THE EVOLUTION OF NIGERIA, 1849 – 1960
The evolution of Nigeria from about 1849
until it attained independence in 1960 is largely the story of the
transformational impact of the British on the peoples and cultures of
the Niger-Benue area.
The colonial authorities sought to
define, protect and realize their imperial interest in this portion of
West Africa in the hundred or so years between 1862 and 1960, The
British were in the Niger- Benue area to pursue their interests, which
were largely economic and strategic. In the process of seeking to
realize those interests, there were many unplanned-for by-products.
The first critical step in this
uncertain path was taken in 1849 when, as part of an effort to
‘sanitize’ the Bights of Benin and Biafra, which were notorious for the
slave trade, the British created a consulate for the two Bights. From
here, one thing led to another for the British, especially to deepen
involvement in the political and economic life of the city states of the
Bights and to rivalry with the French who also began showing imperial
ambitions in the area. The result, in time, was that the British
converted the coastal consulate and its immediate hinterland into the
Oil Rivers Protectorate in 1885, which, in 1893, transformed into the
Niger Coast Protectorate.
The apparently irreversible logic of
this development led to deeper and closer involvement in the
administration of the peoples and societies of this segment of Nigeria
which, by the middle of the twentieth century, came to be known as
Eastern Nigeria.
The second step, along the same path,
was taken about 1862 when the British annexed the Lagos Lagoon area and
its immediate environs and converted same into a crown colony. According
to the British, they did this in order to be better able to abolish the
slave trade which used that area as export point. According to Nigerian
historians, on the other hand, they did so to be better able to protect
their interest in the vital trade route that ran from Lagos, through
Ikorodu, Ibadan and similar communities, to the Niger waterway in the
north and beyond into Hausaland. Be that as it may, by 1897, British
influence and power had overflowed the frontiers of Lagos and affected
all of Yorubaland which was subsequently attached to Lagos as a
Protectorate. The political and administrative unit which came to be
known as Western Nigeria in the 1950s came as the end of this second
step.
The third and final step in this
uncharted path came in 1888. The British administered political
‘baptism’ on Greyne Goldie’s National African Company which had
successfully squeezed out rivals, British and non-British, from the
trade in the lower Niger, following a trade war of almost unprecedented
ferocity. As a result of the ‘baptism’, Goldie’s company became the
Royal Niger Company, chartered and limited. It also acquired political
and administrative powers over a narrow belt of territory on both sides
of the river from the sea to Lokoja, as well as over the vast area
which, in the 20th century, came to be known as Northern Nigeria.
Thus, by about 1897, the three blocks of
territory had emerged, as British colonial possessions, from moves made
during the period of the These three blocks of territories One change,
perhaps the major one, was that the charter of the Royal Niger Company
was withdrawn and the territory under its shadowy control was declared
the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria and brought under the Colonial
Secretary. Similarly, the Niger Coast Protectorate, which had been under
the Foreign Secretary, was renamed the Protectorate of Southern Nigeria
and brought under the Colonial Secretary. In addition, the narrow
“strip of Royal Niger Company from Lokoja to the sea”, which had divided
the Niger Coast Protectorate into two, was united with it, thus
bringing the western and eastern halves of that administration together
territorially. The Lagos Colony and Protectorate underwent no change
while continuing under the controlling authority of the Colonial Office.
With these three units then brought under the Colonial Office, the
situation was created in which the management of their affairs came to
be informed by the same theory and practice of administration.
The amalgamation of 1914 offered an
opportunity for making changes in the unsatisfactory arrangement, but
not much was achieved this area. All that was created was a body known
as the Nigerian Council which met once a year to listen to what may be
called the Governor’s address on the state of the Colony and
Protectorate of Nigeria. The body had no legislative powers whatsoever.
The same ambivalence based on imperial self-interest that characterized
the Lugardian approach to seeing and treating Nigeria as one political
entity and Nigerians as members of one political family was also
evidenced in the constitutional development efforts of his successors.
For example, while the Sir Hugh Clifford Constitution of 1922 introduced
the elective principle for legislative houses for the first time, the
Legislative Council which replaced Lugard’s Nigerian Council legislated
only for the Colony and Southern Provinces while the Governor continued
to legislate for the Northern Provinces through proclamations. The
forty-six-member Council, presided over by the Governor, was dominated
by ex-official and nominated members.
The Legislative Council system thus
implied a division of responsibility to govern Nigeria between the
United Kingdom-based British Government and the government established
in the Colony. Besides, Nigerians were excluded from membership of the
Executive Council.
The Richards Constitution of 1946,
though it had among its objectives the promotion of the unity of Nigeria
and securing greater participation by Nigerians in discussing their
affairs, deliberately set out to cater for the diverse elements within
The country, Significant provisions of this new constitution included
the establishment of a re-constituted Legislative Council whose
competence covered the whole country; the abolition of the official
majority in the Council; the creation of Regional Councils consisting of
a House of Assembly in each of the Northern, Eastern and Western
Provinces, and creation of House of Chiefs in the North, whose roles
were purely advisory rather than legislative. Significantly, however,
the Richards Constitution was designed without full consultation with
Nigerians which explains the hostility with which it was greeted,
especially in the South.
Although the Richards Constitution was
expected to last for nine years, opposition to it, especially from the
political leaders, was so strong that a new constitution, the Macpherson
Constitution, was promulgated in 1951. Unlike its predecessors, there
was significant participation of Nigerians in its making from the
village level up to the Ibadan General Conference of 1950; the major
provisions of the Constitution were as follows: the establishment of a
145-member House of Representatives, 136 of them elected, to replace the
Legislative Council; a bicameral legislature for both the North and
West, one being the House of Chiefs while the East retained the
unicameral House of Assembly; the establishment of a Public Service
Commission to advise the Governor on the appointment and control of
public officers; the competence of the Regional Legislatures to
legislate on a range of prescribed subjects while the central
legislature was empowered to legislate on all matters including those on
the Regional Legislative lists. Substantially, therefore, the 1951
Constitution was more or less a half-way house between regionalization
and federation. Between 1951 and 1954, two important constitutional
conferences were held in London and Lagos between Nigerian political
leaders and the British government. These resulted in a new 1954 Federal
Constitution whose main features were: the separation of Lagos, the
nation’s capital, from the Western Region; the establishment of a
Federal Government for Nigeria comprising three regions, namely, North,
West and East with a Governor-General at the centre and three Regional
Governors; the introduction of an exclusive Federal Legislative List as
well as a Concurrent List of responsibilities for both the Federal and
Regional Governments, thus resulting in a strong central government and
weak regions; regionalization of the Judiciary and of the public service
through the establishment of Regional Public Service Commissions, in
addition to the Federal one.
From the point of view of the evolution
of the Nigerian state, the most significant thing about the 1954
Constitution, which remained in force until Independence in 1960, was
that the Lugardian principle of centralization was replaced by the
formula of decentralization as a matter of policy in the administration
of the Nigerian state.
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