What britain did to nigeria – and what it should be doing (but isn’t) today | thearticle

Nigeria is full of energy, enterprise and dynamism. Like most big states it struggles to create national unity from a plethora of cultures and languages. With a total population of 206

million — the largest in Africa and rising fast — it will soon have the third largest population of English speakers and Christians in the world. At 100 million, roughly the same number as

Nigerian Christians, it already has the third largest Muslim population. If Muslims and Christians can’t live together in amity in Nigeria, Africa is in even deeper trouble than the troubled

Middle East.  When Nigeria became independent in 1960 the British Empire was reduced by more than 50 per cent. Under British rule none of its weaknesses as a political entity had been

resolved. Arguably some of the worst had been intensified or created by the British.  Nigeria, today, is fixed in British minds as the land of scams, corruption, and, for my generation,

military coups and starving Biafran children. Kidnapping is one of the few features to gain international attention, a dark market economy with ransom tariffs set according to the profession

of the victims. A professor is worth more than a priest. Big gangs raid schools and charge bulk prices for returns. Banditry and armed robberies afflict several areas. Pastoralists,

fighting over land-use, kill agriculturalists and vice versa. Da’esh-linked terrorists still cause havoc in the North-East and around the northern borders. Inter-ethnic killings are

increasing. Nigeria is a fragile state. You might imagine that the recent amalgamation of Britain’s Foreign Office and Department for International Development would be justified by a

coordinated response to Nigeria’s mix of security and developmental problems. You’d be wrong. Discounting its own expertise in humanitarian aid and the training of police and security

forces, the British Government plans to cut development aid to Nigeria by 58 per cent. This despite thousands of displaced people fleeing violence in Borno State, a Federal army too

underequipped and unmotivated to fight terrorism successfully, as well as a police force that needs intensive training. Max Siollun, in his recent book _What Britain did to Nigeria_, traces

the origin of Nigeria’s ills to the early colonial period, the century of British engagement from the 1820s to the 1920s. Siollun’s treatment is balanced and illuminating, but his book will

provide fodder for fashionable arguments between academics of the colonialism-bad and the colonialism-good schools — though lack of relevant statues will limit conflict to the seminar room.

  Siollun shatters the comfortable assumption that the transition from pre-colonial to colonial government, in what became Nigeria, avoided the monstrous bloodshed in, say, the Congo under

Leopold II of Belgium. In my own online _Emirs, Evangelicals & Empire_ I underestimated the violence of the British takeover. Siollun tells of the racism, brutality and arrogance of many

local British “Residents”, or colonial officers — both civil and military — from the early Royal Niger Company to Lord Lugard’s West African Frontier Force. But because most of the fighting

fell on mercenary troops, mainly Hausa, with longstanding inter-ethnic and local animosities, the burnt villages and piles of corpses, after crushed uprisings and punitive raids, belonged

to Africans.  The culturally very different North and South of Nigeria were amalgamated in 1914, not in some grand imperial vision, but, as Siollun suggests, to save on administrative costs.

Indirect Rule was not a British strategic plan — though it divided and ruled with near impunity. Britain just could not afford enough colonial officers. The Colonial Office budget

determined governance. And there was the bonus that someone else did dirty work like tax collection and recruitment of forced labour. Punishment of those who saw little difference between

this and former enslavement was severe.  Unsurprisingly there was considerable resistance to British rule, much of it caused by repression and extortion, but used to justify severe and often

disproportionate military responses. The Fulani of Sokoto Caliphate in the North-West suffered the most because their structured military force and cavalry encouraged set-piece battles

against the British “square” and the unforgiving Maxim gun. The South-East lacked regular fighting forces and local guerrilla warfare was far more effective against British-led troops,

especially along its narrow densely forested paths. “Dash” given to chiefs who provided the Royal Niger Company with exclusive rights of trade in palm oil was the prototype of today’s

endemic bribery. Treaties that few chiefs could read and understand gave coercion and fraud a veneer of lawfulness. The earliest colonial era scam was to imitate messengers from

British-appointed “warrant chiefs” imposed on, for example, Igbo societies. The scammer donned a red fez and insisted on payments of different kinds with the spurious threat that failure to

pay would involve heavy punishments from the chief with British support.  There were also mitigating reforms. Slavery, twin infanticide, and the burial of servants/slaves with their chief in

some South-Eastern societies were gradually eliminated. Colonial provision of roads, railways and education was transformative. Christian missions followed by government schools brought

educational change to the South. Today most Southern states have high rates of adult literacy. The contrast with some Northern states is striking. According to _EduCeleb_, a Nigerian

educational news agency, in Sokoto 80 per cent of women aged 18-24 are illiterate, but only 1.8 per cent in the South-East’s Imo state. Nationally, the adult literacy rate was 22 per cent at

independence in 1960; now it is well over 60 per cent.  Sixty years on, years when Nigeria stumbled from one disaster to another yet somehow surviving, somehow holding together, that

heritage wears thin as an excuse. The latest crisis looks particularly dangerous. Nigeria’s Catholic bishops, informed by detailed information from their parishes around the country,

published a formal statement this February. They are not in the habit of crying wolf.  “The very survival of the nation is at stake. The nation is pulling apart. Widespread serious

insecurity for long unaddressed has left the sad and dangerous impression that those who have assumed the duty and authority to secure the nation are either unable – or worse still unwilling

– to take up the responsibilities of their office. Patience is running out. “The call for self-defence is fast gaining ground. Many ethnic champions are beating loudly the drums of war,

calling not only for greater autonomy but even for outright opting out of a nation in which they have lost all trust and sense of belonging. The calls for secession on an ethnic basis from

many quarters should not be ignored or taken lightly. Many have given up on the viability and even on the desirability of the Nigeria project as one united country. No wonder many non-state

actors are filling the vacuum created by an apparent absence of government. The Federal Government under President Muhammadu Buhari can no longer delay rising to its obligation to govern the

nation; not according to ethnic and religious biases but along the lines of objective and positive principles of fairness, equity and, above all, justice. It is not too much for Nigerians

to demand from Mr. President sincerity both in the public and private domain. There are no more excuses.” Sadly, the British Government seemingly has plenty of excuses for finding something

better to do than worry about the future of the most important country on the African continent.  A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only publication that’s committed to covering every

angle. We have an important contribution to make, one that’s needed now more than ever, and we need your help to continue publishing throughout the pandemic. So please, make a donation._