Northern Nigeria

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 863607721

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-45464

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Lugard, Frederick John Dealtry http://d-nb.info/gnd/117667412

Title:: Northern Nigeria

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: His Maj. Stat. Off.

Year of publication:: 1907

Scope:: 1 Online-Ressource (65 Seiten)

Collection:: Economics Books

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18 COLONIAL REPORTS—MISCELLANEOUS. is to prompt a large number of the more recently enslaved population to leave their masters, and establish independent communities. Such communities own allegiance to no chief or clan, and would live a life of idleness defying all authority. Under the new scheme they at once become subject to the headman of the district in which they reside, and pay their share of the taxes, which go to maintain the British and native administration equally. It is a fundamental principle of the administration that payment shall be made to every labourer himself personally for his labour. Neither, on the one hand, is payment made to a chief who would appropriate probably the bulk of the labourers’ earnings, nor, on the other hand, does Government (with rare exceptions), claim labour as an equivalent of taxes. The rule is to pay the labourer, and then let the village headman collect from his peasantry, out of the coin thus earned, the amount required to meet the cess of the village. It is thus clear to simple folk that Government is not a slave master, claiming forced labour at its discre tion, but that each individual is bound to pay the just tax, though free to earn the means to do so by what method he prefers. I personally attach much importance to these methods of procedure, both as emphasising the contrast with the former system, and as the first principles in embryo of a system which, in future years, will have a much more extended application. It will not, for instance, I hope, be long before the labourer recognises that he can dispose of his free labour equally to native chiefs as to Government, while they, in turn, learn to recognise that they can hire free labour to replace their former slaves, and thus maintain their estates in cultivation. The money wherewith to pay for this labour they themselves earn in the form of salaries for discharging the functions of district headmen, or other official duties for the administration. Salaries of Native Officials. 17. At present it is necessary—in the first initiation of so far-reaching a scheme—to compromise to some extent with native custom and tradition, and the payment of the. officials, from the Emir down to the village head, is fixed in shares or percentages of the tax they receive. But so soon as the system has been put into effective operation, and has become well understood, these percentages would with advantage be changed into permanent salaries paid by the Government out of the total proceeds of the taxation. Explanation of Terms. 18. I have explained that the term “principal chief” is throughout this memorandum and its enclosure, restricted to those chiefs who, owning no native superior, have a machinery

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