The Company’s Charter was taken over by the Imperial authorities at the opening of 1900, and Jebba, 200 miles higher up the river, shortly afterwards made Government headquarters.
If Lokoja does not possess the former political predominance, its business importance is more than ever. The town may be said to occupy a strategic commercial position. It stands, as has been stated, at the confluence of the Benue and Niger rivers, which here are together about two miles across.
The Benue flows into the Niger at an angle of 45 degrees and is navigable to Yola, 467 miles distant. It runs through the Bassa country, remarkably rich in agricultural and sylvan produce, of which not a tithe has yet been tapped.
There are eight European firms in Lokoja, namely, the Tin Areas of Nigeria, the British Cotton Growing Association, the Niger Company, Messrs Pagenstecher, John Holt, G. W. Christian, J. D. Fairley, and the Bank of British West Africa. The first five are buyers of produce as well as storekeepers, whilst the remainder only engage in the latter form of business. The exception to both descriptions of business is, of course, the bank, which does not go beyond its own sphere.
Kabba Province, in which Lokoja stands, is noted for the rubber, palm-kernels, and shea-nuts cultivated by the native farmers, with comparatively little beeswax and a few hides. The Niger Company is the largest buyer. Away from the headquarters, at Burutu, it is the largest station of the Company. In the sheds I saw tons and tons of palm-kernels, shea-nuts, rubber, and other forest products brought from the interior and exchanged for British goods and for the small amount of Continental articles which British manufacturers cannot make; and there are also large cash transactions—in fact, most of the purchases are paid for in cash—of which only a small proportion is expended on the spot.
This is not done at once, nor is it necessarily carried out with the firm to whom the native farmer or trader has sold the produce. He is not the man quickly to launch into outlay. He is cool, careful, calculating, and, having disposed of what he has to sell, will sit down for two or three days to cogitate on what he shall buy in the way of presents to take to his folks at home. Having brought himself to the mood of expenditure, he probably inspects all the stores before deciding where he is to bestow his patronage, which may be no more than 5s.
A somewhat similar procedure is followed when he is a seller. Each European firm will be tried and the amount it will give for the produce ascertained previous to one being selected. Time is no object. If anybody fresh from England and not conversant with native methods sought to inculcate new ideas and method by refusing to pay the price offered and declined a few days earlier for the native produce, then that merchant would simply take it away and probably never bring more to the same place.
Lokoja has this difference from its Lancashire prototype, Liverpool, that whereas the Mersey and the Manchester ends of the Ship Canal are the water termini of sea-borne merchandise, Lokoja is a kind of clearing-house for general distribution. To its beach are moored screw and stern-wheelers, from 10 tons’ freight to the larger ones of the “Naraguta” class, for freight of 600 tons; barges drawing 12 to 15 inches, for passing up the broad though very shallow creeks of the Niger and the Benue, carrying goods of English make to the inhabitants of districts which can give our home manufacturers those essential oils and other products of the soil necessary for their industries, and which they scour the world to discover.
To other parts of the beach come and go native canoes of infinite variety in shape and size, some as long as vessels seen on European canals, and decreasing by degrees until there is the plain dug-out made from the trunk of a tree, in which the perambulating trader, with wife and child, makes his peregrinations perhaps 500 miles up the Benue, buying and selling and exchanging at the stopping-places, and at night sloping his mat on a pole fixed horizontally, thus providing a house and shelter for sleep. Lokoja is the great centre of them all.