taxes made from purchases of petroleum products from a State should be remitted to that State. At the moment, VAT is collected and administered by the Federal Government which keeps a percentage to itself and then distributes the balance in an arbitrary manner, under which States from which little or nothing has been collected, get the bulk of the funds.
A Conference of Nigerian Nationalities
Nigeria, according to the late sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, is a mere geographical expression. As we saw earlier, the nations and peoples of Nigeria existed separately and independently for centuries until they were forcefully brought into the artificial State called Nigeria.
The territory called Nigeria is as much a victim of European colonial callousness as the rest of Africa. Many of the internal boundaries of Nigeria are as artificial as inter-State boundaries of Africa. Was it not Lord Salisbury who stated thus at the Berlin Conference 1885:
"We have been engaged in drawing lines on maps where no white man's foot ever trod; we have been giving away mountains and rivers and lakes to each other, only hindered by the small impediment that we have never known where the rivers and lakes and mountains were."
Another Briton, an official who participated in the drawing of the Southern section of the Nigerian-Cameroon border, is also recorded to have recalled, years after that: "In those days we just took a blue pencil and ruler, and we put it down at Old Calabar, and drew that blue line to Yola ... I recollect thinking when I was sitting having an audience with the Emir (of Yola) surrounded by his tribe, that it was a very good thing that he did not know that I, with a blue pencil, had drawn a line through his territory."
The carry over of this artificiality of boundary into Nigeria, is evident when Kwara and Kogi States are treated as Northern, instead of Yoruba (Western) States, or when Asaba and Agbor (Oshimili, Anioma and Ika) are included in a Delta State. It is therefore clear that a Conference of Nationalities will involve, not only a restructuring of functions between the bloated Centre and the States, but there also has to be, a re-grouping of the States along national/ethnic lines. To continue with the examples I have given above, Kwara and Kogi will merge with the Yoruba States and Asaba and Agbor (Oshimili, Anioma and Ika) should merge with their sister Igbo States east of the Niger.
Indeed, there has been much talk of zoning Nigeria into 6 or 8 political zones. The idea is that larger political units will better be able to carry out major social and economic projects in the decontrolled regional system being demanded. The Movement for National Reformation (M.N.R.) has in fact mad elaborate proposals in this regard which merit serious consideration. It is important that only groups of the same or similar nationalities should come within a zone. Grouping must be voluntary and states within a zone should be free to decide what matters they wish to retain for themselves and what they want jointly handled in the zonal system. These structural changes need to be tabled for discussion at a Conference of Nigerian Nationalities.
The M.N.R. proposals are stated clearly thus: "Proposals so far discussed entail the application of the federal principle from the national level down to the local level. One reason for this is the need to resolve the "nationalities" question in Nigeria. Another reason is the need to restore genuine federalism as envisaged by the country's founding fathers, by the creation of units large enough to perform the functions originally reserved to the Regions but which have been progressively eroded by the Federal Government, by reason, among other causes, of the diminutiveness and impecuniousness of the present States. The Movement for National Reformation advocates that intermediate authorities be created by providing for States of the same "nationality, or neighbouring States of smaller size and different "nationalities," to coalesce in a federation interposed between the State and Union levels. The country as a whole could then be the Union of the Federations of Nigeria (UFN) or the Union of the Federated States of Nigeria (UFSN). A new Act of Union, freely subscribed to by the "Nationalities" and Federations, is envisaged".
Conclusion
The current struggle by the peoples of the Niger Delta and their Brethren from the South, is the 4th phase of our struggle. We must recall the very first heroic liberation struggle by Isaac Adaka Boro - "the twelve day revolution" which commenced on 23rd February, 1966 and ended 12 days later with a heroic surrender. No one was killed. But the seed of consciousness had been planted.
Although these earlier revolutionaries were nave enough to believe that the Arewa North was our friend, their struggle has been immortalised by history. Boro's address to his troops was inspiring and showed the level of civilisation and enlightenment in the leadership of the force.
"Today is a great day, not only in your lives, but also in the history of the Niger Delta. Perhaps it will be the greatest day for a very long time. This is not because we are going to bring heaven down, but because we are going to demonstrate to the world what and how we feel about oppression. Before today, we were branded robbers, bandits, terrorists or gangsters but after today, we shall be heroes of our land.
"For this reason, and for the good name of the Ijaws, do not commit atrocities such as rape, looting or robbery. Whatever people say, we must maintain our integrity. Moreover, you know it is against Ijaw tradition to mess about with women during war. You have been purified these many days. Be assured that if you do not get yourselves defiled within the period of battle, you shall return home safe even if we fail".
The men of the Niger Delta Volunteer Force each took the following oath before the revolution: "I...a Niger Delta citizen from the town of...today herein sworn in at the Revolutionary Camp of the Niger Delta Volunteer Service, as (an officer, warrant officer, non-commissioned or a serviceman) do solemnly declare to uphold the natural rights and integrity of the Niger Delta peoples and fight with my life for the restoration of same. So help me God."
The nextmajor milestone is the Ogoni struggle, led by the legendary Ken Saro-Wiwa and MOSSOP - the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People. Thethird stage occurred in late 1998 and early 1999, when the youths of Izon land issued the Kaiama Declaration.
We are now in the fourth and final phase, in which the gaunlet has been picked up by the Southern Governors, with the Governor of Delta in the vanguard. It is a peaceful, well co-ordinated struggle, with dialogue a main weapon. We pray that in spite ofdecades of exercise of predatory instincts and undeserved enrichment, the Arewa North will see reason and realise thatthe end of the Lugard era has come. We in the South want to be friend and Brothers and not wives and anybody.
We have a lot of lessons to learn from the Arewa North. How a small band of men from the Sudan and Northern parts of West Africa could come to what became Northern Nigeria, and conquer most of it, is amazing enough. How, in spite of not having the military capacity to conquer the Middle Belt, North East Arewa (Borno Empire) and the South, and yet applying apolitical, administrative and organisational skills, managed to put the whole of Nigeria under their control for 50 years, is a truly incredible feat. And yet, these people are a minority even in the North. Let us learn from them.
They are a focused, determined, united and well co-ordinated and organised group. We must adopt their methods. Wemust mobilise and enlist all our people in this struggle. The institutions such as Legislative Houses, Governors and Local Governments must be involved.
We must nurture our minorities. If the minorities in our communities feel that they will be oppressed, disenfranchised and deprived for their resources, then they willlook up to other groups like the Arewa North as allies against local oppression.
This is what motivated the Boro group and theNiger Delta Congress of Chief Harold Dappa Biriye to seek alliance with the NPC in theFirst Republic. Let us give concrete assurances to our minorities, otherwise they will become our Achiles heel and we will fail in our great and just Odyssey.
I would like to conclude this address, by repeating the following wise words uttered by a respected elder statesman of Nigeria and theNiger Delta, Dr. M.T. Akobo.
"Like the American in 1787, 'in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity' we, as Nigerians of our various nationalities, culture, historical, economic and social background of the Niger Delta will participate in producing and proclaiming a just and stable Constitution for the Federal Republic of Nigeria."
Nigeria's Coat of Arms bears the words, "Unity and Faith, Peace and Progress". One fundamental and indispensable word is missing from that coat of arms and this may be responsible for Nigeria's plight as a failed State. That word is JUSTICE

HISTORY OF COLONIAL DEVELOPMENT IN NIGERIA

COLONIAL NIGERIA

Colonial Nigeria was the area of West Africa that became the modern day Nigeria, during the time of British rule in the 19th and 20th centuries. British influence in the region began with the prohibition of slave trade to British subjects in 1807. The resulting collapse of African slave trade led to the decline and eventual collapse of the indigenous Edo Empire. Britain annexed Lagos in 1861 and established the Oil River Protectorate in 1884. British influence in the Niger area increased gradually over the 19th century, but Britain did not effectively occupy the area until 1885. Other European powers acknowledged Britain's power over the area in the 1885 Berlin Conference.

From 1886 to 1899, much of the country was ruled by Royal Niger Company, authorized by charter, and governed by George Taubman Goldie. In 1900, the Southern Nigeria Protectorate and Northern Nigeria Protectorate passed from company hands to the Crown. At the urging of governor Frederick Lugard, the two territories were amalgamated as the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria, while maintaining considerable regional autonomy among the three major regions. Progressive constitutions after World War II provided for increasing representation and electoral government by Nigerians. The colonial period proper in Nigeria lasted from 1900 to 1960, after which Nigeria gained its independence.

Overview

Through a progressive sequence of regimes, the British imposed Crown Colony government on the area of West Africa which came to be known as Nigeria, a form of rule which was both autocratic and bureaucratic. After initially adopting an indirect rule approach, in 1906 the British merged the small Lagos Colony and the Southern Nigeria Protectorate into a new Colony of Southern Nigeria, and in 1914 that was combined with the Northern Nigeria Protectorate to form the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria.^[1] Administration and military control of the territory was done primarily by white Britons, both in London and in Nigeria.^[2]

Following military conquest, the British imposed an economic system designed to profit from African labour. The essential basis of this system was a money economy—specifically the British pound sterling—which could be demanded through taxation, paid to cooperative natives, and levied as a fine.^[3][4]

The amalgamation of different ethnic and religious groups into one federation created internal tension which persists in Nigeria to the present day.^[5]

Origins of British influence

In the 1700s, the British Empire and other European powers had settlements and forts in West Africa but had not yet established the full-scale plantation colonies which existed in Americas. Adam Smith wrote in 1776 that the African societies were better established and more populous than those of the Americas, thus creating a more formidable barrier to European expansion.^[6][7]

Earlier elements related to this were its founding of the colony at Sierra Leone in 1787 as a refuge for freed slaves, the independent missionary movement intended to bring Christianity to Edo Empire, and programs of exploration sponsored by learned societies and scientific groups, such as the London-based African Association.

Local leaders, cognizant of the situation in the West Indies, India, and elsewhere, recognized the risks of British expansion. A chief of

Bonny in 1860 explained that he refused a British treaty due to the tendency to "induce the Chiefs to sign a treaty whose meaning they did not understand, and then seize upon the country."^[8]

Slave trade and abolition

Map of Negroland and Guinea including the Slave Coast, 1736, by London cartographer Hermann Moll

European slave trading from West Africa began before 1650, with people taken at a rate of about 3,000 per year. This rate rose to 20,000 per year in the last quarter of the century. The slave trade was heaviest in the period 1700–1850, with an average of 76,000 people taken from Africa each year between 1783 and 1792. At first, the trade centered around West Central Africa, now the Congo. But in the 1700s, the Bight of Benin (also known as the Slave Coast) became the next most important hub. Ouidah (now part of Benin) and Lagos were the major ports in Biafra. From 1790–1807, predominantly British slave traders purchased 1000–2000 slaves each year in Lagos alone. The trade subsequently continued under the Portuguese. In the Bight of Biafra, the major ports were Old Calabar (Akwa Akpa), Bonny, and New Calabar.^[9] Starting in 1740, the British were the primary European slave trafficker from this area.^[6] In 1767, British traders facilitated a notorious massacre hundreds of people at Calabar after inviting them onto their ships, ostensibly to settle a local dispute.^[10]

In 1807 the Parliament of the United Kingdom enacted the Slave Trade Act, prohibiting British subjects from participating in the slave trade. Britain subsequently lobbied other European powers to stop the slave trade as well. It made anti-slavery treaties with West African powers, which it enforced militarily. Some of the treaties contained prohibitions on diplomacy conducted without British permission, or other promises to abide by British rule.^[11] This scenario provided an opportunity for naval expeditions and reconnaissance throughout the region. Britain also annexed Freetown in Sierra Leone, declaring it a Crown Colony in 1808.^[12]

The decrease in trade indirectly led to the collapse of Edo Empire. Britain withdrew from the slave trade when it was the major transporter of slaves to the Americas. The French had abolished slavery following the French Revolution, although it briefly re-established it in its Caribbean colonies under Napoleon. France sold Louisiana to the United States in 1803, the same year that it gave up on trying to regain Saint-Domingue. By the end of the Napoleonic Wars, it ended slavery in its possessions. Between them, the French and the British had purchased a majority of the slaves sold from the ports of Edo. The economy suffered from the decline in the slave trade, although considerable smuggling of slaves to the Americans continued for years.

Lagos became a major slave port in the late 1700s and into the 1850s. Much of the human trafficking which occurred there was nominally illegal, and records from this time and place are not comprehensive. According to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Voyage Database, 308,800 were sold across the Atlantic from Lagos in 1776–1850. British and French traders did a large share of this business until 1807, when they were replaced by Portuguese and Spanish. By 1826–1850 the British navy was interfering significantly with Lagos slave exports.^[13]

Whether British conquest of Nigeria resulted from a benevolent motive to end slavery, or more instrumental motives of wealth and power, remains a topic of dispute between African and European historians.^[14] Many locals remained unconvinced of the Crown's authority to completely reverse the legal and moral attributes of a social institution through fiat.^[15] Regardless, slavery had decimated the population and fueled militarization and chaos, thereby paving the way for more aggressive colonisation.^[13][16]

Missionaries

Portuguese Roman Catholic priests who accompanied traders and officials to the West African coast introduced Christianity to Edo, Benin Empire in the fifteenth century. Several churches were built to serve the Edo community and a small number of African converts. When direct Portuguese contacts in the region were withdrawn, however, the influence of the Catholic missionaries waned. By the eighteenth century, evidence of Christianity had disappeared.

Although churchmen in Britain had been influential in the drive to abolish the slave trade, significant missionary activity for Africa did not develop until the 1840s. For some time, missionaries operated in the area between Lagos and Ibadan. The first missions were opened by the Church of England's Church Missionary Society (CMS). Other Protestant denominations from Britain, Canada, and the United States also opened missions and, in the 1860s, Roman Catholic religious orders established missions. Protestant missionaries tended to divide the country into spheres of activity to avoid competition with each other, and Catholic missions similarly avoided duplication of effort among the several religious orders working there. Catholic missionaries were particularly active among the Igbo; the CMS worked among the Yoruba.

The CMS initially promoted Africans to responsible positions in the mission field; for instance, they appointed Samuel Ajayi Crowther as the first Anglican bishop of the Niger. Crowther, a liberated Yoruba slave, had been educated in Sierra Leone and in Britain, where he was ordained before returning to his homeland with the first group of CMS missionaries. The Anglicans and other religious groups had a conscious "native church" policy to develop indigenous ecclesiastical institutions to become independent of Europeans. Crowther was succeeded as bishop by a British cleric. In the long term, the acceptance of Christianity by large numbers of Nigerians depended on the various denominations adapting to local conditions. They selected an increasingly high proportion of African clergy for the missions.

In large measure, European missionaries assumed the value of colonial rule in terms of promoting education, health and welfare measures, so they effectively reinforced colonial policy. Some African Christian communities formed their own independent churches.

(Note: All of this section to this point is from Nigeria: A Country Study (1991) prepared by staff of the Library of Congress of the United States.^[17]

The missionaries gained in power throughout the 1800s. They caused major transformations in traditional society as they eroded the religious institutions such as human sacrifice, infanticide, and secret societies, which had formerly played a role in political authority and community life.^[18]

Commerce

The principal commodities of legitimate trade were palm oil and palm kernels, which were used in Europe to make soap and as lubricants for machinery, before petroleum products were developed for that purpose. Although this trade grew to significant proportions—palm oil exports alone were worth £1 billion a year by 1840—it was concentrated near the coast, where palm trees grew in abundance. Gradually, however, the trade forced major economic and social changes in the interior, although it hardly undermined slavery and the slave trade. The incidence of slavery in local societies increased.

Initially most palm oil (and later kernels) came from Igboland, where palm trees formed a canopy over the densely inhabited areas of the Ngwa, Nri Kingdom, Awka, and other Igbo peoples. Palm oil was used locally for cooking, the kernels were a source for food, trees were tapped for palm wine, and the fronds were used for building material. It was a relatively simple adjustment for many Igbo families to transport the oil to rivers and streams that led to the Niger Delta for sale to European merchants. The rapid expansion in exports, especially after 1830, occurred precisely at the time slave exports collapsed. The Igbo redirected slaves into the domestic economy, especially to grow the staple food crop, yams, in northern Igboland for marketing throughout the palm-tree belt. As before, Aro merchants dominated trade in the hinterland, including palm products to the coast and the sale of slaves within Igboland.

From 1815–1840, palm oil exports increased by a factor of 25, from 800 to 20,000 tons per year. British merchants led the trade in palm oil, while the Portuguese and others continued the slave trade.^[6] Much of this oil was sold elsewhere in the British Empire.^[19] To produce all this oil, the economy of the southern region crossed over from mostly subsistence to the production of palm oil as a cash crop.^[20]

The Niger Delta and Calabar, which once had been known for the export of slaves, became notable for the export of palm oil. The Delta streams were called "oil rivers." The basic economic units in each town were "houses," family-operated entities that engendered loyalty for its employees. A "house" included the extended family of the trader, including retainers and slaves. As its head, the master trader taxed other traders who were members of his "house;" he maintained a war vessel, a large dugout canoe that could hold several tons of cargo and dozens of crew, for the defense of the harbor. Whenever a trader had become successful enough to keep a war canoe, he was expected to form his own "house". Economic competition among these "houses" was so fierce that trade often erupted into armed battle between the crews of the large canoes.

Because of the hazards of climate and tropical diseases for Europeans and the absence of any centralized authorities on the mainland responsive to their interests, European merchants moored their ships outside harbours or in the delta, and used the ships as trading stations and warehouses. In time they built depots onshore and eventually moved up the Niger River to establish stations in the interior. An example was that at Onitsha, where they could bargain directly with local suppliers and purchase products likely to turn a profit.

Some European traders switched to legitimate business only when the commerce in slaves became too hazardous. The traders suffered from the risks of their position and believed they were at the mercy of the coastal rulers, whom they considered unpredictable. Accordingly, as the volume of trade increased, merchants requested that the British government appoint a consul to cover the region. Consequently, in 1849, John Beecroft was accredited as consul for the bights of Benin and Biafra, a jurisdiction stretching from Dahomey to Cameroon. Beecroft was the British representative to Fernando Po, where the prevention squadron of the British Royal Navy was stationed.

In 1850, the British created a "Court of Equity" at Bonny, overseen by Beecroft, which would deal with trade disputes. Another court was established in 1856 at Calabar, based on an agreement with local Efik traders which prohibited them from interfering with British merchants. These courts contained majorities British members and represented a new level of presumptive British sovereignty in the Bight of Biafra.^[11]

West Africa also bought British exports, supplying 30–40% of the demand for British cotton during the Industrial Revolution of 1750–1790.^[19]

Exploration

At the same time, the British scientists were interested in exploring the course and related settlements along the Niger River. The delta masked the mouth of the great river, and for centuries Nigerians chose not to tell Europeans the secrets of the interior. In 1794 the African Association in Great Britain commissioned Mungo Park, an intrepid Scottish physician and naturalist, to search for the headwaters of the Niger and follow the river downstream. Park reached the upper Niger the next year by traveling inland from the Gambia River. Although he reported on the eastward flow of the Niger, he was forced to turn back when his equipment was lost to Muslim Arab slave traders. In 1805 he set out on a second expedition, sponsored by the British government, to follow the Niger to the sea. His mission failed, but Park and his party covered more than 1,500 kilometers, passing through the western portions of the Sokoto Caliphate, before drowning when their boats overturned in rapids near Bussa.

On a subsequent expedition to the Sokoto Caliphate, Hugh Clapperton learned about the mouth of the Niger River, where it reached the sea, but he died before confirming it. His servant, Richard Lander, and Lander's brother John were the ones to demonstrate that the Niger flowed into the sea. The Lander brothers were seized by slave traders in the interior and sold down the river to a waiting European ship.

Initial British attempts to open trade with the interior by way of the Niger could not overcome climate and diseases such as malaria. A third of the people associated with an 1842 riverine expedition died. In the 1850s, the benefits of quinine had been found to combat malaria, and aided by the medicine, a Liverpool merchant, Macgregor Laird, opened the river. Laird's efforts were stimulated by the detailed reports of a pioneer German explorer, Heinrich Barth, who traveled through much of Borno and the Sokoto Caliphate, where he recorded information about the region's geography, economy, and inhabitants.

First colonial claims

Lagos Colony

Flag of the Lagos Colony (1886-1906)

As part of an anti-slavery campaign and a pretext for making inroads into Lagos, Britain bombarded Lagos in November 1851, ousted the pro-slavery Oba Kosoko and established a treaty with the newly installed Oba Akintoye, who was more amenable. Lagos was annexed as a Crown Colony in 1861 via the Lagos Treaty of Cession.

British expansion accelerated in the last decades of the nineteenth century. The early history of Lagos Colony was one of repeated attempts to end the Yoruba wars. In the face of threats to the divided Yoruba states from Dahomey and the Sokoto Caliphate, as represented by the emirate of Ilorin, the British governor—assisted by the CMS—succeeded in imposing peace settlements on the interior.

Colonial Lagos was a busy, cosmopolitan port. Its architecture was in both Victorian and Brazilian style, as many of the black elite were English-speakers from Sierra Leone and freedmen repatriated from Brazil and Cuba. Its residents were employed in official capacities and were active in business. Africans also were represented on the Lagos Legislative Council, a largely appointed assembly. The Colony was ultimately governed by the British Colonial Office in London.^[21]

Captain John Glover, the colony's administrator, created a militia of Hausa troops in 1861. This became the Lagos Constabulary, and subsequently the Nigerian Police Force.^[22]

In 1880, the British government and traders demonetized the Maria Theresa dollar, to the considerable dismay of its local holders, in favor of the pound.^[3] In 1891, the African Banking Corporation founded the Bank of British West Africa in Lagos.^[23]

Oil Rivers Protectorate

Queen Victoria on a stamp of the Niger Coast Protectorate of 1894.

After the Berlin Conference of 1884, Britain announced formation of the Oil Rivers Protectorate, which included the Niger Delta and extended eastward to Calabar, where the British consulate general was relocated from Fernando Po. The protectorate was organized to control and develop trade coming down the Niger. Vice consuls were assigned to ports that already had concluded treaties of cooperation with the Foreign Office. Local rulers continued to administer their territories, but consular authorities assumed jurisdiction for the equity courts established earlier by the foreign mercantile communities. A constabulary force was raised and used to pacify the coastal area.

In 1894 the territory was redesignated the Niger Coast Protectorate and was expanded to include the region from Calabar to Lagos Colony and Protectorate, including the hinterland, and northward up the Niger River as far as Lokoja, the headquarters of the Royal Niger Company. As a protectorate, it did not have the status of a colony, so its officials were appointed by the Foreign Office and not by the Colonial Office.^[21]

In 1891, the Consulate established the Niger Coast Protectorate Force or "Oil Rivers Irregulars".^[22]

Royal Niger Company

Ensign of the Royal Niger Company (1888-1899)

British stamps used in 1898 at Akassa by the Royal Niger Company.

The legitimate trade in commodities attracted a number of rough-hewn British merchants to the Niger River, as well as some men who had been formerly engaged in the slave trade but who now changed their line of wares. The large companies that subsequently opened depots in the delta cities and in Lagos were as ruthlessly competitive as the delta towns themselves and frequently used force to compel potential suppliers to agree to contracts and to meet their demands. To some extent, competition amongst these companies undermined their collective position vis-a-vis local merchants.

In the 1870s, therefore, George Taubman Goldie began amalgamating companies into the United African Company, soon renamed the National African Company.^[11]

The Royal Niger Company established its headquarters far inland at Lokoja, which was the main trading port of the company,^[24] from where it pretended to assume responsibility for the administration of areas along the Niger and Benue rivers where it maintained depots. It soon gained a virtual monopoly over trade along the River^[3]

The company interfered in the territory along the Niger and the Benue, sometimes becoming embroiled in serious conflicts when its British-led native constabulary intercepted slave raids or attempted to protect trade routes. The company negotiated treaties with Sokoto, Gwandu, and Nupe that were interpreted as guaranteeing exclusive access to trade in return for the payment of annual tribute. Officials of the Sokoto Caliphate considered these treaties quite differently; from their perspective, the British were granted only extraterritorial rights that did not prevent similar arrangements with the Germans and the French and certainly did not surrender sovereignty.

Even before gaining its charter, the Company signed treaties with local leaders which granted it broad sovereign powers. One 1885 treaty read:

We, the undersigned King and Chiefs...with the view to the bettering of the condition of our country and people, do this day cede to the National Africa Company (Limited), their heirs and assigns, forever, the whole of our territory...We also give the said National African Company (Limited) full power to settle all native disputes arising from any cause whatever, and we pledge ourselves not to enter into any war with other tribes without the sanction of the said National Africa Company (Limited).

We also understand that the said National African Company (limited) have full power to mine, farm, and build in any portion of our territory. We bind ourselves not to have any intercourse with any strangers or foreigners except through the said national African Company (Limited), and we give the said National African Company (Limited) full power to exclude all other strangers and foreigners from their territory at their discretion.

In consideration of the foregoing, the said National African Company (Limited) bind themselves not to interfere with any of the native laws or customs of the country, consistently with the maintenance of order and good government...[and] agree to pay native owners of land a reasonable amount for any portion they may require.

The said National African Company (Limited) bind themselves to protect the said King and Chiefs from the attacks of any neighbouring tribes (Ibid.).^[11]

The company considered itself the sole legitimate government of the area, with executive, legislative, and judicial powers all subordinate to the rule of a council created by the company board of directors in London. The council was headed by a governor. The deputy governor served as political administrator for company's territory, and appointed three officials in Nigeria to carry out the work of administration. These were the agent general, the senior judicial officer, and the commandant of the constabulary.^[25] However, the company did accept that local emirs could act as partners in governance and trade. It therefore hired native intermediaries who could conduct diplomacy, trade, and intelligence work in the local area.^[26]

The company, as was common among European businesses in Africa, paid its native workers in barter. At the turn of the century, top wages were four bags of salt (company retail price, 3s 9d) for a month of work.^[4] Trade was also conducted through a mechanism of barter and credit. Goods were made available on credit to African middlemen, who were expected to trade them at a pre-arranged price and deliver the proceeds to the company. The company's major imports to the area included gin and low-quality firearms.^[3]

By the 1880s, the National African Company became the dominant commercial power, increasing from 19 to 39 stations between 1882 and 1993. In 1886, Taubman secured aroyal charter and his company became the Royal Niger Company. The charter allowed the company to collect customs and make treaties with local leaders.^[4]

Under Goldie's direction, the Royal Niger Company was instrumental in depriving France and Germany of access to the region. Consequently, he may well deserve the epithet "father of Nigeria," which historians accorded him. He definitely laid the basis for British claims.

The Royal Niger Company had its own armed forces.^[22] This included a river fleet which it used for retaliatory attacked on uncooperative villages.^[3]

Britain's imperialistic posture became more aggressive towards the end of the century. The appointment of Joseph Chamberlain as colonial secretary in 1895 especially marked a shift towards new territorial ambitions of the British Empire.^[27] Economically, local colonial administrators also pushed for the imposition of British colonial rule, believing that trade and taxation conducted in British pounds would prove far more lucrative than a barter trade which yielded only inconsistent customs duties.^[3]

Military conquest

The British led a series of military campaigns to enlarge its sphere of influence and expand its commercial opportunities. Most of the fighting was done by Hausa soldiers, recruited to fight against other groups. The superior weapons, tactics, and political unity of the British are commonly given as reasons for their decisive ultimate victory.^[28][29]

In 1892 the British forces set out to fight the Ijebu Kingdom, which had resisted missionaries and foreign traders. The legal justification for this campaign was a treaty signed in 1886, when the British had interceded as peacemakers to end the Ekitiparapo war, which imposed free trade requirements and mandated that all parties continue to use British channels for diplomacy.^[11] Although the Ijebu had some weapons they were wiped out by British machine guns called Maxim guns. With this victory, the British went on to conquer the rest of Yorubaland, which had also been weakened by sixteen years of civil war.^[30] By 1893, most of the other political entities in Yorubaland recognized the practical necessity signing another treaty with the British, this one explicitly joining them with the protectorate of Lagos.^[11][31]

King Koko in His War Canoe, London Daily Graphic, March 30, 1895; depicting King Frederick William Koko—onetime antagonist to the Royal Niger Company

In 1896–1897 the forces of the Niger Coast Protectorate fought with the remnants of the Benin Empire. Following the defeat of an unsuccessful foray by Consul General James R. Phillips, a larger retaliatory force captured Benin City and drove Ovonramwen, the Oba of Benin, into exile.^[32]

The British had difficulty conquering Igboland, which lacked central political organization. In the name of liberating the Igbos from the Aro Confederacy, the British launched the Anglo-Aro War of 1901–1902. Despite conquering villages by burning houses and crops, continual political control over the Igbo remained elusive.^[33][34] The British forces began annual pacification missions to convince the locals of British supremacy.^[35]

A campaign against the Sokoto Caliphate began in 1900 with the creation of the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria, under the direction of Governor Lugard. The British captured Kano in 1903. Deadly battles broke out sporadically through 1906.^[36] Lugard was slow to describe these excursions to the Colonial Office, which apparently learned of preparations to attack Kano from the newspapers in December 1902. Not wishing to appear out of control or weak, they approved the expedition (two days after it began) on January 19, 1903.^[37] In general the Colonial Office allowed Lugard's expeditions to continue because they were framed as retaliatory and, as Olivier commented in 1906, "If the millions of people [in Nigeria] who do not want us there once get the notion that our people can be killed with impunity they will not be slow to attempt it."^[38]

Lugard informed the leaders of conquered Sokoto:

The Fulani in old times . . . conquered this country. They took the right to rule over it, to levy taxes, to depose kings and to create kings. They in turn have by defeat lost their rule which has come into the hands of the British. All these things which I have said the Fulani by conquest took the right to do now pass to the British. Every Sultan and Emir and the principal officers of state will be appointed by the high Commissioner throughout all this country. The High Commissioner will be guided by all the usual laws of succession and the wishes of the people and chief, but will set them aside if he desires for good cause to do so. The Emirs and chiefs who are appointed will rule over the people as of old time and take such taxes as are approved by the High Commissioner, but they will obey the laws of the Governor and will act in accordance with the advice of the Resident. ^[39]

Political administration under the Crown

Further information: Northern Nigeria Protectorate, Southern Nigeria Protectorate, and Provinces of Nigeria

The British Colonial Office in Westminster, created in the 1860s by architect George Gilbert Scott; illustrated in 1875

Contemporary photograph of the same building, now housing the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

Transition to Crown rule

Concrete plans for transition to Crown rule—direct control by the British government—apparently began in 1897. In May of this year, Herbert J. Read published a Memorandum on British possessions in West Africa, which remarked upon the "inconvenient and unscientific boundaries" between Lagos Colony, the Niger Coast Protectorate, and the Royal Niger Company. Read suggested they be merged, and more use made of Nigeria's natural resources^[40] In the same year, the British created the Royal West African Frontier Force (RWAFF or WAFF), under the leadership of Colonel Frederick Lugard. In one year, Lugard recruited 2600 troops, evenly split between Hausa and Yoruba. The officers of the RWAFF were British. The operations of this force are still not fully known due to a policy of strict secrecy mandated by the British government.^[41]

Guidelines for running the Nigerian colony were established in 1898 by the Niger Committee, chaired by the Earl of Selborne, in 1898. The British finalized the border between Nigeria and French West Africa with the Anglo-French Convention of 1898.^[42]

The territory of the Royal Niger Company became the Northern Nigeria Protectorate, and the Company itself became a private corporation which continued to do business in Nigeria. The Company received £865,000 compensation for the loss of its Charter. It continued to enjoy special privileges and maintained a de facto monopoly over commerce. Under Lugard from 1900–1906, the Protectorate consolidated political control over the area through military conquest and initiated the use of British currency in substitute for barter.^[3][4]

Colonial administration

In 1900, the British government assumed control of the Southern and Northern Protectorates, both of which were ultimately governed by the Colonial Office at Whitehall. The staff of this office came primarily from the British upper middle class—i.e., university-educated men, primarily not nobility, with fathers in well-respected professions.^[43] The first five heads of the Nigeria Department (1898–1914) were Reginald Antrobus, William Mercer, William Baillie Hamilton, Sydney Olivier, and Charles Strachey.^[44] Olivier was a member of the Fabian Society and a friend of George Bernard Shaw.^[45]

Under the Colonial Office was the governor, who managed administration of his colony and held powers of emergency rule. The Colonial Office could veto or revise his policies. The seven men who governed Northern Nigeria, Southern Nigeria, and Lagos through 1914 were Henry McCallum, William MacGregor, Walter Egerton, Ralph Moor, Percy Girouard, Hesketh Bell, and Frederick Lugard. Most of these came from military backgrounds. All were knighted.^[46]

Undated British archival photo of locomotive in Nigeria

Walter Egerton's sixfold agenda for 1908, as detailed on November 29, 1907, in a telegram to the Colonial Office, is representative of British priorities.^[47]

1. To pacify the country;
2. To established settled government in the newly won districts;
3. To improve and extend native footpaths throughout the country;
4. To construct properly graded roads in the more populated districts;
5. To clear the numerous rivers in the country and make them suitable for launch and canoe traffic; and
6. To extend the railways.

Egerton also supervised improvements to the Lagos harbour and extension of the local telegraph network.^[47]

From 1895–1900, a railway was constructed running from Lagos to Ibadan; it opened in March 1901. This line was extended to Oshogbo, 62 miles away, in 1905–1907, and to Zungeru and Minna in 1908–1911. Its final leg enabled it to meet another line, constructed 1907–1911, running from Baro, through Minnia, to Kano.^[48]

Some of these public work projects were accomplished with the help of forced labour, referred to as "Political Labour". Village Heads were paid 10 shillings for conscripts, and fined £50 if they failed to supply. Individuals could be fined or jailed for refusing to comply.^[4]

Frederick Lugard

Frederick Lugard, who was appointed as High Commissioner of the Northern Nigeria Protectorate in 1900 and served until 1906 in his first term, often has been regarded by the British as their model colonial administrator. Trained as an army officer, he had served in India, Egypt, and East Africa, where he expelled Arab slave traders from Nyasaland and established the British presence in Uganda. Joining the Royal Niger Company in 1894, Lugard was sent to Borgu to counter inroads made by the French, and in 1897 he was made responsible for raising the Royal West African Frontier Force (RWAFF) from local levies to serve under British officers.

During his six-year tenure as High Commissioner, Sir Frederick Lugard (as he became in 1901) was occupied with transforming the commercial sphere of influence inherited from the Royal Niger Company into a viable territorial unit under effective British political control. His objective was to conquer the entire region and to obtain recognition of the British protectorate by its indigenous rulers, especially the Fulani emirs of the Sokoto Caliphate. Lugard's campaign systematically subdued local resistance, using armed force when diplomatic measures failed. Borno capitulated without a fight, but in 1903 Lugard's RWAFF mounted assaults on Kano and Sokoto. From Lugard's point of view, clear-cut military victories were necessary because the surrenders of the defeated peoples weakened resistance elsewhere.

Lugard's success in northern Nigeria has been attributed to his policy of indirect rule; that is, he governed the protectorate through the rulers defeated by the British. If the emirs accepted British authority, abandoned the slave trade, and cooperated with British officials in modernizing their administrations, the colonial power was willing to confirm them in office. The emirs retained their caliphate titles but were responsible to British district officers, who had final authority. The British High Commissioners could depose emirs and other officials if necessary.

Amalgamation

A map displaying Southern and Northern Nigeria, 1914.

Amalgamation of Nigeria was envisioned from early on in its governance, as is made clear by the report of the Niger Committee in 1898. Combining the three jurisdictions would reduce administrative expenses and facilitate deployment of resources and money between the areas. (Specifically it would enable direct subsidy of the less profitable Northern jurisdiction.) Antrobus, Fiddes, and Strachey in the Colonial Office promoted amalgamation, along with Lugard.^[49]

Following the order recommended by the Niger Committee, the Colonial Office merged Lagos Colony and the Southern Nigeria Protectorate on May 1, 1906, forming a larger protectorate (still called the Southern Nigeria Protectorate) which spanned the coastline between Dahomey and Cameroon.^[49]

Lugard advocated constantly for unification of the whole territory, and in August 1911 the Colonial Office asked Lugard to lead the amalgamated colony.^[50]

In 1912, Lugard returned to Nigeria from his six-year term as Governor of Hong Kong, to oversee the merger of the northern and southern protectorates. On May 9, 1913, Lugard submitted a formal proposal to the Colonial Office in which Northern and Southern provinces would have separate administrations, under the control of a "strongly authoritarian" governor-general. The Colonial Office approved most of Lugard's plan, but balked at authorizing him to pass laws without their approval.^[51] John Anderson diplomatically suggested:

If it is the necessity for formally submitting the drafts that hurts Sir F. Lugard, I should be quite prepared to omit that provision provided that the period of publication of the draft prior to enactment is extended from one month to two. If an eye is kept on the Gazettes as they come in this will enable us to warn him of any objections we may entertain to legislative proposals, and also give Liverpool and Manchester an opportunity of voicing their objections.^[51]

The task of unification was achieved on the eve of World War I. From January 1914 onwards, the newly united colony and protectorate was presided over by a proconsul, who was entitled the Governor-General of Nigeria. The militias and RWAFF battalions were reorganized into the RWAFF Nigeria Regiment.^[52]

Lugard's governmental model for Nigeria was unique and there was apparently not much planning for its future development. Colonial official A. J. Harding commented in 1913:

Sir F. Lugard's proposal contemplates a state which it is impossible to classify. It is not a unitary state with local government areas but with one Central Executive and one Legislature. It is not a federal state with federal Executive, Legislature and finances, like the Leewards. It is not a personal union of separate colonies under the same Governor like the Windwards, it is not a Confederation of States. If adopted, his proposals can hardly be a permanent solution and I gather that Sir F. Lugard only regards them as temporary—at any rate in part. With one man in practical control of the Executive and Legislative organs of all the parts, the machine may work passably for sufficient time to enable the transition period to be left behind, by which time the answer to the problem—Unitary v. Federal State—will probably have become clear.^[5]

The Colonial Office accepted Lugard's proposal that the governor not be required to stay in-country full-time; consequently, as governor, Lugard spent four months out of the year in London. This scheme proved unpopular and confusing to many involved parties and was phased out.^[53]

Indirect rule

Yoruba sculpture from colonial period depicting the British technique of indirect rule

Emir of Kano, with cavalry, photographed in 1911

The Protectorate was centrally administered by the Colonial Civil Service, staffed by Britishers and Africans called the British Native Staff—many of whom originated from outside the territory. Under the Political Department of the Civil Service were Residents and District Officers, responsible for overseeing operations in each region. The Resident also oversaw a Provincial Court at the region's capital.^[54]

Each region also had a Native Administration, staffed by locals, and possessing a Native Treasury. The Native Administration was headed by the traditional rulers—emirs in the north—and his District Heads, who oversaw a larger number of Village Heads. Native Administration was responsible for police, hospitals, public works, and local courts. The Colonial Civil Service used intermediaries, as the Royal Niger Company had, in an expanded role which included diplomacy, propaganda, and espionage.^[55]

Half of all taxes went to the colonial government and half went to the Native Treasury. The Treasury used a planned budget for payment of staff and development of public works projects, and therefore could not be spent at the discretion of the local emir. Herbert Richmond Palmer developed details of this model from 1906–1911 as the governor of Northern Nigeria after Lugard.^[56]

In 1916 Lugard formed the Nigerian Council, a consultative body that brought together six traditional leaders—including the Sultan of Sokoto, the Emir of Kano, and the King of Benin—to represent all parts of the colony. The council was promoted as a device for allowing the expression of opinions that could instruct the governor-general. In practice, Lugard used the annual sessions to inform the traditional leaders of British policy, leaving them with no functions at the council's meetings except to listen and to assent.

Unification meant only the loose affiliation of three distinct regional administrations into which Nigeria was subdivided—northern, western, and eastern regions (see fig. 6). Each was under a lieutenant governor and provided independent government services. The governor was, in effect, the coordinator for virtually autonomous entities that had overlapping economic interests but little in common politically or socially. In the Northern Region, the colonial government took careful account of Islam and avoided any appearance of a challenge to traditional values that might incite resistance to British rule.^[57]

This system, in which the structure of authority focused on the emir to whom obedience was a mark of religious devotion, did not welcome change. As the emirs settled more and more into their role as reliable agents of indirect rule, colonial authorities were content to maintain the status quo, particularly in religious matters. Christian missionaries were barred, and the limited government efforts in education were harmonized with Islamic institutions.^[57]

In the south, by contrast, traditional leaders were employed as vehicles of indirect rule in EdoLand & Yorubaland, but Christianity and Western education undermined their sacerdotal functions. In some instances, however, a double allegiance—to the idea of sacred monarchy for its symbolic value and to modern concepts of law and administration—was maintained. Out of reverence for traditional kingship, for instance, the Oba of Benin, whose office was closely identified with Edo religion, was accepted as the sponsor of a Yoruba political movement. In the Eastern Region, appointed officials who were given "warrants" and hence called warrant chiefs, were strongly resisted by the people because they lacked traditional claims.

In the early stages of British rule, it is desirable to retain the native authority and to work through and by the native emirs. At the same time it is feasible by degrees to bring them gradually into approximation with our ideas of justice and humanity. . . . In pursuance of the above general principles the chief civil officers of the provinces are to be called Residents which implies one who carries on diplomatic relations rather than Commissioners or Administrators.

Frederick Lugard, shortly before becoming High Commissioner of Northern Nigeria.^[58]

In practice, British administrative procedures under indirect rule entailed constant interaction between colonial authorities and local rulers—the system was modified to fit the needs of each region. In the north, for instance, legislation took the form of a decree cosigned by the governor and the emir, while in the south, the governor sought the approval of the Legislative Council. Hausa was recognized as an official language in the north, and knowledge of it was expected of colonial officers serving there. In the South, only English had official status. Regional administrations also varied widely in the quality of local personnel and in the scope of the operations they were willing to undertake. British staffs in each region continued to operate according to procedures developed before unification. Economic links among the regions increased, but indirect rule tended to discourage political interchange. There was virtually no pressure for greater unity among the regions until after the end of World War II.

Public works, such as harbour dredging and road and railway construction, opened Nigeria to economic development. British soap and cosmetics manufacturers tried to obtain land concessions for growing oil palms, but these were refused. Instead, the companies had to be content with a monopoly of the export trade in these products. Other commercial crops, such as cocoa and rubber, were encouraged, and tin was mined on the Jos Plateau.

The only significant interruption in economic development arose from natural disaster—the great drought of 1913-14. Recovery came quickly and improvements in port facilities and the transportation infrastructure during World War I furthered economic development. Nigerian recruits participated in the war effort as laborers and soldiers. The Nigeria Regiment of the RWAFF, integrating troops from the north and south, saw action against German colonial forces in Cameroon and in German East Africa.

During the war, the colonial government earmarked a large portion of the Nigerian budget as a contribution to imperial defense. To raise additional revenues, Lugard took steps to institute a uniform tax structure patterned on the traditional system that he had adopted in the north during his tenure there. Taxes became a source of discontent in the south, however, and contributed to disturbances protesting British policy. In 1920 portions of former German Cameroon were mandated to Britain by the League of Nations and were administered as part of Nigeria.

Until he stepped down as governor-general in 1918, Lugard primarily was concerned with consolidating British sovereignty and with assuring local administration through traditional leaders. He was contemptuous of the educated and Westernised African elite found more in the South, and he recommended transferring the capital from Lagos, the cosmopolitan city where the influence of these people was most pronounced, to Kaduna in the north. Although the capital was not moved, Lugard's bias in favor of the Muslim north was clear at the time. Lugard bequeathed to his successor a prosperous colony when his term as governor-general expired.

The policy of indirect rule used in Northern Nigeria became a model for British colonies elsewhere in Africa.^[59]

Developments in colonial policy under Clifford

Flag of British Colonial Nigeria

Sculptural representation of Africa at the Colonial Office building on Whitehall street; created by Henry Hugh Armstead

Lugard's immediate successor, Sir Hugh Clifford, was an aristocratic professional administrator with liberal instincts who had won recognition for his enlightened governorship of the Gold Coast. The approaches of the two governors to colonial development were diametrically opposed. In contrast to Lugard, Clifford argued that colonial government had the responsibility to introduce as quickly as practical the benefits of Western experience. He was aware that the Muslim north would present problems, but he had hopes for progress along the lines which he laid down in the south, where he anticipated "general emancipation" leading to a more representative form of government. Clifford emphasized economic development, encouraging enterprises by immigrant southerners in the north while restricting European participation to capital intensive activity.

Uneasy with the amount of latitude allowed traditional leaders under indirect rule, Clifford opposed further extension of the judicial authority held by the northern emirs. He said that he did "not consider that their past traditions and their present backward cultural conditions afford to any such experiment a reasonable chance of success."^[60] In the south, he saw the possibility of building an elite educated in schools modeled on a European method (and numerous elite children attended high-ranking colleges in Britain during the colonial years). These schools would teach "the basic principles that would and should regulate character and conduct."^[60] In line with this attitude, he rejected Lugard's proposal for moving the capital from Lagos, the stronghold of the elite in whom he placed so much confidence for the future.

Clifford also believed that indirect rule encouraged centripetal tendencies. He argued that the division into two separate colonies was advisable unless a stronger central government could bind Nigeria into more than just an administrative convenience for the three regions. Whereas Lugard had applied lessons learned in the north to the administration of the south, Clifford was prepared to extend to the north practices that had been successful in the south. Sir Richmond Palmer, acting as lieutenant-governor in the North, disagreed with Clifford and advocated the principles of Lugard and further decentralisation.^[57]

The Colonial Office, where Lugard was still held in high regard, accepted that changes might be due in the south, but it forbade fundamental alteration of procedures in the north. A.J. Harding, director of Nigerian affairs at the Colonial Office, defined the official position of the British government in support of indirect rule when he said that "direct government by impartial and honest men of alien race . . . never yet satisfied a nation long and . . . under such a form of government, as wealth and education increase, so do political discontent and sedition."^[60]

Economics and finance

Looms in Lagos, photographed in 1910–1913 by H. Hunting of the Patterson Zuchonis trading company

The British treasury initially supported the landlocked Northern Nigeria Protectorate with grants, totaling £250,000 or more each year.^[61] Its revenue quickly increased, from £4,424 in 1901 to £274,989 in 1910. The Southern Protectorate financed itself from the outset, with revenue increasing from £361,815 to £1,933,235 over the same period.^[62]

After establishing political control of the country, the British implemented a system of taxation in order to force the indigenous Africans to shift from subsistence farming to wage labor. Sometimes forced labor was used directly for public works projects. These policies met with ongoing resistance^[63][64]

Much of the colony's budget went to payments of its military, the Royal West African Frontier Force (RWAFF).^[65] In 1936, of £6,259,547 income for the Nigerian state, £1,156,000 went back to England as home pay for British officials in the Nigerian civil service.^[66]

Oil exploration began in 1906 under John Simon Bergheim's Nigeria Bitumen Corporation, to which the Colonial Office granted exclusive rights. In 1907, the Corporation received a loan of £25,000, repayable upon discovery of oil. Other firms applying for licenses were rejected. In November 1908, Bergheim reported striking oil; in September 1909, he reported extracting 2,000 barrels per day. However, development of the Nigerian oilfields slowed when Bergheim died in a car crash in September 1912. Lugard, replacing Egerton as governor, aborted the project in May 1913. The British turned to Persia for oil.^[67]

European traders in Nigeria initially made widespread use of cowrie, which was already valued locally. The influx of cowrie lead to inflation.

Emergence of Southern Nigerian nationalism

British colonialism created Nigeria, joining diverse peoples and regions in an artificial political entity along the Niger River. The nationalism that became a political factor in Nigeria during the interwar period derived both from an older political particularism and broad pan-Africanism, rather than from any sense among the people of a common Nigerian nationality. The goal of activists initially was not self-determination, but increased participation on a regional level in the governmental process.

Inconsistencies in British policy reinforced existing cleavages based on regional animosities, as the British tried both to preserve the indigenous cultures of each area and to introduce modern technology, and Western political and social concepts. In the north, appeals to Islamic legitimacy upheld the rule of the emirs, so that nationalist sentiments were related to Islamic ideals. Modern nationalists in the south, whose thinking was shaped by European ideas, opposed indirect rule, as they believed that it had strengthened what they considered an anachronistic ruling class and shut out the emerging Westernised elite.

The southern nationalists were inspired by a variety of sources, including such prominent American-based activists as Marcus Garvey and W.E.B. Du Bois. Nigerian students abroad, particularly at British schools, joined those from other colonies in pan-African groups, such as the West African Students Union, founded in London in 1925. Early nationalists tended to ignore Nigeria as the focus of patriotism. Their common denominators tended to be based on newly assertive ethnic consciousness, particularly that of the Yoruba and Igbo. Despite acceptance of European and North American influences, the nationalists were critical of colonialism for its failure to appreciate the antiquity, richness and complexity of indigenous cultures. They wanted self-government, charging that only colonial rule prevented the unshackling of progressive forces in Nigeria and other states.

Political opposition to colonial rule often assumed religious dimensions. Independent Christian churches had emerged at the end of the nineteenth century. European interpretations of Christian orthodoxy in some cases refused to allow the incorporation of local customs and practices, although the various mission denominations interpreted Christianity in different ways. Most Europeans tended to overlook their own differences and were surprised and shocked that Nigerians wanted to develop new denominations independent of European control. Protestant sects had flourished in Christianity since the Reformation; the emergence of independent Christian churches in Nigeria (as of black denominations in the United States) was another phase of this history. The pulpits of the independent congregations became avenues for the free expression of critics of colonial rule.

Colonial Lagos circa 1910

In the 1920s, Nigerians began to form a variety of associations, such as professional and business associations, such as the Nigerian Union of Teachers; the Nigerian Law Association, which brought together lawyers, many of whom had been educated in Britain; and the Nigerian Produce Traders' Association, led by Obafemi Awolowo. While initially organized for professional and fraternal reasons, these were centers of educated people who had chances to develop their leadership skills in the organizations, as well as form broad social networks.

Ethnic and kinship organizations that often took the form of a tribal union also emerged in the 1920s. These organizations were primarily urban phenomena that arose after numerous rural migrants moved to the cities. Alienated by the anonymity of the urban environment and drawn together by ties to their ethnic homelands—as well as by the need for mutual aid—the new city dwellers formed local clubs that later expanded into federations covering whole regions. By the mid-1940s, the major ethnic groups had formed such associations as the Igbo Federal Union and the Egbe Omo Oduduwa (Society of the Descendants of Oduduwa), a Yoruba cultural movement, in which Awolowo played a leading role. In some cases, British assignment of people to ethnic groups, and treatment based along ethnic lines, led to identification with ethnicity where none had existed before.^[68]

A third type of organization that was more pointedly political was the youth or student group, which became the vehicle of intellectuals and professionals. They were the most politically conscious segment of the population and created the vanguard of the nationalist movement. Newspapers, some of which were published before World War I, provided coverage of nationalist views.

The 1922 constitution provided Nigerians the chance to elect a handful of representatives to the Legislative Council. The principal figure in the political activity that ensued was Herbert Macauley, often referred to as the father of Nigerian nationalism. He aroused political awareness through his newspaper, the Lagos Daily News. He also led the Nigerian National Democratic Party (NNDP), which dominated elections in Lagos from its founding in 1922 until the ascendancy of the National Youth Movement (NYM) in 1938. His political platform called for economic and educational development, Africanization of the civil service, and self-government for Lagos. Significantly, Macauley's NNDP remained almost entirely a Lagos party, popular only in the area whose people already had experience in elective politics.

The National Youth Movement (NYM) used nationalist rhetoric to agitate for improvements in education. The movement brought to public notice a long list of future leaders, including H.O. Davies and Nnamdi Azikiwe. Although Azikiwe later came to be recognized as the leading spokesman for national unity, when he first returned from university training in the United States, his outlook was pan-African rather than nationalist, and emphasized the common African struggle against European colonialism. (This was also reflective of growing pan-Africanism among American activists of the time.) Azikiwe had less interest in purely Nigerian goals than did Davies, a student of Harold Laski at the London School of Economics, whose political orientation was considered left-wing.

By 1938 the NYM was agitating for dominion status within the British Commonwealth of Nations, so that Nigeria would have the same status as Canada and Australia. In elections that year, the NYM ended the domination of the NNDP in the Legislative Council and worked to establish a national network of affiliates. Three years later internal divisions arose that were dominated by major ethnic loyalties. The departure of Azikiwe and other Igbo members of the NYM left the organization in Yoruba hands. During World War II, Awolowo reorganized it as a predominantly Yoruba political party, the Action Group. Yoruba-Igbo rivalry became increasingly important in Nigerian politics (see Ethnic Relations, ch. 2).

Second World War

During World War II, three battalions of the Nigeria Regiment fought in the Ethiopian campaign. Nigerian units also contributed to two divisions serving with British forces in Palestine, Morocco, Sicily, and Burma, where they won many honors. Wartime experiences provided a new frame of reference for many soldiers, who interacted across ethnic boundaries in ways that were unusual in Nigeria. The war also made the British reappraise Nigeria's political future. The war years, brought a polarization between the older, more parochial leaders inclined toward gradualism and the younger intellectuals, who thought in more immediate terms.

The rapid growth of organized labour in the 1940s also brought new political forces into play. During the war, union membership increased sixfold to 30,000. The proliferation of labor organizations fragmented the movement, and potential leaders lacked the experience and skill to draw workers together.

The Action Group was largely the creation of Awolowo, general secretary of Egbe Omo Oduduwa and leader of the Nigerian Produce Traders' Association. The Action Group was thus the heir of a generation of flourishing cultural consciousness among the Yoruba and also had valuable connections with commercial interests that were representative of the comparative economic advancement of the Western Region. Awolowo had little difficulty in appealing to broad segments of the Yoruba population, but he worked to avoid the Action Group from being stigmatized as a "tribal" group. Despite his somewhat successful efforts to enlist non-Yoruba support, the regionalist sentiment that had stimulated the party initially continued.

Segments of the Yoruba community had their own animosities and new rivalries arose. For example, many people in Ibadan opposed Awolowo on personal grounds because of his identification with the Ijebu Yoruba. Despite these difficulties, the Action Group rapidly built an effective organization. Its program reflected greater planning and was more ideologically oriented than that of the NCNC. Although lacking Azikiwe's compelling personality, Awolowo was a formidable debater as well as a vigorous and tenacious political campaigner. He used for the first time in Nigeria modern, sometimes flamboyant, electioneering techniques. Among his leading lieutenants were Samuel Akintola of Ibadan and the Oni of Ife.

The Action Group consistently supported minority-group demands for autonomous states within a federal structure, as well as the severance of a midwest state from the Western Region. It assumed that comparable alterations would be made elsewhere, an attitude that won the party minority voting support in the other regions. It backed Yoruba irredentism in the Fulani-ruled emirate of Ilorin in the Northern Region, and separatist movements among non-Igbo in the Eastern Region.

The Northern People's Congress (NPC) was organized in the late 1940s by a small group of Western-educated Northern Nigerians. They had obtained the assent of the emirs to form a political party to counterbalance the activities of the southern-based parties. It represented a substantial element of reformism in the North. The most powerful figure in the party was Ahmadu Bello, the sardauna (war leader) of Sokoto.

Bello wanted to protect northern social and political institutions from southern influence. He insisted on maintaining the territorial integrity of the Northern Region. He was prepared to introduce educational and economic changes to strengthen the north. Although his own ambitions were limited to the Northern Region, Bello backed the NPC's successful efforts to mobilize the north's large voting strength so as to win control of the national government.

The NPC platform emphasized the integrity of the north, its traditions, religion, and social order. Support for broad Nigerian concerns occupied a clear second place. A lack of interest in extending the NPC beyond the Northern Region corresponded to this strictly regional orientation. Its activist membership was drawn from local government and emirate officials who had access to means of communication and to repressive traditional authority that could keep the opposition in line.

The small contingent of northerners who had been educated abroad—a group that included Abubakar Tafawa Balewa and Aminu Kano—was allied with British-backed efforts to introduce gradual change to the emirates. The emirs gave support to limited modernization largely from fears of the unsettling presence of southerners in the north, and by observing the improvements in living conditions in the South. Northern leaders committed to modernization were also firmly connected to the traditional power structure. Most internal problems were concealed, and open opposition to the domination of the Muslim aristocracy was not tolerated. Critics, including representatives of the middle belt who resented Muslim domination, were relegated to small, peripheral parties or to inconsequential separatist movements.^[69]

In 1950 Aminu Kano, who had been instrumental in founding the NPC, broke away to form the Northern Elements Progressive Union (NEPU), in protest against the NPC's limited objectives and what he regarded as a vain hope that traditional rulers would accept modernization. NEPU formed a parliamentary alliance with the NCNC.

The NPC continued to represent the interests of the traditional order in the pre-independence deliberations. After the defection of Kano, the only significant disagreement within the NPC was related to moderates. Men such as Balewa believed that only by overcoming political and economic backwardness could the NPC protect the foundations of traditional northern authority against the influence of the more advanced south.

In all three regions, minority parties represented the special interests of ethnic groups, especially as they were affected by the majority. They never were able to elect sizeable legislative delegations, but they served as a means of public expression for minority concerns. They received attention from major parties before elections, at which time either a dominant party from another region or the opposition party in their region sought their alliance.

The political parties jockeyed for positions of power in anticipation of the independence of Nigeria. Three constitutions were enacted from 1946 to 1954. While each generated considerable political controversy, they moved the country toward greater internal autonomy, with an increasing role for the political parties. The trend was toward the establishment of a parliamentary system of government, with regional assemblies and a federal House of Representatives.

In 1946 a new constitution was approved by the British Parliament at Westminster and promulgated in Nigeria. Although it reserved effective power in the hands of the Governor-General and his appointed Executive Council, the so-called Richards Constitution (after Governor-General Sir Arthur Richards, who was responsible for its formulation) provided for an expanded Legislative Council empowered to deliberate on matters affecting the whole country. Separate legislative bodies, the houses of assembly, were established in each of the three regions to consider local questions and to advise the lieutenant governors. The introduction of the federal principle, with deliberative authority devolved on the regions, signaled recognition of the country's diversity. Although realistic in its assessment of the situation in Nigeria, the Richards Constitution undoubtedly intensified regionalism as an alternative to political unification.

The pace of constitutional change accelerated after the promulgation of the Richards Constitution. It was suspended in 1950 against a call for greater autonomy, which resulted in an inter-parliamentary conference at Ibadan in 1950. The conference drafted the terms of a new constitution. The so-called Macpherson Constitution, after the incumbent governor-general, went into effect the following year.

The most important innovations in the new charter reinforced the dual course of constitutional evolution, allowing for both regional autonomy and federal union. By extending the elective principle and by providing for a central government with a Council of Ministers, the Macpherson Constitution gave renewed impetus to party activity and to political participation at the national level. But by providing for comparable regional governments exercising broad legislative powers, which could not be overridden by the newly established 185-seat federal House of Representatives, the Macpherson Constitution also gave a significant boost to regionalism. Subsequent revisions contained in the Lyttleton Constitution, enacted in 1954, firmly established the federal principle and paved the way for independence.

Self governing regions (1957)

In 1957 the Western and the Eastern regions became formally self-governing under the parliamentary system. Similar status was acquired by the Northern Region two years later. There were numerous differences of detail among the regional systems, but all adhered to parliamentary forms and were equally autonomous in relation to the federal government at Lagos. The federal government retained specified powers, including responsibility for banking, currency, external affairs, defense, shipping and navigation, and communications, but real political power was centered in the regions. Significantly, the regional governments controlled public expenditures derived from revenues raised within each region.

Ethnic cleavages intensified in the 1950s. Political activists in the southern areas spoke of self-government in terms of educational opportunities and economic development. Because of the spread of mission schools and wealth derived from export crops, the southern parties were committed to policies that would benefit the south of the country. In the north, the emirs intended to maintain firm control on economic and political change.

Any activity in the north that might include participation by the federal government (and consequently by southern civil servants) was regarded as a challenge to the primacy of the emirates. Broadening political participation and expanding educational opportunities and other social services also were viewed as threats to the status quo. An extensive immigrant population of southerners, especially Igbo, already were living in the north; they dominated clerical positions and were active in many trades.

The cleavage between the Yoruba and the Igbo was accentuated by their competition for control of the political machinery. The receding British presence enabled local officials and politicians to gain access to patronage over government jobs, funds for local development, market permits, trade licenses, government contracts, and even scholarships for higher education. In an economy with many qualified applicants for every post, great resentment was generated by any favoritism that authorities showed to members of their own ethnic group.

In the immediate post-World War II period, Nigeria benefited from a favourable trade balance. Although per capita income in the country as a whole remained low by international standards, rising incomes among salaried personnel and burgeoning urbanization expanded consumer demand for imported goods.

In the meantime, public sector spending increased even more dramatically than export earnings. It was supported not only by the income from huge agricultural surpluses but also by a new range of direct and indirect taxes imposed during the 1950s. The transfer of responsibility for budgetary management from the central to the regional governments in 1954 accelerated the pace of public spending on services and on development projects. Total revenues of central and regional governments nearly doubled in relation to the gross domestic product (GDP—see Glossary) during the decade.

The most dramatic event having a long-term effect on Nigeria's economic development, was the discovery and exploitation of petroleum deposits. The search for oil, begun in 1908 and abandoned a few years later, was revived in 1937 by Shell and British Petroleum. Exploration was intensified in 1946, but the first commercial discovery did not occur until 1956, at Olobiri in the Niger Delta. In 1958 exportation of Nigerian oil was initiated at facilities constructed at Port Harcourt. Oil income was still marginal, but the prospects for continued economic expansion appeared bright and accentuated political rivalries on the eve of independence.

The election of the House of Representatives after the adoption of the 1954 constitution gave the NPC a total of seventy-nine seats, all from the Northern Region. Among the other major parties, the NCNC took fifty-six seats, winning a majority in both the Eastern and the Western regions, while the Action Group captured only twenty-seven seats. The NPC was called on to form a government, but the NCNC received six of the ten ministerial posts. Three of these posts were assigned to representatives from each region, and one was reserved for a delegate from the Northern Cameroons.

As a further step toward independence, the governor's Executive Council was merged with the Council of Ministers in 1957 to form the all-Nigerian Federal Executive Council. The NPC federal parliamentary leader, Balewa, was appointed prime minister. Balewa formed a coalition government that included the Action Group as well as the NCNC to prepare the country for the final British withdrawal. His government guided the country for the next three years, operating with almost complete autonomy in internal affairs.

Constitutional conferences in the UK (1957-1958)

The preparation of a new federal constitution for an independent Nigeria was carried out at conferences held at Lancaster House in London in 1957 and 1958, which were presided over by The Rt. Hon. Alan Lennox-Boyd, M.P., the British Secretary of State for the Colonies. Nigerian delegates were selected to represent each region and to reflect various shades of opinion. The delegation was led by Balewa of the NPC and included party leaders Awolowo of the Action Group, Azikiwe of the NCNC, and Bello of the NPC; they were also the premiers of the Western, Eastern, and Northern regions, respectively. Independence was achieved on October 1, 1960.

Elections were held for a new and greatly enlarged House of Representatives in December 1959; 174 of the 312 seats were allocated to the Northern Region on the basis of its larger population. The NPC, entering candidates only in the Northern Region, confined campaigning largely to local issues but opposed the addition of new regimes. The NCNC backed creation of a midwest state and proposed federal control of education and health services.

The Action Group, which staged a lively campaign, favored stronger government and the establishment of three new states, while advocating creation of a West Africa Federation that would unite Nigeria with Ghana and Sierra Leone. The NPC captured 142 seats in the new legislature. Balewa was called on to head a NPC-NCNC coalition government, and Awolowo became official leader of the opposition.

Independent Nigeria (1960)

By a British Act of Parliament, Nigeria became an independent country (as a Commonwealth realm) within the Commonwealth on October 1, 1960. Azikiwe was installed as governor-general of the federation and Balewa continued to serve as head of a democratically elected parliamentary, but now completely sovereign, government. The governor-general represented the British monarch as head of state and was appointed by the Crown on the advice of the Nigerian prime minister in consultation with the regional premiers. The governor-general, in turn, was responsible for appointing the prime minister and for choosing a candidate from among contending leaders when there was no parliamentary majority. Otherwise, the governor-general's office was essentially ceremonial.

The government was responsible to a Parliament composed of the popularly elected 312-member House of Representatives and the 44-member Senate, chosen by the regional legislatures.

In general, the regional constitutions followed the federal model, both structurally and functionally. The most striking departure was in the Northern Region, where special provisions brought the regional constitution into consonance with Islamic law and custom. The similarity between the federal and regional constitutions was deceptive, however, and the conduct of public affairs reflected wide differences among the regions.

In February 1961, a plebiscite was conducted to determine the disposition of the Southern Cameroons and Northern Cameroons, which were administered by Britain as United Nations Trust Territories. By an overwhelming majority, voters in the Southern Cameroons opted to join formerly French-administered Cameroon over integration with Nigeria as a separate federated region. In the Northern Cameroons, however, the largely Muslim electorate chose to merge with Nigeria's Northern Region.

References

1.      John M. Carland, The Colonial Office and Nigeria (1985), pp. 1–2. "Crown Colony Government in Nigeria and elsewhere in the British Empire was autocratic government. Officials at the Colonial Office and colonial governors in the field never pretended otherwise. In fact, autocratic, bureaucratic rule was the true legacy of British colonial government in Africa."

2.       Carland (1985), The Colonial Office and Nigeria, p. 48.

3.       Robin Hermann, "Empire Builders and Mushroom Gentlemen: The Meaning of Money in Colonial Nigeria", International Journal of African Historical Studies 44.3, 2011.

4.      Ken Swindell, "The Commercial Development of the North: Company and Government Relations, 1900–1906", Paideuma 40, 1994, pp. 149–162.

5.      Carland, The Colonial Office and Nigeria (1985), p. 90.

6.      David Richardson, "Background to annexation: Anglo-African credit relations in the Bight of Biafra, 1700–1891"; in Pétré-Grenouilleau, From Slave Trade to Empire (2004), pp. 47–68.

7.      See Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (1776), Vol. 2 p. 112. (Quoted in Richardson, 2004). "Though the Europeans possess many considerable settlements both upon the coast of Africa and in the East Indies, they have not yet established in either of those countries such numerous and thriving colonies as those in the islands and continent of America."

8.      Isichei, A History of Nigeria (1983), p. 362.

9.      David Etlis, "African and European relations in the last century of the transatlantic slave trade"; in Pétré-Grenouilleau, From Slave Trade to Empire (2004), pp. 21–46.

10.  Randy J. Sparks, The Two Princes of Calabar: An Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Odyssey; Harvard University Press, 2004; ISBN 0-674-01312-3; Chapter 1: "A Very Bloody Transaction: Old Calabar and the Massacre of 1767".

11.  Anietie A. Inyang & Manasseh Edidem Bassey, "Imperial Treaties and the Origins of British Colonial Rule in Southern Nigeria, 1860-1890", Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences 5.20, September 2014.

12.  Asiegbu, Nigeria and its British Invaders (1984), p. xxiii. "After the Abolition Act in 1807 making the trade in African slaves illegal for British subjects, Britain did not stop there: For the next quarter of a century successive British Governments embarked on a kind of aggressive diplomacy, bullying and bribing other European nations, especially Spain and Portugal, to toe the anti-slavery line with England. / On the West African Coast itself British anti-slavery policy became very evident not only in the establishment of the free colony or Settlement of Freetown in Sierra Leone for the recaptives or freed slaves. A detachment of the all-powerful British Navy, the West African naval squadron, was stationed in West African waters to patrol along the coastline and to intercept any slave ships or vessels equipped for the slave trade, and to bring slave vessels captured for trial before British controlled courts in Freetown. At the same time Britain embarked on securing from African rulers, in consideration of payments to these rulers, what became known as anti-slave trade treaties. By these treaties the rulers engaged to stop the traffic in slaves in their respective territories. In the process of enforcing these anti-slave trade policies on the west coast with its powerful navy Britain discovered the military weakness or inferiority of the African states in relation to its own military power."

13.  Olatunji Ojo, "The Organization of the Atlantic Slave Trade in Yorubaland, ca.1777 to ca.1856", International Journal of African Historical Studies 41.1, 2008. "Slave production in the interior raised exports from Lagos ten fold, making it West Africa's leading slave port. The most accurate trade figures are found in the Trans-Atlantic slave voyage database (TSD), which put the number of slave exports between 1776 and 1850 at 308,800. Of that number only 24,000 slaves were shipped before 1801, while 114,200 and 170,600 were sold during 1801–25 and 1826–50, respectively. Exports from Badagry lagged far behind, with about 37,400 slaves sold during 1776–1860."

14.  Asiegbu, Nigeria and its British Invaders (1984), pp. xiv–xv. "Here again, European and African scholars have been at loggerheads and in the same kinds of conflicts as had featured in their interpretations of the primary motives of the British anti-slavery movement and abolitionism in the mid-19th century, namely, British self-interest or imperial ambitions on the one hand, and British humanitarian feeling for Africa on the other hand."

15.  Tamuno, The Evolution of the Nigerian State (1972), p. 6. "To the British, traffic in human beings after 1807 was both 'uncivilised' and illegal. As the century went on, a strong feeling developed that the slave trade, as an aspect of piracy, stood condemned in international and municipal law. This change in moral tone over the slave trade at first seemed incomprehensible to generations of people in Southern Nigeria who within a relatively short period were presented with two different concepts of right and wrong. Their scepticism about the correctness of such conflicting standards persisted into the early twentieth century."

16.  Warren Whatley & Rob Gillezeau, "The Impact of the Slave Trade on African Economies", World Economic History Congress, Utrecht, May 23, 2009.

17.  Helen Chapin Metz, ed. "Influence of Christian Missions", Nigeria: A Country Study, Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress, 1991, accessed 18 April 2012

18.  Tamuno, The Evolution of the Nigerian State (1972), pp. 11–12.

19.  Bouda Etemad, "Economic relations between Europe and Black Africa c. 1780–1938"; in Pétré-Grenouilleau, From Slave Trade to Empire (2004), pp. 69–81.

20.  Tamuno, The Evolution of the Nigerian State (1972), p. 14. "The most significant economic development in Southern Nigeria since 1807 was the transition from the pre-colonial emphasis on subsistence agriculture to an increasing concentration on production for sale."

21.  Carland, The Colonial Office and Nigeria (1985), p. 2.

22.  Asiegbu, Nigeria and its British Invaders (1984), pp. xxv. "In the Lagos Colony Captain John Glover, as administrator of the Colony, created between 1861 and 1862 the famous Hausa militia ('Glover's Hausas') which became the nucleus of the Lagos Constabulary (itself splitting after 1895 into two bodies, one a civil police force, the other a military unit). The earliest recruits into the Lagos militia came from the liberated African yard or depot which glover had established in the Colony for the reception of run-away domestic slaves from the surrounding local communities. In the Niger territories, the Royal Niger Company organized its own constabulary forces between 1886 and 1899; at the Niger Coast Protectorate the Consular Administration, with its headquarters at Calabar, established after 1891 the Niger Coast Protectorate Force or Constabulary, sometimes known as the 'Oil Rivers Irregulars' (which under Consul Annesley acquired the name of the 'forty thieves'). Thus by 1897 when the WAFF was created, British West Africa had in some form or other known, like French West Africa, almost half a century of European or British military presence and activity."

23.  Tamuno, The Evolution of the Nigerian State (1972), pp. 15.

24.  "Northern Nigeria: The Illo Canceller and Borgu Mail" by Ray Harris in Cameo, Vol. 14, No. 3, Whole No. 90, October 2013, pp. 158-160.

25.  Afeadie, "The Hidden Hand of Overrule" (1996), p. 10–12.

26.  Afeadie, "The Hidden Hand of Overrule" (1996), p. 12–13. "Specifically, the Company sought to secure the cooperation of the traditional rulers in ensuring peaceful conditions for trade. For this objective, the Company chose to administer the African inhabitants of the Niger Sudan through their traditional rulers and their political institutions. […] They needed special personnel: such officials who knew the local conditions and who could communicate between the Company and the indigenous people. […] These intermediaries assisted government diplomacy and helped to establish and maintain relations between the company and the traditional rulers. They gathered information which was needed for policy-making in administration. Some of them also manned Company stations and served as District Agents."

27.  Afeadie, "The Hidden Hand of Overrule" (1996), p. 13–15.

28.  Isichei, A History of Nigeria (1983), p. 372–373.

29.  Asiegbu, Nigeria and its British Invaders (1984), pp. xiv, xxviii–xxx.

30.  Isichei, A History of Nigeria (1983), pp. 365–366.