Ethnicity

  An underlying reason, which was to play a crucial role in the cause of the Nigerian civil war, was ethnicity. Its origins can be found in the country’s topography and its very early history. Although it has a tropical climate throughout there are broadly two zones, savannah in the North and rainforest in the South. The southern belt of rainforest created an impenetrable barrier for invading armies. This, coupled with the tsetse fly which is endemic throughout the rainforests and indeed parts of the savannah, meant that survival of cattle and horses was impossible. 12 This was to have a dramatic effect on the ethnic development of modern-day Nigeria. Trade in the North was based on cattle and horses whilst in the South forestry and elementary farming was the norm. 13

  Knowledge of the early history of Nigeria is still a matter for conjecture, but it seems likely that from the seventh century empires and states flourished in the region. The Arab invasion at this time created trade and communication from the north to the south across the Sahara. Some of the earliest and most powerful of these states were the Kanem–Borno and Hausa states. It also seems likely that equally powerful states existed further south, namely Nupe and Kwarafa. The Hausa states developed into walled cities and engaged in trade and serviced the caravans that crossed the Sahara. Manufactured cloth and leather goods helped in the development and wealth of these city states. Indeed, the relationship between these states and the Mediterranean Arab rulers remained intertwined for many centuries and created much of Northern Nigeria’s unity, but also its separateness from the rest of Nigeria.

  Similarly, further south the Yoruba, Ife and Benin states flourished, but because of the topography there was little contact with these states by the North. Although, there are accounts in the sixteenth century of the Nupe state invading Yoruba land, by the fifteenth century the southern Benin Empire emerged as the region’s most powerful state. The empire dominated the entire region including Yorubaland and spread as far east as Lagos and west as far as the lower Niger. The Oba (King) of Benin can date his line from 1170 to the present. It is also apparent that this empire developed far beyond subsistence farming. It developed not only its secular art, known today throughout the museums of the world, but also an elaborate system of rule and control. Ingeniously it established a chieftain system whereby chiefs were appointed to rule over various towns but scattered throughout the empire. This meant that no one chief could establish ascendant power which would challenge the Oba’s rule. This probably accounts for the longevity of the empire. It is also likely that it traded with many other states, including northern ones which included the Hausa people. It was, for example, involved in slave trading with these northern states. There was ongoing demand for slaves in Northern Nigeria’s Islamic societies because Muslims were not allowed to enslave other Muslims, only non-believers. 14 What is interesting about the Benin Empire was that it was not influenced by Islam and indeed Islamic influence over the Yoruba Empire was limited. It seems likely, therefore, that from a very early age, because of the Arab influence in the north of the country and its topography, there was an historic division between modern Southern and Northern Nigeria, causing much distrust between the two peoples and creating an underlying reason for the outbreak of the civil war.

  The influence of Europeans from the fifteenth century also helped to confirm this divisiveness. The Portuguese arrived on the West Coast of Africa in the late fourteen-seventies looking for a sea passage to India. Having discovered the source of Arab gold and anxious to cut them out as the middle men in this trade, they started commercial activities in gold at Elmina in modern-day Ghana. They also traded in pepper at Benin. Indeed in 1483 King John II of Portugal had taken the title of Lord of Guinea. This initial European contact with the indigenous population on the south coast of West Africa permanently changed the axis of economic activity, especially in Nigeria. Up until this time all commercial activity outside each empire had been conducted in a northerly direction. From this time on the dynamics of trade in the south were focused firmly towards the sea. More importantly it had the effect of making the southern coastal peoples, of what was to become modern-day Nigeria, look to closer cooperation with Europeans rather than their Muslim neighbours in the North, thus compounding this divisiveness.

  Religion

  Islam came to Kanem in the eleventh century and it was introduced perhaps in the thirteenth century to Hausaland by Wangrawa from Mali. The camel was introduced into North Africa in AD 100 15 and gave immediate impetus to trans-Saharan trade. This trade had been in the hands of the Berbers, but after the Arab conquest of the Berbers this trade fell into Arab hands. As the Muslim states grew in prosperity so the demand for gold, ivory and leather increased. So did the demand for slaves. Negro slaves were in particular demand because as previously noted Muslims were not allowed to enslave other Muslims. Fulani nomads some of whom had been converted to Islam started to infiltrate into Northern Nigeria as early as the eleventh century. Some of their writers and administrators were employed in the Northern Nigerian Empires, bringing with them the Koran and the potential of literacy. However the spread of Islam in the north was patchy and sporadic, and many of these empires remained animist or adopted a mixture of animism with Islam. Over a period of time, these Fulani writers and administrators saw a decline in their influence over the courts throughout the northern areas along West Africa, and indeed the period also saw a decline in the influence of Islam. Because of this, the Muslim Fulani felt their only recourse to their pagan overlords was to revolt. A series of Jihads were instigated throughout the region. In Hausaland the Fulani had established themselves as important officials at the various courts and they had become openly critical of their masters. This criticism was to vent its focus through a famous Muslim scholar Usman dan Fodio. He justified his Jihad against the Hausa rulers by accusing them of professing to believe in Islam whilst at the same time mixing their beliefs with pagan traditions. By 1808 this Fulani Jihad had brought most of Hausaland under its control and it laid the foundation of the Sokoto Caliphate. By 1830 the Fulani were masters of modern-day Northern Nigeria. As far as later rivalries were concerned, particularly with regard to the Nigerian civil war, through controlling this vast area of the country and establishing a unified administrative and legal system, not to mention a singular religion, their hegemony was ensured in Northern Nigeria. This, however, was to the detriment of the region being able to integrate with the rest of the country on an equal basis once independence was achieved. The religious obligation demanded that ‘our religion is a religion of obedience’. 16 That obedience effectively made the north unwilling to integrate with the rest of the country.

  The census of 1952–53 showed that the proportion of Muslims in the country was 45%, the proportion of Christians 25%, and 30% were pagan. Christianity was introduced to the country with the arrival of Europeans. The Portuguese attempt to indoctrinate the country around Benin with Christianity, when they first arrived, met with little success. Indeed it is true to say that Christianity made little inroads into Nigeria until the slave trade was outlawed in 1807. The banning of this obnoxious trade was caused by a great evangelical resurgence in Britain and elsewhere within its expanding colonial empire. The spread of evangelical Christianity in Nigeria gathered momentum because these new missionary churches offered western-style education. People in Southern Nigeria took full advantage of this opportunity. However, due to later constraints on the part of the British administration, in order to gain the cooperation of compliant leaders, controls were put on Christian evangelical expansion into Northern Nigeria. This, coupled with the fact that followers of Islam were deeply suspicious of European religion as well as its education, meant that the North generally reacted negatively to these intrusions. Indeed by 1960, the year of independence, European-style education in the country was still hopelessly out of balance. The South had 842 secondary schools whilst the North could only muster 41. 17 This state of affairs had created two anomalies, both of which added to ethnic and tribal divisions, and can be seen as major causes of tribal friction, which was one of the important factors in the civil war. The first was that as the country drew closer to independence so more and more government jobs were Nigerianised, at the expense of the European community. Generally the only people competent and capable of fulfilling these roles were from the South, those indeed who had received a European-style education. Many of these Southerners increasingly took up professional careers in the North. Under equal conditions these jobs would have been taken by Northerners, but because of the lack of European-style education in the North they were simply not available. Indeed it is interesting to note that the North was reluctant to expunge its European workforce knowing that it would have to replace them with Nigerians from the South. The second anomaly, caused by the North’s unwillingness to encompass European education, was one of simple jealous misunderstanding, leading many Northerners to fear the encroachment of Southerners into northern Nigeria, changing, usurping and taking over their lifestyles. This also affected the economic structure and the distribution of wealth in the North. By being better educated, Southerners assumed many of the professional and administrative opportunities at the expense of the less well-educated Northerners. This meant that Southerners, in these roles, tended to have higher remuneration than those Northerners in more menial forms of employment. These factors led to a series of unrests and uprisings culminating in the 1966 pogrom essentially against the Igbo Southerners from the east by educationally disadvantaged Northerners.

  Colonial control

  The European slave trade had begun in an unambitious way. In 1485 Pope John II gave the people of San Tomé the right to trade with the Benin Empire. 18 San Tomé, which proved difficult to settle, suffered from an acute labour shortage. However, Benin had an ample supply of labour and found it extremely profitable to supply people to San Tomé, thus fulfilling a simple economic need. It was then discovered that the gold merchants of Elmina were prepared to pay twice the price for slaves exported from Benin. This was the first step in the establishment of the export trade of people to the Americas, initially to the south, then to the Caribbean and finally to the north. It is estimated that during the next three hundred and fifty years some twenty-four million people suffered this ruthless trade which led to the tragic deaths of nine million people. 19

  For the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, 1807 was a year to celebrate, but in southern Nigeria it gradually left the infrastructure of shipping fleets, agents and middle men without a commodity in which to trade. However, changing industrial and economic conditions in Britain and Europe meant increasing demand for soap as well as for vegetable oils, the best of which was palm oil. 20 The move from the slave trade to the palm oil trade in what became the Oil River States of southern Nigeria was fairly swift.

  By 1860 this trade had expanded in the Delta region to £1,000,000 per annum, 21 leading to continuous friction between British traders and also to ongoing raids by the indigenous population. Furthermore, the French and Germans had started to take an active interest in trade on the Niger. Goldie Taubman, an ex-British Army officer, had been sent out to Nigeria by his family to manage a near bankrupt palm-oil trading company, called Holland and Jacques. 22 Holland and Jacques changed its name to the Central African Trading Company and by 1879 Goldie, who had conveniently dropped his German sounding surname, had amalgamated three competitive rivals into the United Africa Company. He had achieved this by convincing his competitors of two facts. Firstly, that they could sustain their production of palm oil and protect it from the vagaries of world market prices by joining forces and controlling the price they paid to the African producers and middlemen. The world price for vegetable oils had fallen as supplies from West Africa and other sources had increased. Secondly, he persuaded them that it was a way of countering increasing competition from French trading companies.

  George Goldie was ambitious to expand his company’s interest and keep control of trade in Nigeria. Goldie argued that ‘with old established markets closing in our many factories, with India producing cotton fabrics not only for her own use but for export, it would be suicidal to abandon to our rival powers the only great remaining underdeveloped opening for British goods’. 23 His main fear was of competition from the French and he was concerned that the French government would annex the middle and lower Niger to give their traders a monopoly. Goldie’s plan was that his company would take over the middle and lower Niger providing that the British government grant him a royal charter for his company. The company would then control this large territory as a monopoly and as a private colony. Goldie also had ambitions over the Sokoto Empire in Northern Nigeria, where he believed further rich trading opportunities were to be gained. His company already depended on trade in ivory and shea butter (a kind of margarine) from the Islamic kingdom of Nupe.

  In 1886 Goldie had his request granted, and his renamed Niger Company gained its royal charter, which had been granted because of strong French colonial ambitions and also Germany’s late volte-face with regard to colonies. In the meantime, although Sir George Goldie, as he became, had his charter company he was still vulnerable to French competition and the duplicitous indigenous rulers. Britain therefore agreed to fund a military force to protect the Royal Niger Company. The formation of the West African Frontier Force in 1898 was put under the command of Captain Frederick Lugard, a brave, diminutive, upper-class Englishman, who had found a degree of dubious fame in East Africa over his dealings with other competing colonial powers. 24

  In 1900, the British government took over responsibility for the Royal Niger Company’s territories, and in the process formed the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria, the Niger Coast Protectorate and the Lagos Colony Protectorate territories. It is interesting to note that Goldie was well compensated for the loss of his company’s charter status. The company was paid £450,000 plus a royalty on minerals from the company’s former territory for a period of 99 years. 25 In view of the British Government’s parsimoniousness, its changed attitude to its responsibilities was surprising, until one looks at the revenues that were being generated from all three areas. In the first six months of 1888 the palmoil trade was worth £1,172,840, 26 of which over half was in the hands of British traders, and much of the trade was going through Lagos, thus making the territory economically self-sustaining. However, more important at the time was the fact that France exercised direct colonial control, whereas Britain, in the interest of financial frugality, exercised indirect control, through Goldie’s chartered company. It was this element of vulnerability which determined that Britain should exercise direct control over the West African Frontier Force and Sir George Goldie’s independence, in order to counter French colonial ambitions.

  In 1900 Sir Frederick Lugard, as he had now become, was appointed to the important post of high commissioner for the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria. His resources for subjugating this vast new territory were severely limited. This, and the parsimony of his political masters, determined the style of his rule over this territory. He interfered as little as possible with the social structure of his vast new territory and fostered a policy of indirect rule. For example, he allowed Muslim law to run alongside British law as a dual system. Also, in agreement with the Caliph of Sokoto, he excluded Christian missionaries so that there would be limited interference with the Muslim religion. Of course his resources in manpower and equipment may have been limited, but in the words of Hilaire Belloc:

  Whatever happens we have got

  The Maxim gun and they have not. 27

  Unfortunately the indirect rule approach, although laudable at the time, meant that in the future when Nigeria became independent it would help to foster the divisiveness which was to have such a devastating effect in the years leading up to the civil war. At the time, Lugard’s prime objective was to create and protect trade, because the perceived wisdom was that colonial activity was only good if the new territory was financially viable and indeed could add value to Britain’s commercial power. As it happened, Northern Nigeria was hopelessly insolvent commercially and had to rely on subsidies from the South to balance its books. Indeed when Lugard was appointed the country’s first Governor General in 1912 he actually amalgamated the exchequers of both areas and he made the South contribute the North’s deficit from alcohol duty.

  Not only had Lugard’s control of Northern Nigeria created the right atmosphere to induce divisiveness in the future, but it also fostered much hatred and distrust between the peoples. On his appointment as Governor General of the whole country he decided to keep the country split as two administrative zones, the North and the South. He refused to listen to the advice of others who proposed that the administration of Nigeria would be better served if it were split into more than two regions. One suggestion was for four areas: North, Central, West and East. The other was for five regions: the Hausa States, the Chad Territory, the Benue Provinces, the Western Provinces and the Eastern Provinces. 28 If he had heeded this advice it is much more likely that as indigenous political aspirations began to grow, although potentially regionalized, they would have had a greater national flavour and would not have been as enmeshed in ethnicity and religion as they became, with such disastrous results. It seems that Lugard was determined to administer the country simply as two units, firstly because he did not want to break up the rule in the North which he had so successfully instigated, but secondly because he planned his administration as a continuous one and did not want a break because of his absences when back in Britain.

  Although there were many positive aspects to Lugard’s rule, on balance he helped create and left behind a country which would be ill-prepared to cope with the rigours of self-government in the future. Not only had he refused to listen to the advice to have more than two administrative areas, which may well have paved the way for better government, but by curtailing the spread of missionary activity in Northern Nigeria, he hindered the spread of western-style education in the North. As the North had many fewer educated people than the South, and as Nigerians took over from Europeans, it was only natural that these vacancies were filled by those educated people who mainly came from the South. This meant that in the years before the civil war there were tens of thousands of Southern, mainly Eastern, Nigerians working in the North. Arguably this caused resentment and friction between the better paid Southerners and the less well-off Northerners who had had to accept much of the menial work.