The Origin of British Administrators' Preference for the Northern Nigeria

Abstract

It is widely known that not only Lord Lugard who had not hesitate to say about quasi “heaven-born” superiority of the Northern Nigeria, but also many British administrators had acknowledged their preference for the northern Nigeria than southern Nigeria. It is discussed in this paper what the origin of this “British administrators' preference for the north (Nothern Nigeria)” is.
Before the year of 1830 when the River Niger's mouth was discovered, the main British people who were active on the coast of the Bight of Benin and the Bight of Biafra were slave traders and explorers. Slave traders overwhelmed explorers in number, but as far as information is concern which they had brought in to the Britain, their cotribution was nominal. In contrast to this, explorers had brought many kinds of and large quantities of information about both of the South (coastal area) and the North (inland area). They wrote many reports and books, in which they depicted the northern area as highly organized Mahomedan countries where people were modest.
About ten years after the discovery, many kinds of peoples began to come to both coastal and inland areas. Among those groups, the most important groups were non-slave traders, missionaries, and administrators. All these new-comers arrived to Nigeria with the information and knowledge which was available in Britain. That is; continual political coflicts in the south, and well organized Mahomedan Emirates in the north; wild “pagan” people in the south, and polite and honest islamic people in the north; highly humid weather in the south, and dry and relatively comfortable weather in the north.
But as missionaries in the north had experienced failure of missionary work because of strong resistance by islamic people and they had succeeded in the south, they began to change their image of Nigerian people. Contrary to this, administrators whose main interest was to find the means to secure their country's economic and political interest over the new territory, felt no need to change their image of Nigeria. For them well organized society in the north seemed to be favorable for their future rule. And this is one of the most important reasons why British administrators in the north concentrated their attention upon establishment of administrative and taxation systems in the first stage of British administration, and the British administrators in the south did not.