Northern Nigeria

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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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TAXATION OF NATIVES IN NORTHERN NIGERIA. 17 remunerative within a short period, but—what is, in my view, far more important—a country situated as Northern Nigeria is, can develop sound methods of administration and of taxation at that period of its infancy and tutelage when they can best be imposed without friction and discontent, and when the minds of the people are in a condition receptive of the innovations introduced by the advent of a new suzerainty. Later, when they have settled down under that rule, and have gauged, as they suppose, its demands, it is more difficult to introduce schemes of this nature without awakening resentment and discontent. Effect on Native Labour and Slavery Questions. 16. Since (as I have said) the main questions of administra tion are intimately connected, a review of taxation would be incomplete without a brief allusion to the greatest problem of African Administration, in so far as it is connected with this subject, viz., the question of native labour and slavery. The institution of this scheme of taxation and of reform in the Native Administration has brought the British staff into touch with the natives as no other method could have done, and has made it impossible for Mohammedan chiefs even surreptitiously to demand payment of taxes in slaves as was the former custom, since the assessment and payments of every village are known to the British officers. It has brought home to the latter the real diffi culties of the native chiefs and landowners in meeting their obli gations, and maintaining their position in the face of a decreasing supply of labour, due to the cessation in the supply of slaves, and the large number who have asserted their freedom. The scheme of taxation aims at providing a modest but sufficient income for the ruling classes, derived from a fair and moderate tax upon the peasantry, thus enabling the former to maintain their position without recourse to slave-raiding and extortion, and the latter to devote themselves to increasing the output of their land, with the assurance that they will reap the fruits of their industry, and that it will not be subject to arbitrary con fiscation. In my view this reform was imperative and vital to the maintenance of the whole social system, and the preser vation of the whole fabric of native administration, which other wise seemed in danger of collapse from the great fundamental revolution caused by the prohibition of slave-raiding and slave trading. That simultaneously a large source of revenue has been created, which will steadily increase, is, in a sense, acci dental, for the re-organisation was a vital necessity, and a natural corollary of the abolition of the slave-raid and the slave-market, even had Government abstained from appropriat ing any share of the taxation. Moreover, the demand for coin wherewith to pay the tax acts as a powerful stimulant to labour and industry. There is, moreover, another aspect. The first inevitable result of the abolition of the legal status of slavery 86472 B

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