Nigeria

impressions jotted down in varying moods. The value, if, indeed, they have any value at all, of these disjointed ramblings lies in the glimpse they may afford of native characte...

After trekking on horseback five hundred miles or so, you acquire the philosophy of this kind of locomotion. For it has a philosophy of its own, and with each day that passes yo...

You may fairly call it the Great White Road to Hausaland, although it does degenerate in places into a mere track where it pierces some belt of shea-wood or mixed trees, and you...

“Some Africans I have met”—the words conjure up a series of powerful chiefs, or fantastic “witch doctors,” or faultlessly-attired barristers from some centre of light and learni...

Each twenty-four hours brings its own series of events and its own train of thoughts following upon them. A new incident, it may be of the most trivial kind, sets the mind worki...

It was dusk, dark almost. The road glimmered dimly in the distance. Over the deep furrows the shadows crept, and the little path between them mingled with the gathering gloom.

Some things detach themselves, as it were, from the general background, rooting themselves in memory. Such, the rise in the road beyond which the first of the great Mohammedan t...

All Zaria is astir, for this is December, the sacred month, the month when the pilgrims to Mecca are offering sacrifices, and to-day the Sallah celebrations begin. At an early h...

Nigeria is a geographical expression applied to a territory in West Africa which by successive stages, covering a period of more than one hundred years, under circumstances wide...

What is now known as Southern Nigeria comprises 77,200 square miles, and includes the whole seaboard of the Nigerian Protectorate, some 450 miles long, and the marvellous delta...

Beyond the deltaic region proper lies the vast belt of primeval and secondary forest of luxurious growth, giant trees, tangled vines and creepers, glorious flowering bushes, gau...

In connection with the internal government of the Protectorate it may be advisable to refer briefly to the House Rule Ordinance of 1901 which has recently given rise to some con...

Early in the seventies, a decade after the British occupation, Lagos, for more years than one cares to remember an important export centre of the slave trade, was a small settle...

The administrative problems which confront the Government of Southern Nigeria in the western, or Yoruba, province are very much more complicated than any to be met with in the c...

The political situation in Yorubaland, some aspects of which were briefly sketched in the preceding chapter, is one that, obviously, cannot last. Its inconveniences are too nume...

A casual visitor provided by private kindness with the hospitality of a stern-wheeler and not, therefore, exposed to the discomforts (soon, it is to be hoped, to be a thing of t...

The political events of which Northern Nigeria was the scene last century are well known, but a brief recapitulation of them is necessary by way of introduction to the study of...

An attempted reconstruction of the prehistoric period—considered locally—of that portion of Western Central Africa, now known as Northern Nigeria, would take up many chapters, a...

A broad, sandy road, piercing a belt of shea trees, gnarled and twisted, their bark figured like the markings of a crocodile’s back, from which peculiarity you can distinguish t...

_Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!_ The sonorous tones perforate the mists of sleep, heralding the coming of the dawn. _Ashadu Allah, ila-allahu, ila-allahu!_ Insistent, reverberating...

The word “peasant” as applied to the Fulani is, no doubt, a misnomer. I employ it merely to distinguish the herdsmen from the caste of statesmen and governors, evolved in Nigeri...

You are permanently conscious that this country has a history and traditions. Nowhere, perhaps, does the fact impress the new-comer more vividly than at Kano. It is a wonderful...

Kano Province under the British Administration includes a number of independent Emirates which we found existing and which we have maintained, viz.: Kano, Katsina, Katagum, Daur...

The fundamental principle aimed at by the Government in Northern Nigeria is indirect administration, i.e. administration through the native rulers of the communities, the Chiefs...

Having indicated some of the quagmires into which direct rule would lead us, one may now pass to an examination of the foundations upon which native law and custom repose in the...

The policy of governing Northern Nigeria on native lines—in other words, of training the natives to govern themselves instead of trying to govern them ourselves—has the approval...

Among those to whom the government of the coloured races of mankind appears in the light of a sacred trust committed to an Imperial white people, as to the servants of that peop...

If we have the imagination to grasp the true significance of the events which led, a century ago, to the break-up of the Hausa dynasty by the Fulani, we shall find the key to th...

The predominant characteristic of our educational methods—official and unofficial—in Western Africa hitherto may be summed up in one word—denationalization. The result is so not...

The external, by which I mean non-indigenous, trade of Northern Nigeria plays as yet but an insignificant part in the commercial and industrial activities of the country. It is...

There appears to be no doubt that Nigeria is a highly mineralized country. Iron exists in considerable quantities and in many districts, in Southern but more particularly in Nor...

No interested student of Nigerian affairs can fail, I think, especially after an examination of the problem on the spot, to arrive at the conclusion that the present dual system...

To all these incongruities must be added the series of events which have led to the creation of two competing railway systems, and, consequently, to open rivalry between the two...

An effort was made in the previous chapter to depict some of the disadvantages and drawbacks arising, and likely to become accentuated with time, from the dual administrative co...

I have referred to Christian missionary propaganda in Mohammedan Northern Nigeria. There has now to be considered the question of Christian missionary propaganda in Southern Nig...

Is Nigeria a cotton-growing country? Is an export trade in cotton, of any large dimensions, a possibility—early or remote? I will endeavour to answer these questions to the best...

Cotton is grown extensively in parts of Northern Nigeria, not for export—outside the Hausa provinces—but for home consumption. In Kano province—28,600 square miles in extent wit...

Apart from religious questions there is probably no subject upon which it is more difficult to secure reasonable discussion and study than the subject of drink; none upon which...