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.

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Recently the scholars studying conflict theories or peace building in Africa have tended to neglect the historical perspective of Africa. Without knowing the history of traditional kingdoms and chiefdoms, including slave trade, colonialism, and neo-colonialism, we cannot accurately understand serious problems with which African people are now confronted.
Coups d'etat are common in Africa. Nigeria in particular, an oil-rich African giant, has experienced the military rule for about twenty-nine years since its independence. Why did the Nigerian officers decide to seize the power? Why did they desire to keep the power for such a period of time? And, why don't they intend to withdraw from the political arena? To answer these questions, we should consider the impact of British rule in Nigeria.
The Nigerian army was originally established to conquer the native kingdoms and chiefdoms under the policy of British colonization. British rulers sometimes undermined the “rule of law.” Later the Nigerian army became the tool for traditional rulers, who started to work for the British rule in order to suppress their own people. New rulers of independent Nigeria learned how to use the military to defend their vested interests during 1960 through 1966. Therefore, it is the negative legacy of British rule that civilian and military regimes had not maintained “law and order” to save the lives of Nigerian people. So many civilians, being involved in armed conflict between Nigerian army and rebellions, were killed by the army.
Samuel Huntington showed two conditions to avoid military intervention. According to him, the civil-military relation may be destroyed if the governments would not be able to promote “economic development” and to maintain “law and order” and if civilian politicians would desire to use the military power for their own political ambitions.
As to the “economic development,” approximately 80% of Nigerian people suffer from poverty, whereas the retired generals enjoy their political power as well as financial business with a plenty of money. As mentioned above, the aspect of “law and order” has been also neglected by the regimes. After independence, civilian regimes used the military for their political interests and led the army officials into the political arena.
Therefore, as suggested by Huntington, military intervention may be caused in Nigeria again if the Fourth Republic would neglect the importance of promoting “economic development” and of maintaining “law and order.” The Fourth Republic also needs to keep the army out of politics and the politics out of the army to avoid military intervention. Actually it is difficult to meet these conditions, because the group of retired generals still has strong influence over political and economical arenas.

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