Pre-Colonial Systems and Colonial Administration

What you need to know

• The Hausa-Fulani system was highly centralised. The Emir was the political, judicial and religious head of the emirate, and after the jihad led by Usman dan Fodio early in the nineteenth century the emirates were linked to the Sultan of Sokoto, who held overall religious and political authority over the caliphate.
• The Emir governed through a structured council of titled officials: the Waziri as chief adviser or prime minister, the Galadima in charge of the capital, the Madawaki as head of the army, the Sarkin Dogari over the police, the Maaji as treasurer and the Alkali as judge presiding over courts applying Islamic law.
• Hausa-Fulani government was theocratic as well as monarchical, since Islamic law supplied the legal framework, and it had an organised system of taxation including the jangali cattle tax and land and produce taxes. This settled hierarchy with its taxation machinery is exactly what made indirect rule easy to impose there.
• The Yoruba system was centralised but constitutionally limited. The Oba was sacred and powerful but not absolute, and in the Oyo empire the Alaafin ruled with the Oyo Mesi, a council of seven kingmakers headed by the Bashorun, who selected the Alaafin and could in the last resort reject him.
• The Yoruba system contained genuine checks: the Oyo Mesi could require a rejected Alaafin to abdicate, the Ogboni society acted as a religious and judicial check on the Oyo Mesi themselves, the Are-Ona-Kakanfo commanded the army and was kept outside the capital, and the Aremo, the Alaafin's eldest son, traditionally could not succeed his father. Below the Alaafin, subordinate towns were governed by their own Obas and Baales.
• The Igbo system was largely decentralised, often described as acephalous or segmentary, and the village was the basic political unit. There was no king over a wide territory in most Igbo areas, though a few communities such as Onitsha and Nri had recognised monarchies.
• Igbo decisions were taken in the village assembly, in which adult males deliberated until a consensus emerged, guided by the Ofo title holders who were lineage heads, the council of elders, the Ozo title society, the age grades, which carried out public works and enforced decisions, and the Amadi or free-born who formed the body of citizens. Village groups cooperated through town unions and markets.
• The differences to set out in a comparison are: degree of centralisation, the existence and power of a single ruler, the role of religion, the method of taking decisions, the basis of law, and how far ordinary people participated. The Hausa-Fulani system was the most centralised, the Igbo the most participatory, and the Yoruba a monarchical system with constitutional restraints.
• The Royal Niger Company administered a large part of the territory on a commercial charter before its charter was revoked and the British government took over direct administration at the start of the twentieth century, after which the Protectorates of Northern and Southern Nigeria were formed.
• The amalgamation of 1914 by Lord Lugard joined the Northern and Southern Protectorates under a single Governor-General with a Nigerian Council, mainly for administrative efficiency and so that the revenue surplus of the South could cover the deficit of the North. The two halves continued to be administered very differently in practice.
• Indirect rule was the British policy of governing through existing traditional rulers and institutions, with British officers supervising rather than replacing them. Its reasons were shortage of British personnel, the expense of direct administration, the vast territory, the language barrier, and the view that familiar authority would be more readily obeyed.
• Indirect rule succeeded in the North because the emirate system already provided a single recognised ruler for each area, an established hierarchy of officials, courts applying a written legal code, and a functioning tax system that the British could simply take over.
• It worked only partially in the West, because although Obas existed, their authority was constitutionally limited by councils such as the Oyo Mesi, and the British treatment of the Oba as sole authority upset that balance and provoked resentment, with educated elites and the press also objecting.
• It failed in the East because there were no chiefs of the required kind, so the British appointed warrant chiefs, men who held no traditional legitimacy and who often abused their new powers. Resentment at the warrant chiefs and at rumours of taxation on women culminated in the Aba Women's protest of 1929, a major uprising that forced the British to review the system in the East.