Paradoxical Heritage

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THE HERITAGE which the British left behind, on their transfer of power to Nigerians, is paradoxical. It is a good and an evil heritage.

On their departure, the plants of public order were in the process of being choked by the weeds of insensate intolerance; the forces of progress were deliberately subordinated to the dead-weight of decadent and unsophisticated reaction; native tyranny was enthroned as the protector of human freedoms; and the country, though politically emancipated, was firmly held in leash by foreign economic interests.

Leaving their motives aside, the good that the British did in Nigeria, in material terms, is considerable and cannot be obliterated. They brought peace, order, good government, and flourishing commerce to a territory bedevilled and torn asunder by petty strifes and senseless wars. The credit belongs absolutely to them that Nigeria, as we know it today, was their exclusive and unaided creation. In other words, without British rule, there would have been no Nigeria.

On the other hand, it can be argued, with great cogency, that if the British had not come, the peoples of Nigeria, under different indigenous governments, could have made more rapid progress, materially, than they have done under British rule. They would, in any case, have been spared the excessive barbarity attendant on overseas slave-trade and slavery. However, such an exercise as this is not only bound to be purely speculative, but it is also one on which conflicting opinions can be urged with equal plausibility.

Let us, therefore, admit without qualification that the British regime gave us Nigeria and was beneficial to Nigerians. Having regard to relevance and space, we have set out in the second chapter of this book, sometimes in detail and sometimes in outline, the highlights of the good things which’ Britain has done for Nigeria in all sectors of human endeavour. It is unnecessary, in the present context, to repeat them.

But let us also admit, in all honesty, that British rule was immeasurably baneful to Nigeria and Nigerians. There are four important grounds for making this assertion:

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(I) The closure of the North to Christian missionary influences.

(2) The fossilisation of the political institutions in the North, under the aegis of Indirect Rule.

(3) The treatment of the North and the South as two distinct political and administrative units for all practical purposes and the inflexible maintenance of disparate standards in them.

(4) British manoeuvres immediately before and in 1959 to place the control of the Federal Government in Northern hands, in order thereby, according to them, to ensure the unity and stability of the country after independence.

We will deal with these grounds in the order in which we have stated them. Geographically, the North was not as easily penetrable to Western influence as the South. The Arab influence to which it was exposed was mainly commercial and religious and only incidentally educational. Even the type of education acquired under this influence was purely religious, not functional. The latter kind of education, however, existed in different parts of the South for some 15 years before the cession of Lagos and for more than half a century before British rule was firmly established in Nigeria in 1900. This was made possible because many parts of the South were comparatively easily accessible to Christian missionaries who, at that stage, were responsible for the education of Southerners.

The result, however, is that while, at the commencement of British rule, the South could boast of a number of persons educated in the Western sense, among whom were highly qualified professionals, the North was not at all in a position to make a similar boast. This initial handicap was aggravated by the policy of the British Government forbidding Christian missionaries to operate in the North. This policy was laid down by Lugard and was pursued, with unreasoning fervour and obstinacy, by himself and his successors in office.

The effect of the initial handicap and of Lugard’s pernicious policy was frightful. In 1935, the North (population 11 millions) had 37,000 ‘Koran Schools’ where about 200,000 pupils were ‘taught to recite passages from the Koran and, in some cases, a little reading and writing of Arabic…’. In addition, ‘there were 134 Native Administration Elementary Schools with 6,060 pupils. The number of scholars in 253 Mission Schools, mostly in pagan areas, was 12,037. The 10 Middle Schools … had an enrolment of 869.’.

‘In the Southern Provinces (population 8 millions) the number of children in all Elementary classes is 174,915. The number in all classes of Middle Schools is 13,000.’ The comparative figures for 1960, the year of Nigeria’s independence, were equally unedifying. Tile North (population 17 millions) had 2,340 Primary Schools with 282,848 pupils in them, and 41 Secondary Schools with 6,334 pupils. In the South (population 13,6 millions) there were 13, 103 Primary Schools with 2,629,760 pupils and 331 Secondary Grammar Schools with 55,225 pupils. Lagos alone with only a population of 272,000, had 5,714 pupils in Secondary Grammar Schools as contrasted with 6,334 pupils in all Secondary Schools in the North.

At present, the position of the North in these matters has improved a little, but remains comparatively unsatisfactory. There are about 550,000 Northern children in Primary Schools and about 18,000 in Secondary Schools, as against 2.7 millions and 143,006 in the South, respectively.

The psychological effect of all this on Northern minds has been complex, baffling, and dangerous. In their dealings with their fellow-citizens from the South, they sometimes evince feelings of inferiority or superiority, all depending on particular individuals and circumstances. They regard Western education with contempt and as only a workman’s indispensable tool. But they betray an inexplicable hostility and resentment towards Southerners for being too far ahead of them in Western education. Since 1947 when the voices of Northern spokesmen were first heard in the affairs of Nigeria, they have persistently demanded, either by word or by conduct, that the South should be halted in its progress until the North is able to catch it up. On occasions, some ambitious Southern politicians have also lent support to this manifestly perverse and exceedingly harmful suggestion.

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