Chapter IV The Liquor Traffic in Southern Nigeria
Apart from religious questions there is probably no subject upon which it is more difficult to secure reasonable discussion and study than the subject of drink; none upon which it is more easy to generalize, or which lends itself more readily to prejudice and misunderstanding of the real points at issue. That moral reformers in England and elsewhere should feel strongly about drink is natural enough. A considerable proportion of the population of this country, of France, Germany, Belgium, and other European States live wretched and unhealthy lives. They are over-worked, under-fed, herded in insanitary tenements with insufficient space, ventilation, and light, under conditions which preclude decency and breed moral and physical diseases. Their horizon is one dead, uniform, appalling greyness from birth to death. Who can feel surprise that people thus situated should seek momentary forgetfulness in drink? The drink problem in Europe is not a cause but an effect. The cause lies deep down in the failure-side of our civilization, and statesmen worthy of the name are grappling with it everywhere. Those of us who think we see beyond an effect, are striving to prevent the reproduction in tropical Africa of this failure-side of our civilization. We are striving to maintain the economic independence of the West African; to ensure him a permanency of free access to his land; to preserve his healthy, open-air life of agriculturist and trader, his national institutions, his racial characteristics and his freedom. We are endeavouring to show him to the people of Europe, not as they have been taught by long years of unconscious misrepresentation to regard him, but as he really is. We feel that if we can protect the West African from the profounder economic and social perils which encompass him on every side; from the restless individualism of Europe; from unfair economic pressure threatening his free and gradual development on his own lines; from the disintegrating social effects of well-meaning but often wrongly informed and misdirected philanthropic effort; from political injustice—that if we are able to accomplish this even in small measure, the question of drink, while requiring attention, becomes one of secondary importance. The West African has always been a moderate drinker. From time immemorial he has drunk fermented liquors made from various kinds of corn, and from different kinds of palm trees. It is not a teetotal race, as the North American race was. It is a strong, virile race, very prolific.
Unfortunately this question of drink has been given a place in the public mind as regards Southern Nigeria altogether disproportionate to the position it does, and should, hold. It has been erected for many sincere, good people into a sort of fetish, obscuring all the deeper issues arising from the impact upon the West African of civilization at a time when civilization has never been so feverishly active, so potent to originate vast changes in a few short years. The temperance reformer in England strikes, often blindly, at “drink” anywhere and everywhere on the same principle, utterly oblivious to physiological and climatic differences; he cannot see beyond or behind the subject which specially interests him and which has become his creed. The use of intoxicants of some kind is common to humanity all over the world. It responds to a need of the human body. Christ Himself did not condemn its use, since He Himself, the Sacred Writings tell us, changed water into wine at a marriage feast. Excessive indulgence in liquor, like indulgence in any other form of human appetite, is a human failing. It is not the drink which is an evil, but the abuse of it. The abuse of liquor nine times out of ten is the outcome of social discomfort and unhappiness, a way of escape, like a narcotic, from the pangs of conscience, or of misery. People who concentrate merely upon effects are unsound guides when constructive measures are required. The temperance reformer in England approaches the question of drink in West Africa from the subjective point of view which characterizes the home outlook upon most questions lying outside the home latitudes. Saturated with his home experience, the English temperance reformer places the West African in the same economic and social setting as the European and argues on parallel lines. To that mode of reasoning, three-fourths of the evils which civilization has inflicted upon coloured races may be traced. Nothing is more curious or more saddening to observe than the unfailing success of such methods of thought translated into public action, in their effect upon home sentiment. Consumption sweeping through the ranks of a coloured people as the consequence of the educationary and religious processes of Europeanism may make a holocaust of human victims. The public remains indifferent. European marriage laws; European ethics, or nominal ethics, in the matter of sex relationship; the European individualistic social system grafted upon the communal life of a coloured people—these things may produce widespread human misery and immorality. The public is cold and unconcerned. European interference and innovation in social customs and usages essential to the well being, to the political and racial needs of a coloured people in one stage of development, but repugnant to European twentieth-century notions, may cause social disturbance and widespread anarchy which those who are responsible for such interference can never themselves witness, let alone suffer from. It is virtually impossible to arouse popular interest. For these and kindred disasters are very largely brought about by the uninstructed zeal of God-fearing, Christian men and women in Europe who judge other countries by their own, other peoples by their own people, other needs by their own needs, with the best of intentions and with the purest of motives; and outside a small band of students, ethnologists and experienced officials, the public mind is scandalized and even incensed if any one ventures to doubt the excellent results necessarily flowing from disinterested action. It is disinterested: therefore it must be right. That is the popular belief and the general fallacy.
Poor Mary Kingsley, who knew her West Africa as few have ever known it and who had the true scientific mind, fought hard against this ingrained characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon temperament. But she fought in vain. Despite her charity, the geniality and the humour in which she clothed her truths, she had against her the whole weight of what is called the philanthropic school of home opinion, responsible for so much good and yet for so much unconscious harm.
“The stay at home statesman,” she once said, “think that Africans are all awful savages or silly children—people who can only be dealt with on a reformatory, penitentiary line. This view, you know, is not mine... but it is the view of the statesmen and the general public and the mission public in African affairs.”
And again:—
“The African you have got in your mind up here, that you are legislating for and spending millions in trying to improve, doesn’t exist; your African is a fancy African.... You keep your fancy African and I wish you joy of him, but I grieve more than I can say for the real African that does exist and suffers for all the mistakes you make in dealing with him through a dream thing, the fiend-child African of your imagination. Above all, I grieve for the true negro people whose home is in the West Coast....”
No, you cannot excite public interest in these matters. But mention the liquor trade, describe the Nigerian as an infant in brain, incapable of self-control, down whose throat wicked merchants are forcibly pouring body and soul destroying drink which a wicked Administration taxes in order to raise revenue. Public sentiment responds with alacrity. It becomes at once a popular cry, and the most inconceivable distortions of native character and native life pass muster. Oppose that view and it will be a miracle if you emerge with any shred of reputation you may once have possessed. Stones from episcopal catapults will whistle round your ears. Scribes, utterly ignorant of the country whose inhabitants they portray in an absurdly false light, and who make their living by going shuddering around in professional temperance circles, will hint darkly that somewhere in the dim back of beyond your attitude is dictated by personal interest. A certain type of missionary will denounce you from the housetops, ransack the Bible for quotations to describe the extent of your fall from grace, and end up by praying the Almighty for the salvation of your soul. You will be described as a man who cynically ministers to the degradation of the negro. People who believed in you will ponder sadly over your moral declension. You may consider yourself lucky if your best friend does not cut you in the street. To disparage the Administration, to describe the English gentlemen who serve it in Nigeria as callous onlookers while a people sinks down before them in ruin and decay; to paint the sober Nigerian as a drunken brute—all this is permissible. But the deafening clamour which arises, the protesting and outraged indignation which obtains if a humble voice is heard to deny the accuracy, and to resent, in the public interest, these sweeping charges against White and Black alike, beggars description. You find yourself denounced to the whole world as a cruel libeller of godly men, and much else besides. It would be humorous if it were not pathetic, because amidst all this froth and fury the vital problems arising out of European contact with West Africa are obscured, and a force which, instructed and directed in the right way, might be of untold benefit is wasted on a sterile issue.
The onslaught upon Southern Nigeria in the matter of the liquor traffic carried on by that sincere, but tactless, misinformed and pugnacious cleric, Bishop Tugwell, and the bulk of his assistants in West Africa, aided by the Native Races and Liquor Traffic United Committee at home, is a typical example of the harm which lack of perspective and muddle-headedness can do to a good cause. The liquor traffic is common to the whole of West Africa and requires constant and vigilant attention. For more than a century, long before the bulk of the coast line was occupied by the Powers in a political sense, spirits had been exported to West Africa from Europe together with cotton goods, woollen goods, beads, ironware, hardware, haberdashery, perfumery, salt, tobacco and a host of other articles. At first the trade was untaxed. As European political influence extended, the various Administrations found it necessary to control the traffic by placing an import duty upon spirits at the port of entry. In this policy Great Britain has always led; the other Powers have always lagged. When interior penetration from the coast began and the scramble for Western Africa was well on its way, Great Britain’s influence was responsible for the proposal that the import should be prohibited beyond a certain geographical limit interiorwards. Thus Northern Nigeria was excluded from the accessible zone of European spirit import. By general consent the trade has been looked upon as a potential danger, if unregulated, and nowhere has the determination to prevent it from becoming an active evil been so clearly recognized as in Southern Nigeria; by successive increases of duty, and, as I shall show, by so adjusting taxation as virtually to penalize spirits of high potency in favour of spirits of weak strength. The Governor-General of French West Africa, M. Ponty, told me only last autumn at Dakar, how he desired to bring the French duties up to the British level, and what difficulties he was experiencing in doing so. Now the existence of a permanent, outside influence, whatever its origin, directed at encouraging the Administration in this course could only be to the good. While differences of opinion must exist as to the relative importance of the matter compared with other problems of administration, I have met no one who would not regard a policy of letting in spirits free, as wrong. I have met no one who is not convinced that it is right to tax the trade just as high as it can be taxed, up to the point, that is, when people will still buy and not be driven to illicit distilling, which in the West African forest could not be suppressed. If Bishop Tugwell and his friends had concentrated upon the potentiality of the danger, and had given every help and assistance to the Administration to cope with it, supplying the Administration with such information as they might possess of a specific, controllable, accurate character, it would have been difficult to over-estimate their usefulness from this particular point of view.
But the course they have been pursuing for the last few years has been quite different. It has been so illogical, so lacking in judgment and sobriety, and so pronouncedly foolish and unjust, as to disgust every fair-minded man who has looked into the facts for himself. Instead of common-sense and reasonable debate, there has been violent and senseless denunciation accompanied by the grossest misstatements. The Administration, urged perpetually to increase the tax, has been cursed with bell, book and candle for the automatic result in swelling the proceeds of revenue derived from these increases. What was demanded as a moral duty has, in its inevitable result, been stigmatized as a crime, and the very men who clamoured for more taxes, have denounced the effect of them. A trade forming from time immemorial, as already stated, part of the general barter trade of the West Coast has become identified in the public mind with a particular British dependency, the very one where official vigilance has been specially exercised. A difficult and complicated economic and fiscal problem has been handled in so unintelligent a manner that it has degenerated into systematic and silly abuse of British officials, who have no more to do with the existence of the traffic than has the Duke of Westminster who presides over the Native Races and Liquor Traffic United Committee. These officials of ours, some of whose difficulties I have attempted to portray, have actually been accused—nay, are still being—of encouraging the trade in every possible way, of forcing it upon the people, of thriving on the drinking habits of the native. Fanaticism has even gone the length of stating that they are “financially interested” in the traffic, as though they received a percentage from Government on the revenue derived from taxing the article! The very Commission which Lord Crewe sent out to investigate the charges persistently brought, has been assailed with unmeasured vituperation for the crime of having rendered a truthful report on the evidence produced, and the public at home has been asked to believe that these Commissioners, the Political and Judicial Staff of the Protectorate, the Medical Staff, the Roman Catholic missionaries15—the most numerous in the Protectorate—together with prominent natives and independent outside witnesses as well, are either deliberate perjurers or incompetent observers; although the accusers’ testimony was hopelessly, even pitifully, inadequate when brought to the test of public examination and inquiry. In an official pamphlet issued by the Native Races Committee the statements of Sir Mackenzie Chalmers, the Chairman of the Commission, as recorded in the minutes of evidence, have been reproduced in mutilated form, presumably in order to carry conviction of his bias with the public. Those who can stoop to such methods do irreparable injury to a good cause. What in its origin was undoubtedly a movement of a genuine philanthropic character, has been converted into an agitation which has so incensed authorized Native opinion, that Mr. Sapara Williams, the leading Native member of the Legislative Council of Southern Nigeria and a fearless critic of the Government, found it necessary to voice the feelings of the community in the following vigorous language uttered in the Legislative Council itself:—
“I must say that I believe every unofficial member and every member of the community of these countries feel bound to say that the majority of the statements made by Bishop Tugwell are untrue. It is a slander on the Administration, a slander on the gentlemen who sit here, and a slander on the general public; and for a man in Bishop Tugwell’s position as the head of the Church here—namely, a Church which always makes it a boast amongst the native communities of its connection as being in communion with the great Church of England—to go before the British public and endeavour, by means of gross misrepresentations and statements which are absolutely incorrect and palpably false on the face of them, to enlist their sympathy and induce them to support a noble cause, is not only detrimental to the good cause itself, but also to the progress of Christianity and missionary work in these countries.... If Bishop Tugwell will talk of something else, instead of this persistent indulging in calumny and malignity simply to promote the movement against the Liquor Traffic it would, perhaps, be better for the interest of this Colony and Protectorate, and the welfare of the Church, and of the mission work in Western Equatorial Africa under him. I say that, to my thinking, these misstatements are made deliberately with a view to influence subscriptions towards the various branches of his many diocesan funds, a course clearly opposed to the true principles of Christianity, inconsistent with the high purpose and professions of his calling and the dignity of his office.”
I am not concerned with Mr. Williams’ views, but nothing could be more significant than this speech—and it is not the only Native protest which has been made in the Southern Nigeria Legislative Council—coming from a native in Mr. Williams’ position, a Christian and a total abstainer. The Native Races Committee has been singularly ill led. It has identified itself completely with extremists whose looseness of statement, whose persistency in statistical and other errors, and whose extraordinary lack of judgment were so painfully apparent when they testified before the Commission of Inquiry. It is matter for regret that divines of high position in this country and Members of Parliament have plunged into the fray without exercising sufficient caution before allying themselves to a campaign conducted on lines inconsistent with accuracy and fair play.
The literature on this subject is enormous, and several chapters would be needed to follow it in any detail. I propose, however, to summarize certain points.
First. The statements as to race demoralization and deterioration, of decrease of energy for labour; of decrease in other branches of trade; of an increase in crime and decrease of population as the result of the spirit trade, have been totally disproved. They have, indeed, been officially dropped by the Native Races Committee. Secondly. The allegations as to the evil quality of the liquor imported have also been disproved and dropped by the Committee. Thirdly. By a system of sur-taxes upon the higher forms of alcohol initiated by Sir Walter Egerton, the character of the Southern Nigerian spirit trade has been revolutionized for good in the last six years. The system inaugurated in 1905 imposed, over and above the general duty, a sur-tax of ½d. for every degree or part of a degree in excess of 12·4 under proof. This sur-tax was successively raised until it reached its present figure of 2½d., with the result that while five years ago nearly 60 per cent. of the total spirits imported varied in strength from between 45 degrees and 55 degrees Tralles, to-day something like 90 per cent. of the total spirits imported are just under 40 degrees Tralles, i.e. 28 per cent. under proof.
Fourthly. Not only is the general trade (i.e. the trade in cotton goods, hardware, etc.) increasing at a far greater ratio than the spirit trade, but the amount of alcohol imported into the Protectorate is actually decreasing, notwithstanding the enormous development of general trade and the steady opening up of the country to which the former is largely due. Here are the figures. They are official and their accuracy has been endorsed by the Secretary of State—
GALLONS OF ALCOHOL
| Years | Totals | Annual average |
|---|---|---|
| 1902-04 | 8,947,000 | 2,982,332 |
| 1905-07 | 8,746,000 | 2,915,333 |
| 1908-10 | 8,626,000 | 2,875,333 |
Fifthly. The population of Southern Nigeria, according to the 1911 census, is 7,750,000. It is believed to be, and probably is, much greater. Thus on the basis of estimated population the consumption of alcohol per head works out at a fraction over one quarter of a gallon. It is, of course, not nearly so great, and this for several reasons. The alcohol imported is not all drunk, to begin with. A great deal of it is stored, sometimes for years, as banked wealth. A great deal of it, in the Central Province and to some extent in the Eastern Province, circulates continuously as a sort of barter currency. This system, a purely native one (in certain regions cloth and tobacco are also used as currency) will gradually fade away with the increased circulation of silver coin. Then, again, a good deal of it is wasted, poured out on the ground as libations to the gods; how much it is impossible to say.
I will now conclude with a consideration of what other steps may be possible to adopt with a view to further controlling the traffic. The policy of the Native Races Committee and of Bishop Tugwell and his friends has apparently changed. Up to the time of the Commission of Inquiry they alternated between a demand for higher duties, and prohibition. Some years ago a deputation waiting upon Mr. Chamberlain put forward a request for a 4s. duty per Imperial gallon. The duty to-day is 5s. per Imperial gallon, apart from the sur-taxes already referred to. “Total prohibition” was officially demanded by the Native Races Committee shortly before the Commission was appointed. The Committee has now dropped the demand for total prohibition, which does not prevent Bishop Tugwell’s friends and coadjutors from continuing to denounce the Administration and describe the ravages of the traffic in lurid terms up and down the country. That the demand for prohibition has been abandoned is significant. Coupled with a cessation of the abusive tactics it would indicate the beginning of wisdom. That the latter continue suggests the possibility that the demand for prohibition will be or may be revived. The only concrete demands now put forward by the official spokesmen of the Committee (vide the deputation to Mr. Harcourt in July) are (1) an international conference; (2) what is described as a system of local option. That is the somewhat feeble conclusion to the raging, tearing propaganda of the last ten years.
How the Native Races Committee can reconcile it with the furious attacks upon all and sundry in which they have indulged is not my affair. At any rate, it is a confession of constructive impotence. And for this reason. International conferences on this subject are held regularly every few years, and much portentous talk is indulged in by grave gentlemen sitting round a table. As a matter of fact, Britain, as already stated, leads in the matter of high duties and adjustment of duties to strike at spirits of higher potency. We have difficulty, which is perennial, in getting the other Powers to agree to our level. At the present moment the duty levied in the French territory of Dahomey, which borders Southern Nigeria, is much lower than ours, and smuggling is the result. Therefore, whatever good a Conference may do, that good will affect foreign territory, not Southern Nigeria. As a practical policy the international conference is, thus, devoid of import so far as Southern Nigeria is concerned. “Local option” is largely a catch word which appeals to the public—always influenced by the subjective point of view. What is really meant by it is that a native community should be given the option of not buying spirits. But it has that option now! The native community of Ibadan and of Abeokuta stopped buying spirits three years ago for several months on end, because the people objected to a licensing duty, which naturally put up the price of spirits and was an innovation entirely foreign to the native mind. Any native community in Southern Nigeria is free, to-day, to buy or not to buy spirits, or cotton goods or tobacco or anything else. But a native community consists not of one Chief, but of a Paramount Chief or King (when the native state form has developed to that extent which, in the Eastern Province, for example, is not yet the case), a number of ordinary Chiefs with their councillors, and the people. It is one thing for a Native community to make up its mind not to buy spirits. It is quite a different thing for a Chief to impose his caprice, which may be purely temporary in its action, upon his people. If, for example, we suppose a Chief desirous to please the missionaries in his locality, or objecting to the present high price of imported spirits and wishing to pull it down, or for some other reason, forbidding his people to buy spirits; then the Administration would be clearly in the wrong in supporting that Chief if his views did not coincide with the views of his people. Such action would amount to coercion and interference with the liberties of the people themselves. The Chief so acting would be violating native law and assuming the powers of a dictator, which in Southern Nigeria under the native system of rule he does not possess. He could only do so backed by the British Administration, and in backing him the British Government would be making native rule impossible and inciting to disturbance and turmoil.
The Native Races Committee’s suggestions carry us then no further. The alternative line of action I suggest is the following:—
The liquor traffic in Southern Nigeria (as everywhere else in Western Africa), must be carefully watched.
It is not now an active evil in Southern Nigeria. It need never become one if certain things are done.
Those things are—
A. Frequent analyses of the imported article. Severe punishment if bad stuff is going in.
B. Continuation of the legislation, consistently followed since 1905, of taxing, over and above the general tax, higher degrees of alcoholic strength pro rata. Perhaps pursuing that still further by prohibiting altogether the importation of liquor above a certain strength.
C. Keeping duties to the level of safety, raising them whenever possible, but never so highly that the population will altogether cease to buy, and take to distilling, which by the pot-still process is the easiest thing in the world.
D. Not permitting the proportion which the spirit trade now bears to the general trade to increase—that means watching, and increasing the duty when possible. At every sign of the present proportion being increased, another increase of duty should be made.
E. Restricting, if possible, the present proportion, by degrees either by the policy of successive increases of duty; or by an arrangement with the merchants (very difficult to bring about, owing to the advent of new firms; but not, perhaps, impossible), whereby they would be precluded from exceeding in the spirit branch of their trade a certain fixed proportion to their general trade turn-over—the imports of each firm being calculated on a basis which would establish a decrease in the total volume of the spirit trade. This arrangement, if it were possible, would have, really, the same effect as judicious increases of duty, by making the imported article dearer.
F. The creation of a sitting committee in Lagos—sitting and permanent—the members of which would be gazetted and paid a small salary: with two branches, one in the Central and one in the Eastern Province, and (if necessary) with corresponding members in several of the more important centres—with the object of creating in each province a sort of bureau of information on the spirit trade to which every one would feel free to communicate.
G. Standing instructions to every medical officer to give attention to the subject from the physiological point of view, within his area and to furnish a half-yearly report to the Principal Medical Officer. These reports would be annotated by the P. M. O., who, reviewing the whole evidence, would give his report. Specific instances raised by any medical officer, might if necessary be referred to the permanent committee above mentioned.
H. A yearly report to be furnished by the Chairman of the permanent committee, and by the P. M. O. respectively, to the local Government, and published in the Official Gazette.
I. Maintenance of the prohibitory line under amalgamation; and its deflection southwards in the Eastern Province in order to keep from the influence of the trade, the northern portions of the Eastern Province where the trade has, up to now, not, or barely, penetrated.
J. Gradual, very gradual, introduction of direct taxation in the Central and Eastern Provinces, working upwards from the coast line—preceded by full explanations, and the calling together of District Chiefs and Heads of Houses for purposes of discussion. In the Western Province, where direct taxation by the British Government would be a violation of Native law and of Treaties and Arrangements, a policy (sketched in Part II.) of re-constituting according to native law, the old Yoruba Kingdom, and reviving through the Alafin, the tribute which in native law is due to him, and eventually controlling the expenditure of the proceeds through the Alafin and the heads of the various Yoruba States. These respective proceedings being taken with the object of gradually making us independent, or virtually independent, of taxation on spirits as a source of revenue.
That is, broadly, the constructive policy I venture to recommend. It might have to be modified here and there. But in its main lines I believe it to be sound.
On the main issue I would say this. The Southern Nigeria Administration stands for high ideals and good government, sound native policy, preservation of native authority and land tenure. In my belief the untruthful and malignant charges brought against it are weakening that for which the Administration stands. This is a grave danger, and one’s sense of justice revolts at allegations made against an Administration the bulk of whose officials are doing good work under many difficulties. It is bad for the Empire and for the forces making for just native government within the Empire, that public opinion should be led to believe that Southern Nigeria is a thing to be ashamed of rather than to be proud of—which ought legitimately, on the facts, to be the case.
It is bad for public policy and the integrity of public life that a Commission of Inquiry should be dragged in the mud when it has recorded the truth.
It is Imperially foolish, and essentially unjust in itself, that the natives of Nigeria should be represented as degraded and demoralized, helpless creatures, when they are nothing of the kind. They resent it, and it is untrue. The propagation of continuous untruths about a native race will sooner or later lead that native race to be held in such low estimation, that it will be persecuted and unjustly dealt by. This picture drawn of this race, strengthens, in public opinion, the various forces which are bent upon perpetuating the legend of the African half-child and half-devil, which is so great an obstacle to sane public views at home, and, therefore, in the ultimate resort to sane policy in Africa.
If the Colonial Office is driven to prohibition or any violent step of that sort, direct taxation must immediately follow in order to raise revenue, and that will mean the massacre of thousands of innocent people. It will also lead to the destruction of palm trees, which will impoverish the country and lower trade; to the stoppage of all export in cereals, the surplus crop being used to produce fermented liquors, and thus, again, to the impoverishment of the country and possibly to the shortage of crops, with the resultant scarcity of food supply; to the creation of illicit stills and the production of a crude liquor full of impurities, and, consequently, very harmful in effects. The Nigerian population of the south must have liquor of some sort. It requires it, like every race does, that is not naturally a teetotal race, which the Nigerian race has never been. To stop drinking is impossible—nor, perhaps, is it desirable if it were possible, especially in the forest zone which is more or less under water for six months in the year. Anyway, it cannot be done. The Nigerians do not over-drink. They are much more sober than we are—that is incontestable. They occasionally drink more than is good for them at weddings, etc. (just as many people do in this country), and at their religious feasts. But they did that (since feasting and drinking has always been part and parcel of the religious stage of humanity the Nigerians are now in—part of the cult of the fertilizing spirit of nature) long before we knew they existed.
The danger of increasing over-indulgence in drink by “educated” natives is a very real one. But “trade spirits” have nothing to do with this. The secret of this tendency is to be found in the false ideal of Christianity which is propagated by many of the missionaries and the denationalizing tendencies which appear to be inseparable, on the present system, from our religious and educationary influences.
The establishment of the European licensing system away from the chief towns of the coast is, I consider, impossible for at least a generation—and undesirable if it were possible.
As an antidote to any dangers of over-indulgence in drink among the mass of the people which may exist, the spread of the Mohammedan religion is automatically the most effective, from the purely social standpoint; and this, not because of any special virtue attaching to Islam, but because Islam in West Africa has become an African religion which does not denationalize, and does not produce the social unhappiness which denationalization brings in its train.16
Footnotes
1 With the exception of the articles on Cotton, which appeared in the Manchester Guardian.
2 Lord Scarborough, I am glad to know, is instituting a movement designed to put up a monument to Richard Lander and Mungo Park at Forcados, one of the mouths of the Niger. The suggestion that a monument should be erected to the memory of Richard Lander at the mouth of the Niger was made last year in the Times by the writer, who had the honour of reporting to Lord Scarborough upon various sites examined in the course of this year, and recommending Forcados as the most appropriate.
3 The total value of the nett commercial trade of Southern Nigeria amounted to £9,288,000 in 1910, viz. imports £4,320,000, exports £4,968,000. Among the imports, cotton goods amounted to £1,306,812. Ten years ago the total import of the latter was only £605,146. The whole commercial movement has grown enormously in the last few years, the total nett turnover in 1907 amounting only to £6,974,000.
4 Vide Part IV.
5 In this connection Mr. Dennett’s paper in the September issue of the journal of the Colonial Institute is very valuable.
6 Vide Part IV.
7 February, 1911.
8 “Affairs of West Africa.” Heinemann, 1902.
9 The subject is discussed at greater length in Part IV.
10 In the case of some of these companies, such as the West African Mines, Ltd., the Anglo-Continental Mines Company, Ltd., etc., only a part of their capital is invested in the tin mines.
11 Perhaps the above remarks are a little too sweeping. It has been brought to my knowledge that in one such case where permission was sought by an experienced ex-Government official and granted by the authorities, the former’s action was, as a matter of fact, twice instrumental in preventing a fraudulent concern from being unloaded upon the public; and no doubt there is something to be said in favour of the practice from that point of view, arguing from an isolated case. But I must adhere to the opinion that, speaking generally, the practice is objectionable, and lends itself to incidents which are calculated to impair the very high standard of public service of which Great Britain rightly makes a boast.
12 Whose administration offers no problems comparable with the task of governing a Hausa province.
13 Now the capital of the Niger province.
14 It is only fair to state that Mr. W. H. Himbury, of the British Cotton Growing Association, has since pointed out, in regard to the prices fetched by indigenous Southern Nigerian cotton (p. 227), that the prices here given only refer to small samples and cannot be taken as indicative of the general selling value of Southern Nigerian cotton. The official report of the Commercial Intelligence officer of Southern Nigeria, from which the figures here given are quoted, is thus somewhat misleading. But the correction does not appreciably affect my general line of suggestion. Referring to the cotton grown in the Bassa and Nassarawa provinces of Northern Nigeria, Professor Wyndham Dunstan in his recent report states that in making a comparison of the lint for the Liverpool market the standard employed is “Moderately rough Peruvian, which is a grade of higher price than Middling American.”
15 And some of the Wesleyans—notably the Superintendent of the Wesleyan Missions in Southern Nigeria, the Rev. Oliver Griffen.
16 It may, perhaps, be well to emphasize, in view of the printed statements describing the writer as the “champion of the liquor traffic” and so forth, which are so freely made in certain quarters, that the above remarks are concerned solely with the liquor traffic in Southern Nigeria—not in West Africa as a whole. They deal with specific facts affecting a specific area of West Africa and with specific circumstances surrounding those facts which have formed the subject of public controversy.