Disaffection and Revolts in Nigeria During the First World War, 1914–1918

Abstract

Nigeria, the biggest of the British dependencies in West Africa and the most populous of British African possessions found herself involved in the First World War barely eight months after the amalgamation of the separate southern and northern Protectorates, to form a single unified British possession. The country naturally did not have time to digest the new administrative changes that had just taken place before the war broke out. The policy of federating contiguous but separate political units, had become of the cardinal principles of British imperial policy. Unification with all its shortcomings had worked well enough in Canada, Australia, and South Africa with their sophisticated electorates and even in small African countries like Uganda and the Gold Coast which, when compared with Nigeria, had the benefit of cultural homogeneity. Amalgamation in Nigeria brought in its trail the problem of finding a common administrative policy in an ethnically variegated country. To complicate things the country was put under an autocratic Governor-General Lugard. This was an unfortunate thing for a country with its 337,000 square miles and about 20 million people in an area one third of that of British India and a population greater than that of Ceylon, British Malaya, Australia, New Zealand and British West Indies all added together. 1 It was not just the size of Nigeria that was overwhelming, but the administrative problems that went with the size proved almost unsolvable. These problems, to make matters worse, were tackled with a rather dogmatic approach of pseudo anthropologist who having designed what African political models should be, tried as much as possible to shape the actual societies to fit into a sort of administrative strait-jacket. Since force was needed to make the Nigerian conform to the official political philosophy of indirect rule, any attempt at withdrawal of these visible signs of Imperial control was of necessity fraught with danger. Before the outbreak of the war Nigeria had a single brigade of five battalions known as the Nigeria Regiment. The total strength of this brigade was about