Nine (9) Reasons for the Adoption of Indirect Rule in Nigeria by Britain

INTRO: The British colonial administrative policy in Nigeria known as the indirect rule was devised and adopted by the renowned British colonial officer, Lord Lugard, (although, there were semblances of the policy before Lugard). Lord Lugard was appointed the High Commissioner of the Northern Protectorate in 1900 following the revocation of the royal charter in the same year. The royal charter was given to the Royal Niger Company (RNC) in 1888 by the British government, to act on behalf of the government, chiefly towards instituting effective occupation in the colonies, as resolved in the Berlin Conference of 1884/85.

Simply put, indirect rule is an administrative system in which the British colonial officials administered Nigeria through the intermediaries, the native authorities. According to Murray (1973, p. 1), indirect rule was an administrative policy that utilized native customs, traditions, institutions and people by fitting them into the British framework of colonial administration.

Lord Lugard’s interest in indirect rule was conceived while he served in the military as the Commander of the West African Frontier Force in Uganda. He once expressed the interest thus:

With regard to internal control in Uganda, in my opinion, the object to be aimed at in the administration of this country is to rule through its own executive government. The people are singularly intelligent, and have a wonderful appreciation of justice and of legal procedure, and our aim should be to educate and develop this sense of justice. I think myself that, by careful selection, even now the various provinces could be ruled by chiefs, who would rapidly conform to European methods (Lugard, 1968, cited in Murray 1973, p. 15).

The indirect rule administrative policy of Britain in Nigeria is to be contrasted with the French policy of assimilation in their colonies in Africa which was direct and “frenchenizing.” This explains why the former French colonies in Africa are more French than Nigeria is British today. I have argued elsewhere that one of the troubles confronting Nigeria today stems from the colonial policy of indirect rule because we practically learnt little or nothing from the British values after we have regrettably lost our traditional values.

The reasons for the adoption of indirect rule in Nigeria are as follows:   

1. Economic Necessity: The administrative policy was largely as a result of lack of men and material resources. Upon assumption of office as the High Commissioner of Northern Protectorate, Lord Lugard was faced with a cornucopia of challenges, while the Colonial Office in London dilly-dallied with putting more strains to the tax-payers’ treasury. While discussing the challenges that faced Lugard, Cook (1968) stated that money was scarce, an administrative staff existed only on paper, housing facilities were pitiful, local rulers were defiant, slave-raiding was chronic and alarming reports frequently reached headquarters concerning French aggression in the Lake Chad country.  Indirect rule is a conscious attempt to surmount or rather circumvent these challenges.
2. Administrative Convenience: The structure of indirect rule features chain of command for the purpose of administrative convenience. At the topmost was Lord Lugard as the High Commissioner in the Northern Protectorate or the Governor-General of the amalgamated Northern and Southern Protectorates of Nigeria. His next in rank were the Resident Officers of the Provinces. The Resident Officers were followed in rank by the Emirs and Obas in the North and South respectively who headed Divisions. After the Emirs and Obas, there were District Heads as the next in rank, and then, the Village Heads. This hierarchical arrangement of offices and positions ensured free flow of command and compliance top-down and bottom-up respectively.
3. Lord Lugard’s Political and Professional Background. The argument here is that Lord Lugard’s indirect rule was informed by his political background as a citizen of a unitary state, and professional background as a military officer. Think about it this way: unitary system, military institution, and indirect rule are hierarchical in nature. United Kingdom is a unitary state in which Westminster has merely ‘lent’ powers to Scotland, Wales and recently, Northern Ireland and can take them back at any time. In the military profession, hierarchy defined the ranks. Lugard was definitely nurtured by his political and professional environments. While reserving enormous powers, he simply lent powers to the Residents, Emirs and Obas, District Heads, and Village Heads. In this regard also, his reluctance to delegate powers even while on leave in London is well-documented. He constructed the concept of continuous administration in which he administered the colonies while on leave in London via telegraph.
4. Success in the Northern Protectorate: The colonial policy was successfully used in the administration of the Northern Protectorate by Lord Lugard while he served as the High Commissioner of the Protectorate from 1900 to 1906, and it was adopted as a result. Indirect rule actually aided the greenhorn in administration who had come from a military assignment from East Africa to succeed administratively given that it engaged the existing traditional structure of administration; all thanks to the centralized administrative system of the Hausa-Fulani kingdoms in the North. In 1912 when Lord Lugard was invited by the Colonial Office in London to come and midwife the amalgamation of the Northern and Southern Protectorates of Nigeria from his Governorship assignment in Hong Kong, Lugard was convinced that what worked for him while he served as the High Commissioner of the Northern Protectorate, indirect rule, would work for the Southern Protectorate. This was more so as Lord Lugard erroneously likened the Obas of the South to the Emirs of the North. He faced challenges due to this error. In confronting the challenges, he erected political hierarchy where it never existed such as in the South-Eastern Nigeria. The failure of indirect rule in that part of Nigeria is well-documented.
5. Preservation of Native Cultures: The policy of indirect rule was adopted to preventing denationalization. In the 1894 Sokoto treaty, the Royal Niger Company among other things promised not to interfere with Muslim practices. Lord Lugard upon his assumption of office as the High Commissioner resolved to uphold the promises of the Company. He would later argue that the treaty was killed by the Caliphate with their lack of cooperation. Nonetheless, the policy of the Northern Nigeria government, as Lugard stated, was to maintain and develop all that is best in the indigenous methods and institutions of native rule, to avoid as far as possible everything that has a denationalizing tendency and to inculcate respect for authority, self-respect, and fair treatment of the lower classes, the weak and ignorant (Lugard, 1970).
6. Britain's Interest in Training the Natives for Eventual Self-government: Indirect rule introduced the natives to the rudiments of British administrative system, and as such, trained the native officials for self-government. Right from the word go, Britain knew that the independence of the colonies was certain, and they used indirect rule as a leadership training strategy. This made the angst of the educated elites understandable as the indirect rule policy did not include them in the scheme of things in leadership training, hence, one of the reasons for the emergence of nationalism in Nigeria.
7. Fear of Mosquitoes: The British colonialists had heard and also witnessed firsthand how deadly mosquitoes were. For instance, it is on records that in 1698, five ships which set sail from Scotland carrying a cargo of fine trade goods, and some twelve hundred colonialists aboard to the Darien region of Panama failed in its mission because of mosquitoes. The expedition was recorded to have been ruined as the colonialists were sickened by yellow fever and strains of malaria for which their bodies were not prepared, and they began to die at the rate of a dozen a day. Meanwhile, African slaves had already developed resistance to malaria from age-long mosquito bites which made them the preferred slaves in the American plantations (Jarvis, 2019). The British colonialist were very conscious of these facts while they were in Africa, especially as a number of the colonialists in Africa met their untimely deaths also from mosquito bites. They avoided unnecessary exposure to mosquitoes via the strategy of indirect rule.
8. Language Barrier: The natives and the colonialists communicated with the aid of interpreters due to language differences, and then, the interpreters were few and far between. This necessitated the indirect rule policy in which few interpreters were required to mediate between the British colonialists and the natives at special occasions and circumstances. Even at that, there were challenges of misinterpretations which in some cases strained the relationships between the natives and the colonialists.
9. Natives Resistances: The British incursions into the Nigerian kingdoms, chiefdoms and republics were rife with resistances, many of which stunned the colonialists. As a matter of fact, Lord Lugard had hoped to begin lording it over the Northern Protectorate promptly in 1900 but that never was; the pacification of the Protectorate was brought to a logical conclusion only in 1903 (Murray, 1973). Before the pacification of the Sokoto Caliphate, the Sultan Abdu of Sokoto once replied Lugard’s letter talking tough that the Caliphate would never have any relationship with the infidels expect war as directed by the Allah in the holy book, Quran. At a point then when Lord Lugard and his cohorts arrested Emir of Zazzau, Ibrahim Kwasau for engaging in slave raiding, his vassal, Dan Yamusa, the Magaji of Keffi assassinated Captain Moloney, the Resident Officer of the Province, and fled to Kano. By and large, it was very risky to mix up with the natives, and indirect rule was designed to minimize contacts between the British colonialists and natives.

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References

Cook, A.N. (1968). British enterprise in Nigeria. London: Frank Cass and Company.

Jarvis, B. (2019). How mosquitoes changed everything (2019). Accessed online from https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/08/05/how-mosquitoes-changed-everything

Lugard, F. (1970). Political memoranda: Revision of instructions to political officers on subjects chiefly political and administrative, 913-1918, 3^rd ed. London: Frank Cass and Company.

Murray, L.S. (1973). Indirect rule – Lugardian style. A thesis presented to the Faculty of the School of Social Science Morehead State University. Accessed online from https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1810&context=msu_theses_dissertations