Lord Lugard and indirect rule: Legacies (2)

There is no doubt that the various Kingdoms comprising the Yoruba in the West had a number of common characteristics.  What they did not have was a central authority which is a sine non qua for indirect rule to succeed.  The same applied to present day Edo vis – a- vis – the Oba.  Many parts of Edo acknowledge the Oba of Benin as either their Chief, or a great Chief to be respected.  But his writ was not all encompassing and there was little power to enforce his writ to recalcitrant “subordinates” – further north of Benin.  (Again at school we learnt of Afemai Ishan, “Kukuruku” – the last name having disappeared in common usage to-day) further South of Edo i.e Agbor, Obulu Uku, Asaba, Itsekiri– there is a lot of influence of Benin culture, at last in the kingship rites, but a very tenuous relationship of subservience to the Oba of Benin.  South East of Benin, i.e the Delta region- the Olu of itsekiris is a Benin descendant) but his power has always been circumscribed by the more numerous  Urhobos, Isokos etc. The riverine peoples of the Delta were Ijaws, a ferocious and Warlike people who as late as 1953 were still fighting inter tribal wars.  There was no central Ijaw King and therefore no possibility for indirect rule. Mosquitoes did not quite encourage colonial officers to live there but by and large because of the ports at Sapele, Calabar, Warri, Abonnema, BuTutu, Bonny, the British were satisfied that goods – such as palm produce, rubber, Timber etc could be shipped to England. The primary source of traditional life, custom etc, of the Ijaws are contained in the numerous books and intelligence reports the colonial Officials wrote trying to decipher the complexities of the Ijaws in the “Oil Rivers protectorate”.

In Eastern Nigeria indirect rule was impossible because the Igbos were largely autochthonous and also extremely energetic and enterprising.  Colonial Office reports are replete with how confusing trying to rule the Igbos but they also had this fantastic ability to assimilate, adjust, compromise and prosper.  These qualities impelled them to the ready acceptance of religion.  With religion, you did not need indirect rule- edicts, laws, regulations, enforcements, information came to the British through the Churches and its several layers of influence.  This is not to suggest that the Igbos forsook whole heartedly their traditions.  Their conscience mightily fought against the changes wrought by colonialism. Their innate vision saw before anyone else in Nigeria, the need to embrace the new circumstances and to turn it to advantage.

The records of the colonial office are filled with thousands of documents which show “X” as the signature of Chiefs in different parts of the world selling and giving their land to the British in return for the protection of the Queen of England.  The French, Danes, Germans etc followed these same examples to show acquisition of land through sale or otherwise.  The land were said to have been acquired or bought in perpetuity and from this grew the doctrine that the minerals under this land also belonged to some foreign European sovereign.  At Independence ownership was deemed to have been passed over to the new Nation.

With the advent of Nollywood it should now be possible to imagine the scene where Olu Jacobs or Pete Edochie wearing their traditional costumes sit with the British consul and someone is translating that the Chiefs and his council had sold their land in perpetuity to the helmeted, stoken-footed white man who is giving his quill to the Chief to mark “X” as his consent for losing his freedom and his land which had been measured, accurately by the ever attendant surveyor.  How is this translation done?  What is the Chief and his council to understand that 25 square miles, as was reported to the Chiefs Ikwerre and Okrika – now belong to Queen when the British wanted to build the port at Port Harcourt?  How do you translate 25 miles in Ikwerre or Ijaw, let alone the square of it?  In return for what??  Again imagine the response of Pee Pee Mrs. Patience Ozokwor to such infamy!! 

Is it then any wonder that the Chiefs threw away the papers they had no use for and less understanding of?

African land law is based on African tradition which understands lease holds ie granting land to strangers for specific purposes for sometime with reversionary interests.  No other form of transaction is possible; definitely not equitable and was a charade merely to demonstrate the strength and overwhelming superiority of the Maxim gun and the gun boats anchored nearby.

One view of the first World War was that it was inevitable given the rapacious interest of European nations to acquire land everywhere in the world- Asia, Middle East, Americas, Caribbeans, Polynesia etc. the land grab was necessary for production of raw materials for European factories and markets for their manufacture.  It does not take a genius to know that sometime soon after 1910 Europe would be at war with itself- hence the frenzy of declaring protectorates and colonies throughout Africa, Middle and far East, Asia etc.  Egypt was declared a protectorate in 1914, the same year as Nigeria and not remotely for any reason to make us want to celebrate. 

The British found three land tenure system – feudal (North) Community (West) Communal (East).  They supplanted all for their purposes and went further in claiming rights of minerals under the ground. 

The land issue has created untold suffering to all countries where because of the need to exploit minerals and produce raw materials – the land and the minerals had been expropriated unjustly by the sovereign powers of Europe.  Consider for a moment how the history of Nigeria would have changed If the land was left to the communities and development was in their own interest.  If coal mined in Enugu, if Tin in Jos, if Columubite,  manganese, oil etc belonged to the communities in which they were found – what a different place Nigeria, South Africa, Zambia, Congo, Bolivia, Peru, Mexico etc would have been.

For us in Nigeria, land continues to be one of our most divisive problems leading to perpetual instability 

The effects of colonial land tenure system has been disastrous and deleterious.  It is  a major cause of war between ethnic groups – Kalabari, Okrika, Ikwerre, Urhobo Vs Isekiri, Rivers, Vs Bayelsa, Cross Rivers Vs Akwa Ibom, Fulani Vs Birom (Plateau) of almost permanent of conflict and quarrels-hardening into psychological antipathetic – actions between ethnic neigbours. 

Some of these land quarrels and issues were responsible for agitation for the creation of states e.g. the request for Port Harcourt State; North /South  divide in Rivers State; Enugu land problems, land problems in Tiv, Lagos white cap Idejo chiefs and other classes of chiefs.

In prospecting for Mineral rights there is a lack of development of mineral producing areas, compounded by disaffection between mineral producing areas and the rest of Nigeria. 

Let us tarry a while over, this question of land and the vehicles used by Britain for colonization.  How can a royal chartered company be a Government? But throughout its colonial history – Egypt, Iran, Canada, US, Australia, India, China, New Zealand- it was this vehicle of a royal chartered company that was used for annexation, under duress and land axpropriation. 

The British had this strange creature called a Royal Chartered Company – a company that enabled its officials sometimes called Consul e.g. in 1851 there was a consul to the Bight of Biafra – are consuls not accredited to a king or state?  We had another consul for Bonny, Degema, Calabar etc.  In Lagos ‘’ the British Consul” presented his papers to Kosoko in 1851.  Soon after Kosoko was deposed and in 1861 Lagos was declared a British colony. Then the land dispute started.  The British asked the Oba for land.  He told them he had no land; that the land owing Chief were the Idejo class of Chiefs in Lagos.  Not withstanding this the annexation took place, land was taken and fought over.  

Yet this fiction about the transfer of land ownership through spurious signatures has become reality.  Numerous claims and cases exist that land was sold.  Countless lawyers in Nigeria, West Africa and Uk have argued cases and made fortunes, through the colonial legal system right up to the Privy Council on this fallacy; that chiefs sold land, or that a protectorate was established at the request of African chiefs and in their interest.   In a sense all that is written above may well be regarded as superfluous or even academic were it not for the harm done to countless people who have lost minerals wealth because of the claim of ownership, through purchase of land by the British, or other Colonialists.

This then is the legacy of British rule to Nigeria.  At best it was always tenuous, at worst it was hypocritical insidious, dividing and ruling us for their benefit.  Our varying degrees of acceptance of British rule has forged a strong suspicion that our differing attitudes to that rule has been transferred into how we see ourselves.  British rule was a thin veneer of administration without leaving any lasting lessons about statecraft, transparency, in Government or the feeling that we are all equal under God and under the rule of law.

 Patrick Dele Cole