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Northern Nigeria was a British colony
formed in 1900. The basis of the colony was the 1885 Treaty of Berlin which broadly granted
Northern Nigeria to Britain, on the basis of their protectorates in
Southern Nigeria. There was, however considerable uncertainty about
the borders which Britain could assert and the trade rights other
Europeans might have, and as a result British involvement in
Northern Nigeria was initially considered a political priority in
Africa due to the threat of German and French rivals. There was
particular uncertainty over the border with French colonies in the
North West.
Britain's chosen Governor, Frederick Lugard,
with limited resources, slowly negotiated with ,and sometimes
coerced, the emirates of the north into accepting British rule,
finding that the only way this could be achieved was with the
consent of local rulers through a policy of indirect rule which
he developed from a necessary improvisation into a sophisticated
political theory. Lugard left the protectorate after some years,
serving in Hong Kong, but was eventually returned to work in
Nigeria where he decided on the merger of the Northern Nigeria
Protectorate with Southern Nigeria
in 1914. The unification was done for economic reasons rather
than political — Northern Nigeria had a budget
deficit. Frederick Lugard sought to use the budget
surpluses in Southern Nigeria to offset this deficit [1], and also
believed that administration of the whole area would be easier if
united, especially since northern Nigeria had no access to the sea.
At the time, neither Lugard nor other British administrators, nor
Africans, considered Nigeria to constitute a potential national
unit- in fact the north and south were considered culturally
radically different- and the merger was an economic and
administrative convenience. Under an umbrella administration for
all Nigeria, the north and south continued to have their own
separate administrations, and each had its own Lieutenant-Governor answering to Lugard and
his successors. However, nationalism developing in Nigeria soon
took the whole of Nigeria as a natural future national unit.
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