Nigerian Colonization
NIGERIA IS BETTER MISGOVERNED BY NIGERIANS THAN THE BEST OF BRITISH ADMINISTRATION, JUSTIFY THE ASSERTION.
INTRODUCTION
The assertion above is more or less a comparative analysis of post colonial administration and colonial administration, in which case Nigerians governing Nigeria is post colonial era while the British administration refers to colonialism. There is no comparing of colonialism with independent rule. It must be borne in mind also that the shark-infested political terrain in Nigeria is the legacy of colonial rule. To a large extent, the problems of the Nigerian polity can be traced back to the impact of colonialism. In this paper, we have attempted to review colonialism in Nigeria and how it has affected the administrative structure and practice in Nigeria, as well as the attitude of the workers.
OVERVIEW OF COLONIALISM IN NIGERIA
Just like most other countries in Africa, Nigeria came under effective colonization around the 19th century. The British, having established a foothold in the areas surrounding the River Niger, after years of extensive trading and Christianization, began actively putting in place formal structures of colonization by way of government institutions and other political arrangements, starting first with Lagos in 1861. By 1914, the Colony of Lagos and the Protectorates of Southern and Northern Nigeria had systematically become consolidated into a contiguous geo-political entity christened Nigeria.
To administer Nigeria, the British colonialists adopted a policy of indirect rule, which had earlier been successfully rehearsed in the Northern Protectorate. Indirect rule involved the use of influential and resourcefulmembers of the various communities, who were made Warrant Chiefs and native Political Agents with mandates or warrants which empowered them to obtain the cooperation of the natives for the furtherance of the objectives of colonialism. The key objectives of British colonialism included: the opening-up of the country to British trade - through diplomacy, but where necessary, military force; the enforcement of the ban on or abolition of slave trade; and, the maintenance of law and order in society. The centres of colonial administration at the time were: Lagos city, for the Lagos Colony; Calabar city, for the Southern Protectorate; and, Kano, for the Northern Protectorate (The National Commission For Museums and Monuments, 1986).
Upon unification of the Southern Protectorate with Lagos Colony into the Colony and Protectorate of Southern Nigeria, and its subsequent amalgamation with the Northern Nigeria Protectorate in 1914, Lord Lugard was appointed the first Governor of the unified Nigerian entity. Lord Lugard built a system which blended the British-style machinery of government with a grassroots administrative instrument in the form of a hybrid strategy that combined British officials at the top of the executive, legislative and judiciary wings of government on the one hand and the native chiefs and prominent members of the local society at the lower rung of the ladder on the other hand.
At this point, the administrative style of the British was gradually being insinuated into the governance of the Nigerian state, and it became the main influence on the local way of organising things – politically, socially and economically. It is in this way that political domination of the society, through colonization, permeated government, trade, religion and the social life of the peoples of Nigeria, with structural and attitudinal implications for the existing public and private organizations. The stiff conditions of colonialism also had implications for the application, cultivation and development of contemporary management practices, as the existing institutions, particularly those owned by the state, had to operate within the ambits of the rigid style preferred by the British colonialists. Colonialism essentially became the tool that was deployed in relegating and decimating the local institutions and management practices while these were supplanted with western-style administrative structures that were invariably regarded as superior to the indigenous ones (Kiggundu, 1991).
COLONIALISM AND NIGERIAN INSTITUTIONS AND SYSTEMS
The economic structure of society arguably moulds the superstructure, including ideas. It also influences the social, political, educational and other institutions that support the class structure of society (Wikipedia, 2009). Colonialism presented a number of impediments to the development of functional principles upon which management practices could be founded in Nigeria. These issues are hereunder examined against the background of the existing administrative, educational, Economic and Socio-political institutions and systems.
The Administrative System
The administrative system adopted in managing the Nigerian state by the British essentially organised government apparatus (and its state-sponsored trading enterprises) along a centralized and hierarchical structure. This system emphasised direct and strong control, as it required that all personnel remain unquestionably subordinate to the top (colonial) authority, personified by the High Commissioner and his executive lieutenants – the Resident, Divisional and District Officers. The local content of the administration – the native Political Agents, Warrant Chiefs, clerks, messengers and constables – were merely subordinate field executors or foot soldiers of colonial policies and decisions of the top hierarchy.
While a hierarchical structure normally suggests organizational tidiness and order, it nevertheless creates an ‘iron cage’ of control that reinforces red-tape and inflexibility, which are the very anti-thesis of innovation, pro-activity, enterprise and ‘processed-thought’. The net effect of this was the blunting of personal initiative, creative thinking and innovation at the work place and a retardation of development of management thought and practices among the local people – who basically formed the workforce of national institutions and establishments.
Secondly, the colonial machinery operated a philosophy of small and low-cost administrative structures, which mostly used ad-hoc instruments and the ‘man-on-the-spot’ strategy for managing its institutions. This meant that little investment was made on developing an elaborate and well-funded administrative structure, with the implication that minimal resources were allocated to the development (through training and research) of the human capital used in running the colonial administration. The impact of this low investment in human resources was the eventual creation of a workforce only good enough to carry out routine, and non-creative, tasks or functions. Also, the authoritarian manner in which work was organised ensured that the Nigerian personnel of the colonial institutions were not at liberty to experiment management ideas that were outside ‘the box’ or dictates of their colonial bosses.
The Educational System
At the core of the education policy of the colonialists was the objective of producing a literate, but junior clerical and mid-level manpower cadre fit to work at government offices, trading companies and sub-tertiary educational institutions. This meant that the authorities spent limited resources on the creation and development of educational institutions that would normally produce a workforce equipped with high level technical, innovative and managerial skills. Specifically, the policy emphasis was on primary or elementary school education. Grammar and secondary schools were few and far in-between. Technical or industrial schools were even fewer. For instance, there were 900 primary schools with a pupil population of 40,000 in Calabar Province as at 1931. However, out of this number, there were only three technical schools and two visible secondary schools. There were no tertiary institutions whatsoever within the province during the period. (The National Commission for Museums and Monuments, 1986).
The colonial government deliberately abandoned the education sector to the religious missions and private individuals, with no clear or systemic policy in place. The result was that given their limited resources, the missionaries were only able to provide functional grammar schools that turned out a mass of people literate enough to sustain employment in clerical, teaching or instructional jobs,
