Slaves, Bibles and Guns

The creation of Nigeria was the outcome of dual projects set in motion by two very different groups of highly motivated minorities. This is an incontestable fact Fola Fagbule and Feyi Fawehinmi, argue in Formation: The Making of Nigeria from Jihad to Amalgamation. This book is a first-rate work of narrative history: informative and riveting. Its undue focus on individuals at the expense of economic forces does not detract from its achievement.

It is valuable enough for the insights within, and on trivia night you will be grateful to the authors if winning depends on knowledge of all the many names of the River Niger, for example.

As the authors admit, publications are not solo efforts. Adekunle Adebisi and Wilna Combrink deserve credit for superb design and brilliant picture choices. Uthman Adejumo, the proofreader, also puts in a good shift. In 357 pages of text, the number of errors I spotted was in the low single digits. I expect the errors will be gone in the second edition that this book richly deserves. In that edition, pullout maps and larger pictures would be an improvement on the present.

Messrs FF and FF did not set out to write a definitive history of the country. And they did not. Formation, instead, sets out to rejuvenate the love of history among Nigerians, and I will add, it should engender a level of fascination with the country, and Nigerians, in foreign readers. It is, as the authors rightly judge it, meant to be a ‘brick for our common house’.

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Across ten chapters, with titles every bit as allusive as the book title, the authors guide us through the processes and outsized individuals who created a country from inchoate groups defined by their association with the ‘River of Rivers’ and its less-heralded tributary: the Benue. The otherwise crisp narrative only ever hit a discordant note for me when it came to their choice of words for the victims of the brisk trade in slaves in the region, later, country. Personally, using ‘slaves’ strikes me as apt and accurate. The authors, however, oscillated between many words of which ‘human captives’ was the best, and ‘human bodies’ worst. The latter brought to mind corpses.

In my opinion, the primary determinant of a book’s quality is the insight it generates and the disagreements it engenders.

I had previously not thought that the emergence of the Sokoto Caliphate was a linear process culminating in the creation of Nigeria. After reading the book, I think that it was. The book allowed me to sew together threads that had previously been floating in my mind. The Caliphate unleashed the latent martial potential of the Hausa kingdoms on their pagan neighbours. That was because as per Islamic law, it was impossible to raid for slaves in a territory deemed as belonging to an Islamic State. Because slaves were the economic fuel of the era, the Caliphate had to raid somewhere. For some of its southern emirates (eastern by the Caliphate’s administrative structure) , that meant southwards.

The book does not shy away from detailing just how widespread and vital slaves were to the economy of the region in the 19th and early 20th centuries. As I read, I realised that there was a marked difference in the slave systems of what I term the Saharan and Atlantic economies. Northern and Southern Nigeria, as we know them today. The former was aristocratic while the latter was commercial. Social mobility was worse in the aristocratic slave society. I came about this idea while reading the book’s brilliant section on the twinned careers of Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther and King Jubo Jugboha, better known as King Jaja of Opobo. Both were former slaves. In contrast, the greatest achievement noted in the book by a slave in the aristocratic society–relegated to a footnote–is being the mother of Sir Ahmadu Bello, the future Sardauna of Sokoto.

The different societal structures in the two economies led to remarkably different modes of government. That had important reverberations, even during British rule. I differ from the authors in their assessment of the most important role played by the British in the creation of Nigeria in 1914. They call it ‘harebrained’; I think it brilliant. It brought into being what seemed a historical inevitability at many times less the cost in blood and treasure it would have taken to occur by local means. One of the many strong suits of the book is forever debunking the idea that ‘Nigerians’ had no contact until the meddling British arrived. On all the measures taken by the British to bring that event about, you will have to read the book to understand what I mean when I write that, ‘I am a Henry Carr for Lugard’.

My estimation of the British effort remains unchanged. Some individual Britons fell in my estimation, but not, despite the authors’ best efforts, Lord Lugard. My view of him very much remains akin to that held by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, an American President, towards the Nicaraguan dictator, Anastasio Somoza, expletives included.

I also disagree with their decision to put in scare quotes the discovery of the Niger by the trio of Mungo Park and the Lander Brothers. Yes, knowledge of a great river preceded them; however, the locals due to the anti-competitive practices of the riverine groups and the ubiquity of slaving did not know that the great river was the River Niger. They did not know its origins, full course or final destination in full. The Europeans eventually did, thanks to the efforts of the amateurs of the Royal Geographic Society. The sacrifices and sheer thirst for knowledge, as well as the presence of institutions fostering them, detailed in another of the book’s excellent sections, makes the case for an achievement without an asterisk.

I also disagree with their rather rosy view of the ‘Clapham Sect’ and the local elites they fostered. I am inclined to view them as mediocrities, keen to snipe and loath to build, rather than the beacons in the tropics the authors make them out to be. The extent of their failure was made clear in the Egba tax protests of 1918. Despite centuries under their influence, the brilliant idea for rolling back British rule held by the rebels was to destroy the rail lines and telegraph cables. The westernised elite had failed to make the case for modernity even among their closest pupils. What verdict but failure exists?

As mentioned, the emphasis on the narrative can come at the expense of focused analysis. For example, for all the narrative oomph brought by the Maxim gun, I think that the authors miss its true significance. It did not allow the British to conquer the Niger area. The disparity in power was already marked, even without it. Instead, it allowed the cheap conquest of the region. The paucity of institutions caused by ‘Empire on the cheap’ would haunt their later attempt to administer the country.

Regardless of my disagreements, I enjoyed the book. When I finished, I was excited to read that this would not be their final collaboration. I found Formation worthwhile; you will too. If you do not, then treat me as Nagwamachi would. Who? Read it to find out.

Emmanuel-Francis Nwaolisa Ogomegbunam is a Nigerian by conviction