Chapter XV: Commercial Development

The external, by which I mean non-indigenous, trade of Northern Nigeria plays as yet but an insignificant part in the commercial and industrial activities of the country. It is largely in the hands of one company, the Niger Company, Limited, to the enterprise of whose founder, Sir George Taubman Goldie, is due our possession of the Northern Protectorate. Three or four other commercial houses have extended their operations to the territory, and more will certainly follow. At present the only other European firm, outside the Niger Company, which is doing a large general business is that of Messrs. John Holt & Co., Limited. Another alien commercial element is the Arab trader. His seat of interest is Kano city, where he has been established for several centuries, and where, as already stated, there is a recognized Arab quarter. The trans-desert trade from Tripoli has always been in his hands, but he is now beginning to use the parcel post and the western route largely. Ten thousand parcels, weighing eleven pounds each, were despatched or received by Arab traders during the first half of last year. The Arabs appear to deal in lines of trade with which European firms are not in touch. Several of them have been in England, and the business headquarters of one of them is in Manchester. They are intelligent men, but form an uncertain and not particularly safe element in the affairs of Kano. A representative of these traders who visited me at the house kindly placed at my disposal near the Residency, two miles from the city, gave it as his opinion that the railway would double the trade of the country in five years.

The two principal articles of import at present are cotton goods and salt. The articles of export are shea-nuts or butter, dressed and dyed goat and sheep skins, ostrich feathers, rubber, ground-nuts, gum arabic, hides, gum copal, beeswax, various kinds of oil-beans, cotton, and a fibre resembling, and equal in value to, jute. Tin and other minerals stand, of course, in a different category, and cannot be regarded as “trade.” Of these I formed the opinion that a very large future expansion in the shea-nut trade and ground-nut trade may be legitimately expected. I rode for days through woods of shea, and I found these trees growing abundantly all over the parts of the Niger Province and Zaria Province I visited, and in many parts of the Kano Province. The ground-nut is already cultivated, its cultivation is easy, and the soil in many districts along the Baro-Kano railway is suitable. I see no reason why that railway should not, in parts, and in time, attract to itself a population of ground-nut cultivators, as the Dakar-St. Louis railway has done, and the new Thiès-Kayes railway is doing in Senegal. The industry is at present handicapped because the merchants will not buy the undecorticated nut, and the price offered to the native is not sufficiently attractive to induce him to go to the great labour involved in decortication. Seeing that the Niger ground-nut fetches much higher prices than the Senegal and Gambia nut, it is astonishing that the merchant is not prepared to deal with the nut himself, and to purchase the undecorticated article from the native. The present policy strikes one as short-sighted.

A great many hopes have been engendered touching an immediate and large export of raw cotton consequent upon the termination of the railway. I should be extremely loath to say anything here which would tend to throw cold water upon the commendable enterprise of the British Cotton Growing Association, to which Imperially we owe much, and the problem is one which is affected by so many varying local influences that to dogmatize upon it would be unwise. Enormous quantities of cotton are undoubtedly grown, some districts in the Zaria and Kano Provinces being almost entirely devoted to its production, and many more off the beaten track could be, if transport were available. But at present there are two difficulties, apart from the general difficulties affecting all economic development in Northern Nigeria, to which I shall refer in a moment. One is the question of price. The other is the local demand. In one sense they are inseparable. The local demand for the raw material by local weavers exceeds the supply, and the result is that the price the Association finds itself, either directly or through its agents, the Niger Company, able to pay is insufficient to tempt the growers. To overcome these obstacles the Association relies upon the attraction offered by a permanent market at a fixed price irrespective of local fluctuation; an increased yield _per_ acre through an improvement in the varieties produced, and improvement in methods of cultivation; and the inroads upon the local weaving industry through the increasing import of Manchester cotton-goods. These views may be quite sound, but, granted their soundness, some time must elapse before they become appreciably operative, and I have difficulty myself in believing that any really substantial export of raw cotton is to be looked for in the _immediate_ future. But that the Association’s general line of policy in seeking to develop and expand the existing native-growing industry, as such, is right, and that its labours are calculated to achieve these ends, I am persuaded; while I see no reason to doubt that a considerable export of raw cotton will eventually be the outcome of those labours.[9] Among agricultural products, corn should also figure largely in course of time. The export of dressed goat and sheep skins is steadily increasing. The trade now amounts to over one million skins _per annum_, of a total home value of £50,000 to £60,000. Until a few years ago it was an entirely trans-desert trade, and the skins were purchased at Tripoli for the American market. Latterly the _London and Kano Trading Company_ have diverted more than half of this trade by the western route, and London is to-day the principal purchaser.

There would seem to be a good future for a trade in hides, especially if Kano becomes a slaughter-centre for cattle for the southern markets. The possible obstacle to this is partly political and partly ethnological, and the first, at least, is worthy of special attention on the part of the Administration. Virtually all the herds in the Hausa States are the property of the Fulani. Now the Fulani M’Bororo, as already pointed out, is a nomad, and it is very doubtful if he will ever be anything else. Indeed, his very calling necessitates that he should be continually on the move to seek out pasture-land, according to the seasons, and the localities he knows. But the more the Protectorate is organized the more ill at ease will the nomad Fulani become, especially as he dislikes most intensely the _jangali_ or cattle-tax, at the best of times an unsatisfactory tax to enforce, and one which, moreover, operates unfairly towards the small herdsman. Here the ethnological peculiarity comes in. The Fulani is very fond of his cattle. He does not breed them for slaughter, but because he literally loves them. He knows every one of them by name, and lavishes as much attention upon them as he does upon his children. This is peculiar to him not in Nigeria only but all over Western Africa. Often have our officers in Northern Nigeria found it impossible to resist the pitiful appeal of some old Fulani herdsman or his wife, begging with eyes full of tears for the restitution of a favourite ox or heifer taken with others under the “jangali” assessment. The dual problem must be thought out or the M’Bororo will silently disappear into the vastness of Africa, as the Shuwa—his nomadic colleague of Bornou—has already partly disappeared from Nigeria. Fulani migration eastwards towards the Nile valley is a marked phenomenon of the last ten years, both as regards French and British territory in West Africa. Khartoum now numbers some 5000 Sokoto Fulani alone. The disappearance of the Fulani M’Bororoji from the Hausa States would not only arrest any development of the cattle and hides trades, but would be an incalculable loss to Hausa agriculture for the reasons given in a previous chapter.

The forest resources of the country are as yet practically untapped, for lack of adequate transport. They are not as rich in Northern as in Southern Nigeria, because the forests are much fewer, but there are very extensive gum-copal forests in Bornu; there is a good deal of rubber in Bauchi and in some other provinces, the Benue region especially abounding in rubber, copal, and fibres of great value. The Muri province is particularly rich. A forestry department organized on the lines of Southern Nigeria is urgently needed. But in this, as in almost everything else, the Administration is hampered for lack of funds.

There can be no doubt whatever, that Northern Nigeria has immense potentialities but they are not going to be developed in a day, or in a decade, and no useful purpose can be served by pretending otherwise. The very vastness of the country and the natural difficulties of communication preclude rapidity in development. In West Africa the game is generally to the tortoise, not to the hare. And several factors must ever be borne in mind. Northern Nigeria, as already stated, is a remarkably self-sufficing country, one part of it supplying the wants of another; peopled with born traders busily occupied in furthering the needs of a comprehensive internal traffic. For instance, the river-borne traffic of the Benue, both up and down, is entirely in the hands now of Nupe and Kakandas trading on behalf of native merchants, mostly Yorubas, at Lokoja. There is an active overland trade between the Benue region, north towards Kano and Bauchi, south with Southern Nigeria right down to Calabar on the ocean. Native merchants from the north import cloth, sheep and cattle, and corn, taking away cash, galena and silver from the Arifu native mines. Between district and district, province and province, all over the country there is a ceaseless interchange of commercial commodities. That is one factor to take into account. Another is that we must revolutionize our ideas as to general conditions and capabilities for labour, proportionately to the needs and extent of population. The belief that the majority of the inhabitants of Northern Nigeria pass their time in idleness, or what approximates to idleness, is a pure delusion. Even from the European standpoint, which is not and cannot be the African’s from climatic causes alone, the Northern Nigerian, speaking generally, is the reverse of idle. Moreover, if on the one hand our political administration tends to root the people in the soil and increase the area under cultivation; on the other hand, our roads and railways and the opening of the tin mines tend to take the people off the land and to create an increasing class of casual, floating labour which cannot itself provide for its own sustenance, and has to purchase its food requirements. The economic consequence is a steadily ascending price of foodstuffs in the neighbourhood of all the great centres. From this the farmer benefits, but at the expense of an increase in the production of raw material for the export trade with Europe. The Northern Nigerian farmer will grow the crop which it pays him best to grow, and if he sees a larger profit in corn for local consumption than in ground-nuts or cotton for export, he will grow corn. These economic questions do not appear to me to be given their due proportion in the estimates which are made. The whole country is in a state of transition, and it must be given breathing space in which to adjust itself. Patience and statesmanship are the main necessities of the moment. Sir Henry Hesketh-Bell, who takes a keen interest in all questions of economic development, may be trusted to do all that is humanly possible to encourage the commercial progress of the territory.

The outsider who attempts any detailed investigation of trade conditions in Northern Nigeria must be prepared to walk as delicately as any Agag, and even then he is pretty sure to ruffle somebody’s feelings. The fact of the matter is, that the paramount position held by the Niger Company—the “monopoly” as some call it, although it hardly amounts to that and must decreasingly do so—is a very sore point with many of the officials. The aims of the latter and the aims of the company necessarily diverge, but there is, I think, a tendency on the part of some of the officials to forget the fact that the Niger Company’s enterprise is the explanation of our presence in the country. One very sore point is the question of “cash for produce,” and this affects not the Niger Company only, but the other merchants. The official case is, that the natives desire cash for their produce, but that the merchants will not pay cash, or pay as little cash as possible, because they make a very much larger profit on the barter business; that this strangles trade development by discouraging the native producer, who is automatically forced to accept goods he often does not require, and must afterwards sell at a loss in order to get the cash he wants. Indeed, the official case goes further. It is contended not only that the merchants will not buy produce against cash when asked for cash, but on occasion actually refuse to sell goods against cash offered by the native, demanding produce in lieu thereof. For example, if a native has sold his produce against cloth and then, possessing some loose cash, desires to purchase, shall we say, earthenware or salt, he is told that his cash will not be accepted, but that he must bring shea-nuts or ground-nuts, or whatever may be the product out of which the merchant can make the biggest margin of profit. Instances are given of merchants having refused to sell salt to natives for cash; of natives being able to buy cloth in the open market for actually less than the merchants reckon in paying the native producers, and so on. Why, it is urged, should the political officer encourage the native to bring produce for sale to the merchant when all he will get is cloth that he must sell at a loss in the market in order to get silver to pay his taxes? Hence we arrive at a point when, as in the last published Government Report, the “pernicious barter system” is denounced, lock, stock, and barrel. The views of the merchants are various. In certain quarters the official allegations are altogether denied. In others it is contended that the barter trade is the best means of getting into touch with the actual native trader; that it would not pay to import cash to buy rough produce like shea-nuts or ground-nuts, which in many cases are all the natives have to offer; that the out-stations are in charge of native clerks from the coast, who cannot be trusted with cash; that the native gets as good value in goods as he does in cash, and so on. Proceeding from the defensive to the aggressive, many of the merchants contend that competition, and competition alone, can be expected to put large quantities of cash into commercial circulation, and that the Government, instead of fostering competition by encouraging new-comers, and especially the small man, to go into the country, handicaps the merchant by disproportionately heavy taxes. The £20 trading licence for every trading station, even far away in the bush, is particularly resented. It is pointed out that if the Administration of Southern Nigeria, whose economic resources are so much richer, makes no such charge, it is preposterous that the Administration of Northern Nigeria, whose economic fortune, in the European sense, depends so largely upon the growth of trade, should do so. One firm of merchants showed me their books, which disclosed in rent, assessment, and licences a total annual charge of £150 for a single station. No doubt there is much to be said on both sides, and each side has a case. It was, for instance, proved to my satisfaction that in certain instances cash had undoubtedly been refused to native traders bringing produce to the merchant stores for sale, and that, in other instances, when cash had been given, the prices paid, as compared with the local price governing merchandise, was so much less as practically to drive the native to accept merchandise. On the other hand, to dub as “pernicious” the barter system, which is responsible for the vast bulk of the trade that provides the Government all over West Africa with such large revenue, must appear a straining of the use of language; nor does the Administration, I think, allow sufficiently for the innumerable difficulties which the merchant has to face in Northern Nigeria. For example, in many of the out-stations produce has often to be stored for six months or more, depreciating all the time, before the state of the river permits of its shipment. But, after all, cash is spreading rapidly, and the key to the situation undoubtedly lies in competition. The more the Administration can do to attract new blood the better will be the all-round results.