Nigeria

by E. D. Morel

CORNER OF A NATIVE MARKET.

ANOTHER CORNER.

The administration of justice has been vastly purified by the inauguration of fixed emoluments. The District Courts and the Supreme Court administer Koranic law, or customary law, i.e. traditional law based on custom, or Government proclamations. Speaking generally, the Alkalis are a fine body of men, and they appear to be realizing more and more the dignity and responsibilities of their position. The chief Alkali in particular is a man of very high character. The legal code in criminal and civil matters is, of course, mainly inspired by the sacred books, and the Alkali is generally a Doctor of Mohammedan common law. His influence and power appear to be more extensive than that of the Egyptian kadi, since he has jurisdiction in criminal cases and in land suits, which the latter has not. Of the cases tried in the courts of the Kano Emirate, about 30 per cent. are matrimonial, such as divorce, restitution of conjugal rights, alimony, etc. The courts are very hard worked, dealing with about 7000 to 8000 cases per annum, and the Alkalis fully earn their salaries. I attended the chief Alkali’s court in Kano city, and was greatly impressed by the general decorum, the respect shown to the Alkali, the activity of the assessors, the marshalling of the witnesses, the order, rapidity, and business-like manner in which the whole proceedings were conducted. It was an example of native self-government in Western Africa which would have astonished a good many people in Europe. No British court, no alien magistrate, could possibly deal with these “affairs of the people,” which require a complete mastery of Koranic law and customary law, such a mastery as only a trained native can ever acquire, and it is to be hoped that any attempts which may arise to curtail the jurisdiction of the native courts—accepted by all classes of natives—will be promptly discouraged, together with similar attempts to interfere with the present Beit-el-Mal system. From a practical point of view the maintenance of the Native Administration, guided and supervised by the Resident, i.e. indirect rule, is inseparable from the financial question. If the Native Administration were not financially provided for it would cease to exist. If the Emirs and their executives were converted into mere civil pensioners of the Government, they would become figure-heads deprived of all power and prestige. Under the system I have described the Emirs have power, and only hyper-sensitiveness and short-sightedness can see in their power our weakness. It is, on the contrary, our strength and defence against the reactionary elements which exist, and which are bound to exist in a country but newly occupied, and which are certainly not less hostile to the native authorities, who pursue their labours under the ægis of the British “raj,” than they are to the British “raj” itself. Anything that impairs the influence of the native authorities, not only impairs the efficiency of the Administration of the country, but is an invitation to lawlessness and disorder.

It is only fair to state in this connection that the initiative of perpetuating, under British rule and with the modifications required, the system of land taxation indigenous to the community, was due to the suggestion of Sir William Wallace, for many years Acting High Commissioner of Northern Nigeria.

CHAPTER XII
THE PRESERVATION OF THE NATIONAL LIFE

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 people possessing the widest experience in the practice of such government, the preservation of the national life of these races must be a matter of paramount importance. Increased knowledge born of familiarity in the art of tropical government and of anthropological knowledge, a clearer realization of human needs which an expanding mental horizon brings with it, are teaching us many things. They are teaching us that there can be no common definition of progress or common standard for all mankind; that the highest human attainments are not necessarily reached on parallel lines; that man’s place and part in the universe around him must vary with the dissimilarities of race and environment; that what may spell advance for some races at a particular stage in their evolution may involve retrogression, if not destruction, for other races in another stage; that humanity cannot be legislated for as though every section of it were modelled on the same pattern; that to disregard profound divergence in culture and racial necessities is to court disaster, and that to encourage national growth to develop on natural lines and the unfolding of the mental processes to proceed by gradual steps, is the only method by which the exercise of the Imperial prerogative can be morally justified. Our one and only conspicuous Imperial failure was due to a misguided belief that we could, and that it was desirable in our own interests that we should, crush out nationality by violence. It inflicted upon the victims immense misery and upon the performers embarrassments which have endured for centuries. Elsewhere we are experiencing the discomforting reflex of a policy based upon the supposition that East is capable of assimilation with West under alien guidance. British India is rent with confusion and mentally unsettled by a jumble of conflicting ideals, to which the Protected Native States offer a contrast that cannot but carry with it its own very significant lessons.

All the good work accomplished in Northern Nigeria during the last seven years can be flung away by a refusal to benefit from experience in other parts of the world. In pleading for the slow but sure policy everywhere in Nigeria, and in pleading that where in Nigeria national life has already expanded through the exercise of its own internal forces into organized communities, possessing their own laws and customs, their own machinery of government and their own well-defined characteristics, that national life shall be protected, preserved and strengthened to enable it to bear the strain of new conditions, one is pleading, it seems to me, for the true welfare of the people and for the highest concept of Imperialism.

These considerations hold good as regards every branch of European activity. Effective British political control does not require constant encroachments of departmental activity. British industrial interests can be allowed to find a natural outlet in the ordinary play of economic forces without calling upon Government assistance, for example, to undermine a national weaving industry in which, as Barth remarked of it many years ago, there is something that is “truly grand,” giving employment and support as it does to innumerable families without compelling them to sacrifice their domestic habits or to pass their lives in immense establishments detrimental to health. British commercial necessities do not demand that the big native cities should be thrown open to the White trader, who can pursue his useful avocations just as well, and certainly with much greater regard to health conditions, outside than inside them. In the same way the advent of the missionary into the organized Mohammedan provinces of the north before the country is ripe to receive them, would be a positive danger, besides being an act perilously akin to a breach of faith. Surely we have become sufficiently intelligent to take a broadly human view of these things? There is a field in pagan Northern and pagan Southern Nigeria sufficiently extensive to occupy all the energies of all the missions put together, without invading the heart of Moslem Nigeria. The advent of Christian missions into Kano or Katsina or Sokoto, for example, would be regarded as an act of aggression. Their presence in Zaria is a great mistake, and I make bold to assert that it is only comparable to a man smoking a pipe on a barrel of gunpowder. We hold this newly occupied country by the force of our prestige, far more than by the very small number of native troops in our service. That it is the duty of Government to prevent the introduction of elements, whatever their character and however lofty their motives, whose presence is calculated to cause unrest, is sufficiently self-evident as not to need emphasizing. No Government can afford to disregard so clear a view as that formulated, for example, in the Emir of Kano’s letter given in Chapter VIII. But one would desire, if possible, that the leaders of the Christian Churches themselves should be brought to appreciate the justice of the contention. The establishment of Christian missions in the Mohammedan Emirates would not succeed in damming up the self-propelling currents of Islamic propaganda which are permeating Nigerian paganism. That is the true problem which the Churches have to face.