British Administration and the Decline of the Patronage-Clientage System in Northwestern Nigeria, 1900-1934

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It is currently assumed by many scholars that the British ruled northern Nigeria through the indirect rule system. The essence of this system, according to our authorities, was to maintain the cultural and religious status quo (Perham, 1960; Temple, [1918] 1968; Crowder and Ikime, 1970). This assumption has fostered the belief that the British administration in northern Nigeria had very little impact on the traditional political system and society. Hence, many writers who have written on the British administration in northern Nigeria have tended to ignore the traditional political system and society. Thus, while we have scholarly works on the relationship between the British officials and the chiefs of northern Nigeria (Heussler, 1968), little work has been done on the relationship between the chiefs and their subjects. Yet we cannot adequately assess the impact of the British administration on the status of the Hausa-Fulani feudal aristocrats by simply examining the aristocrats' relationship with the British officials. We also need to examine the extent to which the British administration affected the relationship between the chiefs and their subjects. British rule in northern Nigeria, like any other alien rule in Africa, whether it was French or Portuguese, was a culturalizing agent which affected every fiber of the society. The British as colonizers had to create a sequacious society, which would be conducive to the chief aim of their rule, i.e., economic exploitation, from the restive communities of the precolonial days (Last, 1970: 345-57).