On all hands the Bauchi plateau is looked upon as an eventual sanatorium where officials can recoup, and thanks to which the term of service may be ultimately prolonged, which, with the keenness which distinguishes this service, they all seem to want—the Politicals, I mean. Even now they play hide-and-seek with the doctors, and keep uncommonly quiet when the time comes round for furlough, lying low like Brer Rabbit. I hesitate to strike a discord where so much unanimity prevails. No doubt it is a generally accepted maxim that the bracing air of a mountainous region, its cool nights and mornings, have recuperative effects upon the system undermined with malaria and other ills, and it may well be—I devoutly hope so—that in course of time the plateau will become the Nigerian Simla and may also contain a population of white settlers engaged in stock-raising and, perhaps, agriculture. But the period within which these things can come about strikes me as still remote. If they are to be, it will mean the expenditure of much money, and, under existing circumstances of transport and housing, the climate of Bauchi has been over-praised. You have always the tropical African sun to reckon with, and there appears to be some subtly dangerous quality about it which even men who have lived in other tropical lands find very trying.
CHAPTER XVII
THE NECESSITY OF AMALGAMATING THE TWO PROTECTORATES
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 of administration, with its artificial territorial boundaries, its differing methods, and its inevitable rivalries, has served its turn and should be brought to an end as speedily as possible. The situation, as it obtains to-day, is incongruous—in some respects almost absurd; and the absence of a sense of proportion in estimating responsibilities and acknowledging public services is conspicuous. No comprehensive scheme of development and, what is more important, no unity of principle in public policy is possible while it lasts. Moreover, just as each Administration settles itself more firmly in the saddle and pursues its own aims with increasing determination, so will differences in the handling of great public issues accentuate themselves and eventual adjustment on a common basis of principle be attended with additional perplexity. It is not only quite natural, but under the existing circumstances it is right that the Administration of Southern Nigeria should work for the interests of Southern Nigeria and the Administration of Northern Nigeria for the interests of the latter. But Nigeria is geographically a single unit, and Imperial policy suffers from a treatment which regards the interests of one section as not only distinct from, but in certain cases antagonistic to the interests of the other. It is not suggested that administration should everywhere be carried out on the same pattern. No one would contend that the problems of government in the Northern Hausa provinces can, for instance, be assimilated to the problems of government in the Eastern Province of the Southern Protectorate. But that the main principles of government should be identical, and that the governing outlook should be directed to a consideration of the interests of Nigeria as a whole, can hardly be disputed. Take, for example, the question of direct and of indirect rule. The tendency in Southern Nigeria, as the Secretariat gets stronger and the initiative of the Commissioners decreases, is towards direct rule, especially in the Western Province. Northern Nigeria has resolutely set the helm in the contrary direction. Take the question of taxation. North of the imaginary line which separates the two Protectorates the native pays a direct tax to the Administration, and tribute from the people to their natural Chiefs and to the Government is assured on specific principles. South of that line the native pays no direct tax to Government, and in the Western Province the Central Administration doles out stipends, apparently suspendable, to the Chiefs, while the paying of native tribute to the Chiefs, where it has not altogether ceased, exists only by the internal conservatism of native custom. Take the question of education. The Southern Nigerian system is turning out every year hundreds of Europeanized Africans. The Northern Nigeria system aims at the establishment of an educational system based upon a totally different ideal. In Northern Nigeria the land question has been settled, so far as the Northern Protectorate is concerned, on a broad but sure foundation; but the Southern Nigerian native is an alien in Northern Nigerian law. In Southern Nigeria there is no real land legislation, and the absence of such, especially in the Western Province, is raising a host of future complications. Every year the gulf widens between the two ideals, and its ultimate bridging becomes a matter of greater difficulty. While on the one hand the Northern Nigeria Administration has had the priceless advantage of “starting fresh” and has been compelled to concentrate upon political and administrative problems, British rule in Southern Nigeria has been the slow growth of years, advancing here by conquest, there by pacific penetration, here by one kind of arrangement with native Chiefs, there by another kind of arrangement. Politically and of necessity British rule in Southern Nigeria is a thing of shreds and patches. The last two Governors, both very able men in their respective ways, have had, moreover, strong leanings in particular directions; sanitation was the load-star of the first; road construction, clearing of creeks and channels, harbour improvements and commercial development the chief purpose of the latter. It is no reflection upon either (the material advance of the Protectorate under Sir Walter Egerton’s administration has been amazing) to say that, between them, questions vitally affecting the national existence of the people, the study and organization of their laws and courts and administrative authority, have been left somewhat in the background. In criticizing a West African Administration it must always be borne in mind that no broad lines of public policy are laid down from home. None of the Secretary of State’s advisers have ever visited Nigeria, and however able they may be that is a disadvantage. There is no West African Council composed of men with experience of the country, as there ought to be, which would assist the Permanent Officials in advising the Secretary of State. The result is that each Governor and each Acting-Governor “runs his own show” as the saying is. One set of problems is jerked forwards by this Governor, another by another. The Governor’s position is rather like that of a Roman Emperor’s, and the officials responsible for large districts, never knowing what a new Governor’s policy is going to be, look upon every fresh change with nervous apprehension, which has a very unsettling effect. A vast wastage of time as well as many errors would be avoided if we had clear ideas at home as to the goal we are pursuing, and laid down specific principles by which that goal could be attained. This could be done without hampering the Governors. Indeed, the very indefiniteness of the home view on all these problems is often a serious handicap to a Governor who, for that very reason, may hesitate to take action where action is required, fearing, rightly or wrongly, the influence which Parliamentary questions may exercise upon the Secretary of State, and who may also find himself committed by an Acting-Governor, in his absence, to actions of which he personally disapproves. In other instances the existence of definite plans in London would act as a salutary check upon sudden innovations by a new and inexperienced Governor. Frequent changes of Governors there must be until the conditions of life in Nigeria are very much improved; but the inconveniences arising therefrom would be largely mitigated if there were continuity of a well-thought-out policy at home.
This digression is not, perhaps, altogether irrelevant to the subject under discussion.
The position of Northern Nigeria is very anomalous. A vast Protectorate shut off from the seaboard by another less than four times its size; having no coastline, and the customs dues on whose trade are collected by the latter. Southern Nigeria enjoying a very large revenue; its officials decently housed and catered for; able to spend freely upon public works and to develop its natural resources. Northern Nigeria still poor, a pensioner upon the Treasury, in part upon Southern Nigeria; unable to stir a step in the direction of a methodical exploration of its vegetable riches; its officials housed in a manner which is generally indifferent and sometimes disgraceful, many of them in receipt of ridiculously inadequate salaries, and now deprived even of their travelling allowance of five shillings a day. The latter measure is so unjust that a word must be said on the subject. The reason for the grant of this allowance [which the Southern Nigerian official enjoys] was frequent travelling, expensive living, and mud-house accommodation. As regards the two first, the arguments to-day are even stronger than they used to be. The safety of the roads and the increased pressure of political work compels the Resident and his assistants to be more or less constantly on the move if they are worth their salt. When travelling about the country, 4s. to 5s. a day and sometimes a little more is an inevitable expenditure; at present, a clear out-of-pocket one. As to living, it is a commonplace that the price of local food supplies is very much higher than it was seven years ago, while the price of goods imported from abroad have not all appreciably decreased. So far as the mud-houses are concerned, probably more than half the officials, except at places like Zungeru and Kano, live in mud-houses to-day. The Resident at Naraguta, for instance, lives in a leaky mud-house, while the Niger Company’s representative at Joss, five miles off, has a beautiful and spacious residence of brick and timber. A good mud-house is not to be despised, but the money to build even good ones is quite inadequate. I could give several examples where officials have spent considerable sums out of their own pockets to build themselves a decent habitation of mud and thatch. Some of the juniors have to be content with grass-houses, draughty, bitterly cold at night and in the early morning, and leaky to boot. Moreover, many of the brick-houses supplied are an uncommonly poor exchange for £90 a year. They are made of rough local brick, which already show symptoms of decay, and the roof is often so flimsy that in the verandah and supper-room one has to keep one’s helmet on as protection against the sun. I am not at all sure that the real official objection to all but leading officials bringing out their wives is not to be sought in the assumption that married officials, other than of the first grade, would no longer put up with the crude discomfort they now live in, and would be a little more chary of ruining their health by touring about in the rains—at their own expense. That Northern Nigeria is not under present conditions a fit place for other than an exceptional type of woman I reluctantly admit; but that the constant aim of Government should be to improve conditions in order to make it so I am fully persuaded. Our women as well as our men have built up the Empire and made it, on the whole, the clean and fine thing it is, and what a good woman, provided she is also a physically strong one, can accomplish in Northern Nigeria is beyond calculation. It is not too much to say of a very extensive region in the eastern part of the Protectorate, that the moral influence of one such woman is powerfully felt throughout its length and breadth. Other aspects of this question will obviously suggest themselves, and they ought to be boldly tackled; but the national prudery makes it difficult to discuss such matters openly. The salaries paid in Northern Nigeria fill one with astonishment. The salary of a first class Resident appears to vary from £700 to £800; that of a second class Resident from £550 to £650; that of a third class Resident from £450 to £550. Kano Province when I visited it was in charge of a third class Resident, admittedly one of the ablest officials in the country, by the way; that is to say, an official drawing £470 a year was responsible for a region as large as Scotland and Wales, with a population of 2,571,170! The Bauchi Province was in charge of a second class Resident, drawing £570 a year; it is the size of Greece, has a population of about three-quarters of a million, and additional administrative anxieties through the advent of a white mining industry. These two instances will suffice. The men saddled with these immense responsibilities are really Lieutenant-Governors and should be paid as such. It is perfectly absurd that an official in whom sufficient confidence is reposed to be given the task of governing a huge Province like Kano should be paid the salary of a bank clerk, when, for instance, the Governor of Sierra Leone, with half the population,[12] is drawing £2500, exclusive of allowances. A comparison of the Northern Nigeria salaries with those paid to the Governors of the West Indian Islands gives furiously to think. The Governorship of the Bahamas, 4404 square miles in extent, with a population of 61,277, is apparently worth £2000; that of the Bermudas, with an area of twenty-nine square miles and a population of 17,535, £2946; that of Barbados, 166 square miles and a population of 196,498, £2500.
CHAPTER XVIII
RAILWAY POLICY AND AMALGAMATION
SCENE ON THE SOUTHERN NIGERIA (EXTENSION) RAILWAY.