aspects of precolonial rule, especially revenue collection systems, were incompatible with the new system of government.
A major change that the British enacted in both Northern and Southern Nigeria was to shift the tax collection system to one that required payment in coin and paper, namely, the British pound. This change required a retooling of local economies that had for centuries accepted payment either in specie or in commodities. The Protectorate of Southern Nigeria was better suited to this new system because many parts of the region had well-established import/export economies that replaced the slave trade in the early nineteenth century. Further, alcohol sale in the south provided a ready tax base and served as one of the major revenue generators for the colonial administration in Southern Nigeria, whereas strict religious laws in the predominantly Muslim north forbade the sale and consumption of alcohol. As a result, Northern Nigeria hemorrhaged money because the tax collection system did not generate the necessary revenues to finance the colonial government. By 1912, Northern Nigeria was heavily dependent on subsidies, both from the southern protectorate and an annual allocation of GBP 300,000 from the Colonial Office.
Sir Frederick Lugard (later Lord), who previously served as high commissioner of Northern Nigeria, was recalled to the country from his post as the governor of Hong Kong in 1912 to facilitate the unification of Northern and Southern Nigeria into one administrative unit. The main goals of Nigerian unification were economic in nature. First and foremost, Lugard needed to stabilize the finances of the Northern Protectorate and allow for easier transfer of funds between the different regions of the country. Second, Lugard was to create a unified bureaucracy to make administering Nigeria more cost-effective and efficient.
Lugard articulated British policy toward Nigeria in a book called The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa. In it, he outlined the idea of indirect rule and the creation of native institutions. Lugard envisioned a system whereby the colonial administration would serve British interests while working in the best interests of the colonized people. In particular, Lugard encouraged local control over taxation and expenditures and discouraged British officials from interfering in local affairs. In Northern Nigeria, where Lugard had previously served as high commissioner, he maintained most of the tax collection system prevalent before British rule. The emir collected the taxes, paid his officials, and financed other projects from a “native treasury” created for this purpose. This system worked because of a long history of centralized rule and taxation in the precolonial states, especially the powerful Sokoto Caliphate. In the south, there was little history of direct taxation. State revenue extraction took the form of customs duties, court fees and fines, and other administrative fees and duties, such as the aforementioned tax on alcohol sales. These policies made revenue allocation in the south a colonial creation, whereas in the north, the colonial administration superimposed itself on an existing taxation system. Finally, Lugard separated colonial administration from the “native treasuries” and required that all local administrative salaries come exclusively from local revenue collection; they could not be supplemented by outside funds.
Despite pretensions of allowing native rulers to administer their own populations, local rulers were little more than unofficial colonial agents, lacking autonomy and political clout. Further, Lugard homogenized the multiple administrative systems in the south, which he dismissed as chaotic and wasteful, but the reorganizaton resulted in increased marginalization of smaller ethnic groups. Most damaging, Lugard created a new type of indigenous ruler in the southern region modeled on the northern emir. This departure from the existing heterogeneity in southern Nigeria created a new class of rulers and bestowed on them powers that few rulers in the south had traditionally possessed. In effect, Lugard created a new class of native colonial administrators who owed their allegiance to their respective ethnic groups but derived their power, not from traditional roles, but from new roles acquired from the British administration. The three major ethnic groups, namely, the Hausa-Fulani in the north, the Yoruba in the southwest, and the Igbo in the southeast, used the new colonial administration to consolidate their power and create a new colonial patronage system that benefited their own groups at the expense of the many minority ethnic groups in the country, including Saro-Wiwa’s Ogoni.
Despite the lack of shared identity as Ogoni before British colonial occupation, British administrators recognized the various Ogoni groups as a distinct “tribe.” In 1932, most Ogoni-speaking areas were amalgamated into what the British determined as the Ogoni “tribe,” with various subgroups referred to as “clans.” In reality, no stable affiliations of this kind existed; for example, one group related to the Ogoni, the Eleme, petitioned the British to be included as part of the Ogoni, but in later years dissociated themselves from the Ogoni. This ethnic and linguistic grouping of peoples into political units was not unique to the Ogoni, however, and in the aftermath of unification, many smaller ethnic groups realized that strength in numbers was the only way to secure their collective rights. Other new ethnopolitical groups coalesced, especially in the diverse Niger Delta region, with the Ijo and the Andoni securing similar recognition from the British authorities. Larger groups in Nigeria were not immune to this consolidation of political power along similar lines. Under British rule, the Yoruba in the southwest of Nigeria transformed from a patchwork of opposing kingdoms and city-states into a major unified force in Nigerian politics, both during colonial rule and after. Similarly, the Igbo, largely recognized as a stateless society, merged into a political force that attempted to secede from Nigeria and form the Republic of Biafra in 1967, sparking a three-year civil war.
For the Ogoni, the need for political influence became increasingly important. In 1945, as various ethnic groups merged and new ethnic identifications surfaced, the Ogoni created the Ogoni Central Union (OCU). Led by Paul Birabi, the first Ogoni university graduate, the OCU agitated for an official Ogoni administrative division. After attaining this in 1947 with the creation of an Ogoni division within what was at the time the Rivers Province, Birabi and the OCU fought for increased access to colonial funds.
The 1950s proved especially troublesome for the Ogoni. As British rule neared its end, the colonial government ceded more and more authority to the native administrations, dominated by Yoruba, Igbo, and Hausa elites. In 1954, the British codified the three major ethnic divisions by splitting the country into three regions, each dominated by one of the major ethnic groups. Birabi pushed for increased Ogoni participation in the new Eastern Region, which, though dominated by the Igbo, was also the most ethnically diverse and densely populated of the three regions. The OCU succeeded in obtaining some funding, especially for access to government-sponsored education for Ogoni youth. Saro-Wiwa, who enrolled at the Government College Umuahia in 1954 at age thirteen, was one of the early beneficiaries of this program.
In the mid- to late 1950s, as Nigeria edged closer to independence, political rivalries born under the colonial administration intensified. The three largest political groups, the Hausa-Fulani, Yoruba, and Igbo, were set to dominate the political arena in the emerging state. This reality, codified by the regional boundaries the British imposed in 1954, led to increased protests among the smaller groups in the country, including the Ogoni. In an attempt to allay minority fears, the British convened a commission headed by Sir Henry Willink in 1957, intending to create safeguards ensuring minority rights in independent Nigeria. Many of the minorities, such as the Ijo, Ibibio, and, most prominently, the minorities in the Western Region agitated for political separation from the “big three” groups as the only way to safeguard their rights from regional ethnic domination. The commission ultimately decided that “although there remained a Body of genuine fears and the future was regarded with real apprehension . . . a separate state would not provide a remedy for the fears expressed.”4 Rather, the commission suggested that the major issues facing the minorities would be better served by handling their concerns at the federal level.
The commission determined that regionalism in Nigeria would do little but destabilize the country and that constitutional safeguards specifically protecting minority rights at the national level would be the best guarantee of these liberties. Thus, despite the protestations of many minority groups testifying before the commission and who saw that a federal solution would be the best guarantor of minority rights, the commission found that these rights would best be secured by a system created for, and dominated by, the three major groups.
Minority fears of domination echoed Saro-Wiwa’s own fears. In fact, during the Nigerian