Evolution of Nigeria, 1849-1960 (Part 3)
Today:Saturday, November 21, 2009
The next evidence for the continued search for unity and rationalisation in the administration of these territories was also the most important, that is, the appointment of Sir Frederick Lugard, the first High Commissioner of the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria (1900-1906), as the man to implement the amalgamation of the two protectorates. He, thus, became the first head of a unified Nigerian administration.
This development impacted on the future Nigerian state in many ways. Firstly, the move was informed not by a desire or a quest on the part of the British to create a Nigerian nation-state. The concern was still with the old quest for efficiency and rationality in colonial administration. It was meant to tackle the problem of the inability of the Northern Protectorate to balance its budget at a time its southern neighbours had a comfortable sur- plus. It was also meant to settle/or side-track cer- tain areas of annovino conflict between the two administrations.
Secondly, the amalgamation was a colossal administrative hoodwink as it existed mainly on paper and in Lugard's person, rather than in an interlocking bureaucracy and political system. Lugard refused to create a central secretariat, for that would eat into his personal power and bring the two protectorates together to an extent he did not consider healthy for the Northern Protectorate, which in his view, needed protection from the bliz- zard of Westernisation which was sweeping through the South. The result was that, under him, a central bureaucracy did not emerge. Also, he made sure there was minimal contact between the technical departments in the north and the south, as well as between them and the local administration so close to his heart. The central co-ordination of the work of these departments rested with him.
Thirdly, Lugard wanted the amalgamation to take place at the level of the local government where his favourite Indirect Rule was applied. And by amalgamation at the local level, he meant an arrangement by which the practice of local govern- ment and Indirect Rule in the southern protectorate was assimilated into what obtained in the northern protectorate which, in his view, and in the view of his doting admirers, was the most glorious achieve- ment of the Second British Empire in the manage- ment of the aflairs of dependent and colonial peoples.
Fourthly, Lugard had no programme of political amalgamation, that is, a system seeking to bring together the forces of the future, the new class of men produced by the impact of Western influence on Nigerian society and population.
Fifthly, this Lugardian approach to amalgama- tion converted Nigeria into a battle field for two British tribal cohorts, the Southern and the Northern cohorts, for the remaining period of British colonial rule in Nigeria. While the North wanted to incorpo- rate the South on the basis of indirect rule, the South wanted to incorporate the North through the expansion and extension of the power of the mod- ern bureaucracy, Western education, Western com- merce and Western legal system and practice. Thus, amalgamated Nigeria remained a ram- shackle affair until 1960, the year of independence. Hitherto, it was merely an arrangement in which fierce unwilling rams looking in different directions were shackled together. Howbeit, after Lugard's second coming, Nigeria became, for good or ill, and in law, an administrative unit.
