The Postmaster-General strikes you as a fair-haired boy of twenty-two. He tells you, with pride, he is “much older than that.” He is thirty-two. The Acting Chief Justice is no “potent, grave, and reverend seigneur,” but is of an age when in England he would probably be fulfilling the rôle of “devil” to a leader in the High Court. The cool, clear-headed, and obviously capable officer temporarily in command of the 1st Battalion (1,314 men) Northern Nigeria Regiment, Captain G. C. Kelly, would, elsewhere, in these days of slow promotion, be lucky to have got his company. His colleague in charge of the battery of four light guns, Captain C. F. S. Maclaverty, could not hope to discharge anything like that responsibility at home. The Deputy Director of Railways, under the famous John Eaglesome, might pass as a youth who had not long finished his articles.
Those at the head of affairs are not much older in years. I do not venture to ask the Acting Governor his age, and there is no “Who’s Who” within reach, but I should judge Mr C. L. Temple, C.M.G., to be on this side of forty; and the next in rank, the Acting Chief Secretary, Mr H. S. Goldsmith, who recently temporarily carried out the duties of the highest position—with absolute rule over a territory containing 10,000,000 inhabitants—is, I learn from a friend, thirty-eight.
He started thirteen years ago, when Northern Nigeria was taken over by the Crown from the Niger Company. He began, as there was urgent demand for getting the administrative machinery into working order, in a very junior post in the Protectorate. In the course of his first year he had to give help wherever it was most pressing, going from one office to another: Stores, Transport, Treasury, and the Marine Department. All his willingness and eagerness were not wasted. Although seemingly unnoticed at the time, it marked out the kind of officer Sir Frederick Lugard wanted. In the last birthday honours list Herbert Symond Goldsmith, Acting Chief Secretary to the Government of Northern Nigeria, received a C.M.G.
Yes, the country has still opportunities for the man who is ready and keen. But it is not the place where “the lotus life” can be lived. The tradition of plenty of work and responsibility which Lugard established still obtains. Government office hours end at 2 p.m., with an hour’s interval from nine to ten for breakfast. But they start early, and you may be startled at first at finding that an appointment for which you asked has been fixed for 7 a.m.
The time for official hours does not mean that it is a case of “down tools” as the clock points. I have found the Chief Secretary still hard at his duties at 5.30 in the afternoon, and one Sunday morning, when I went to see Captain Kelly at his bungalow, I learnt that he was closely engaged at the Brigade Office on a defence scheme.
The Secretariat has only a few constituting the personnel, nothing like the number one might look for at the Capital of such a large and well-populated territory. In Northern Nigeria the Government is greatly decentralised. Wide discretion is left to the Residents, who in some distant and not easily accessible places, such as Bornu and Sokoto, occupy the position of well-nigh sovereign kinglets. Further, actual and daily rule is left to the hereditary Emirs of the Provinces, subject to the advice and guidance, when necessary, of the Residents.
Another cause of the limited staff at the Secretariat is that in Northern Nigeria strict, stern, severe economy remains the order of the hour. There is evidence of it all round. The Secretariat is a poor building indeed. Bare brick whitewashed walls and cement floor crumbling in places, and in others worn into holes. Not a roll-top desk or anything approaching it in the place. Old, plain wooden tables, and, at the farther edge of each, roughly-made pigeon-holes. By way of contrast, the tables are of a light colour and the pigeon-holes have at some time or other been given a single daub of green paint, now faded. The Chief Secretary’s room is just like the others. His table is covered by a bit of threadbare green baize which a messenger at Whitehall would not think fit to wipe his boots upon and for which no Hausa trader would give a handful of cowries.
At present occupied by the Acting Governor, Mr Temple—whose wife shares his “plain living”—the Governor’s “Palace” is a mean shanty. A seven-roomed, wooden bungalow, it has stood “the battle and the breeze” for nine years and shows signs of the ordeal in all directions. It looks as though it could be easily shaken to bits. The dining-room is walled with boards which once received a single dash of brown staining. This apartment, however, is luxurious compared with the Governor’s office adjoining, the plank partition of which has not its ugliness improved by a sparse covering of green paint, of the quality used in England on the garden fences of thirty-pounds-a-year houses. Nor does His Excellency recline on soft velvets or plush cushions, as might be expected of the ruler of Emirs and Kings who turn out in splendour. As I talked with him he sat in a plain chair, the hardness of the seat of which was somewhat relieved by an old horse-blanket folded.
The furniture at Government House is of the same nondescript character. It might have been picked up in job lots at public auction rooms. In order that I might take a group photograph six chairs were brought into the grounds from the drawing-room and I noticed that the six were made up of three different styles. Before the picture could be composed I had to do a temporary repair to one of the chairs.
The motor-car in which he gets about Zungeru, and which is used for traversing distant roads the railway does not cover, is an old shambling machine making as much noise as a traction engine. The motor-cabs of Europe, and even the vehicles of the London General Omnibus Company are smart and ultra-fashionable by comparison. I should say that a suburban shopkeeper would scorn to hire it at a shilling per hour on a Bank Holiday to take his family round Battersea Park or Hampstead Heath. Well-to-do natives in Lagos use better.