The group of stores and the group of bungalows are quite near each other and within a stone’s-throw of the station.
A quarter-of-a-mile from these centres there is the small sabon gari—i.e., native town—established for the requirements of natives who draw supplies there which they retail to the resident Europeans, in the way of daily household requirements. The sabon gari is also a great convenience to the large number of natives who bring in produce to sell to the exporting firms. Compared with Zaria City, this sabon gari is of limited dimensions. It differs markedly from Zaria City in having been laid out on Sir Hesketh Bell’s plan for model native towns.
It is divided into rectangular blocks, or plots, 50 feet by 100 feet. The rent for a plot is 12s. or 16s. a year. The main avenue is 100 feet wide, and other roads have a breadth of 50 feet, whilst streets parallel with the houses—which, of course, are of mud—are 15 feet across; 183 plots are occupied.
Rentals from plots are divided evenly between the British administration and the Beit-el-Mal, but dues from the market stalls go entirely to the Beit-el-Mal. This institution—which is the Treasury for native administration—is described in Chapter VII.
General taxation in Northern Nigeria in every province is adjusted to local custom and usage. Therein lies one of the secrets of our success in governing the country, that the ways of the people are interfered with as little as possible.
But the population must pay taxes. They have always done so in one form or another. Whereas formerly they had to render service, or its substitute, for war or for slave-raiding and were squeezed in actual taxation according to the requirements of the Emir’s Chiefs and, in addition, any man who prospered became an object of cupidity for the taxing Chief, now everybody is rated on a general plan and the amounts levied are decided upon in consultation between the British and the native authorities. Perhaps it will not be considered unduly out of place if, as an example, the system in Zaria Province is stated.
There is, first, the kurdin gidda, or house tax. Every owner—lessee, as we should term him—pays 1s. 6d. annually for occupancy. The kurdin kassa, or farm tax, is levied on every adult male farmer, whether working on his own account or for somebody else. The amount depends on the wealth of the town and the facilities of the inhabitants for earning money, such as proximity to trade routes and a railway. The tax ranges from 3s. to 6s. annually.
The kurdin gari—tax of the town—is paid by adult males who do not farm, whatever their work or occupation, or if they have none. The actual sum paid is fixed on the capacity of the payee to earn. The average is about 3s. a year.
A special tax which has been in existence for centuries is the kurdin karra, or tax on sugar, charged on sugar-cane plots, at 4s. yearly, independently of the size of the individual plot and of the number of men working on it.
Native non-Moslems are levied for a hoe tax, which is imposed only on adult male farmers, who pay from 3d. to 3s. a year on the same principle as that applied to the kurdin kassa.