The Battle of Bida

The Spectator - 13 FEBRUARY 1897

WE hardly expected so rapid a confirmation of the views we ventured to put forward on January 23rd. Every one, however, will read the thrilling account of the battle of Bida, and no one who reads it will, we think, doubt that Negroes can fight, or that we are undertaking in the territory which we begin to call "Nigeria," as if the right to revolutionise the maps were already ours, a work of the greatest difficulty and importance. We have won, through the cool heroism and judgment which Englishmen, when once released from their dependence on the House of Commons, always exhibit, but the victory was clearly a touch-and-go affair from first to last. The troops of the Niger Company, some five hundred drilled Negroes of the Hausa tribe, with twenty-three white men among them, accompanied by Sir George Tubman Goldie, formerly an officer in the Engineers, now Governor of the Company, and quite as remarkable a person as Mr. Rhodes, advanced. On January 25th to the occupation of Bida. This place is the stronghold and capital of the Fulani, the dominant Negro race of the Niger, and is at least four hundred miles distant from the coast. The Fulani were from twenty thousand to thirty thousand strong, they had clouds of cavalry, and they occupied a strong position on the ridge between the invaders and the town. Having, moreover, some military skill, they had sent out heavy flanking parties to attack the British guns, which, being , hampered by the swamps, were still in the rear of the advancing force. Major Arnold, the officer in direct command of the advance, decided to attack the ridge, cleared , it of the enemy, and then, finding himself enveloped by the ' flanking parties, retired, formed square, and successfully defied the charges which the enemy, though mowed down by the Maxims, repeatedly made, apparently with all the daring of Zulus or Matabeles. The fighting lasted for four hours, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. ; but by that time the heavy guns, With their ammunition-waggons, had fought their way up, and the enemy, unable to bear the fresh slaughter among their masses from great guns at point-blank range, retreated in confusion, so that the town was stormed with little loss on January 29th. That was a really grand feat of arms, a victory at odds of one to forty, accomplished with the loss of only one European, Lieutenant Thomson ; but notice in the account how easily the fate of the day might have gone the other way. Major Arnold, it is clear, was entirely surrounded, for even the guns in his rear were attacked, his square contained only five hundred men, and but for the arrival of the guns, which might have been delayed for hours by swamp or• other difficulties of their route, the square might have been broken and erased. The attacking force, in fact, was wholly inadequate if the enemy would fight; and it has yet to do, as we fear without reinforcements, still more serious work. The Fulani power must be broken everywhere, not only in norm, which is the next province to be cleared of them, but in the kingdoms to which Nup4 and fork are nominally or really feudatories; and with every victory as we press onward the numbers will be greater, the fighting more desperate, and the difficulty of conveying heavy artillery and the waggons, which are as necessary as the guns, less easy to overcome. And, as we maintain, the negro, when their savagery is for moment suspended, by any cause, be it religion, or devotion to a chief, or despair, is a formidable fighting animal. Look at these Hausas who have taken Bids. Could British soldiers have fought better? If Sir George Goldie had those thirty thousand Fulani under his command for six months he could conquer Western Africa, and the qualities which discipline imparts permanently to the Hausas may be imparted for one day to other tribes by fanaticism, the tyranny of a leader, or despair. One day of thorough defeat would clear us out of West Africa.

We trust we shall not be mistaken. We do not object to this war at all. If we are to civilise Africa that great work must be commenced by impressing upon all Negroes that in the last resort we have power to enforce our orders by inflicting the penalty of death. We must conquer, in fact, before we can legislate. Our protest is confined to the method we are adopting, which seems to us on, two points dangerous and bad. In our economy or in our pride—we really do not know which is the stronger motive-power—we try to work with forces too small for the task to be performed, and call upon our agents not only for acts of splendid audacity, which is a reasonable call with Englishmen and very seldom unsuccessful, but for a continuity of good fortune which our soldiers cannot control, and without which their devotion would be of no effect. That is not a reasonable call, and some day will involve us in a horrible disaster, as it did in the contest with Cetewayo. An island on the West Coast, where we are in reality so weak, would be an awful affair, and it is that, and nothing less, which we are risking, just because we cannot bring ourselves to believe that when the combatants are black men and white men disparity of force makes any difference. Nine times out of ten it makes none, but the tenth time may be the all-important one, and then through the merest accident, a blunder by the commandant or the non-arrival of some ammunition, our minute force may be overwhelmed by the rush of mere numbers. Suppose the Fulani, who died so freely, had gone on bearing their losses and rushing forward for another twenty minutes! It is Imperial work that we are setting ourselves to do, and we run risks that would be hardly wise if a forlorn hope were attacking the gate of some bandits' peel on a wild border.

The other point is a moral one, and we do not know that we can convince our readers of either its validity or its importance. We do not believe it is right to conquer these vast regions and then leave their millions of inhabitants to be governed by companies whose first idea, if their directors are honest business men, is and must be dividend. We see the horrible results of that system on the Congo, and though Englishmen are not Belgians, we have, as regards the question of black labour, very little confidence in the profit-seeking section 'even of our own countrymen. We see what they think just in Rhodesia; and what they think just, unless their own officials malign them, is slavery with wages, without sales by auction, and without the obligation to feed the old. Black men are working in the mines there in thousands without their own consent. The justification, the only justification, for our incessant conquests in Africa is that we give the people, who for three thousand years have never advanced beyond the savage stage, a chance of rising into the next or semi-civilised stage—an unspeakable improvement— and they can make no such advance if they are held to labour against their own will for the personal benefit of traders who' to begin with, dislike and impede the competition of all rivals. Mr. Cecil Rhodes will doubtless describe that doctrine as "unctuous rectitude," and ask what difference we see between the conscription of law and the still stronger conscription of hunger; but we answer clearly that the one is consistent with freedom and the other is not, and that if history proves anything it proves that, freedom to work or starve, according to choice, Is the first condition of advancing civilisation. We are not, be it understood, bringing any accusation against the Niger Company. We have no evidence that it enforces labour, and think it very probable that it looks for profit to a monopoly of oil much more than to any kind of undertaking in which a cornee would be profitable. But we ca1 see clearly that it is going to acquire very large territories, that it will shortly have subjects by the million, and. that it will be subjected to the usual temptation,—vis., to govern them in its own pecuniary interest, and not either in theirs or in that of the country at large. The only working preventive of that state of affairs is the Royal authority, and we again ask the Ministry and the House Of Commons whether it is not time to make that authority felt, either by the direct government of our new possessions, or, if that is too sudden a change, by investing the Colonial Office with the powers and duties and responsibilities of the old Board of Control for East India affairs. That Board performed its duties excellently well, and the traditional method of working it has not yet had time to die completely away. We detest can’t quite as much as Mr. Rhodes can do, but for God's sake do not let us mow down black men in swathes and waste the heroic courage of our own people in order to get more oil.

Are Nigerian women inferior to men? - Spectator 1959

Are women inferior to men? The topic crops up every other week in the newspapers published in Nigeria, soon to follow its West African neighbour, Ghana, to independence. Their status varies in different parts of the country: between Nigeria's northern region which borders the tip of the Sahara, and the south with its coastline on the Atlantic, there is a pronounced difference. Islam came to the north with the Arabs who crossed the desert from their Mediterranean bases, and their Moslem womenfolk are still in strict purdah. But because of its coastline, the south was opened up much earlier by a variety of visitors who penetrated inland, bringing Christianity, commerce, education, and a different attitude to women.

Polygamy, however, is practised in all parts of the country. Like other customs repulsive to Western ethics, it was based on economics. When a warrior was killed in battle there was no scope for his widows in business, nor could they throw themselves into political or social work, or even get themselves to a nunnery. So the man's brother, or next relative, married the relicts, charitably, regardless of age, charm or numbers. Polygamy still flourishes—though not for quite the same reasons: like the possession of colourful American cars, it demonstrates a man's importance.

Unmarried women have no status; no place in the community. There are no spinsters, only prostitutes: 'Leave the unmarried women to their fate,' writes an African journalist more kindly than most, commenting on forty women who were rounded up by the police. 'I do not think this is a, good way to handle the question of unmarried Women,' he says. 'They cannot just get married or get a job. Most of them are uneducated, nor can they go about asking men to marry them.' He suggests 'the government should round up unmarried men and pair them up with unmarried women. Or else stop chasing them from pillar to post.'

Nowhere among the emerging countries is the percentage of literacy so low as Nigeria. In Turkey , it is 30 per cent.; in Nicaragua 37 per cent.; in Mexico 45 per cent.; in Columbia 56 per cent.; in Ceylon 58 per cent.; while in Nigeria it varies from 1 to 10 per cent. Until women, through education, achieve their own social status, there can be no hope of a solution to the 'unmarried women' problem. Practically all domestic workers and many hospital nurses are men. Women cooks are unheard of, and nurses for children are rare.

In the south the education of women is going ahead rapidly. In the Islamic north the hardworking expatriate Woman Education Officer suffers many disappointments. Miss B., for instance, succeeded in persuading several parents in her area to send their promising daughters to a boarding school from which they could graduate as teachers. Two got their diplomas, were married at once and disappeared into purdah. Of the others, three ran away, feeling it too shameful to have reached their teens unwed. The other five failed to return for their last term. The disheartened Miss B. went to see their parents. She found' all the girls had been married. Miss B. knew enough of native law and custom to realise why. Once girls reach adolescence there is no place for them in their parents' home. They are happy enough to have them away at school but during vacation, in the, large community of a polygamous household, in a country where occupations and entertainments are comparatively few and basic, they feared for their daughters' morals.

' . The women of the south are more Amazonian. They are unfettered by purdah, and polygamy leaves them with time on their hands. Depending on their province and tribe, they do the donkey work on the farms, or haul hundredweights of firewood on their shoulders to markets miles away under a blazing sun with a baby strapped to their backs. From an early age girl children hawk food and cloth until they graduate to become market women, or prosperous traders with a fat bank account which they do not share with their husbands.

They are, however, responsible for their children's education. Although they do not take the payment of taxes very seriously, they value education. When one of the newly self-governing regions started free primary education, found it could not foot the bill, and re-introduced school fees, the women armed themselves with sticks and stones and marched. They threw pupils and teachers out of the schools, threatened the representatives of law and order, and caused riots which resulted in several deaths.

In Africa the bride price is even more essential than the dot in France. Originally the price paid by the suitor was used by the girl's family to buy a bride for her brother. Like prices everywhere, inflation has hit the bride price, provoking would be bridegrooms to air their grievances in the papers.

'Raise the bride price to £25,' says Enugu town. 'Cut it to £15,' says Kaduna. 'Make £50 the maximum,' says 'Lagos. 'Don't blame government for bride price racket,' says a fierce letter about 'much rubbish and half-understood nonsense which has been published about the ineffectiveness of the Bride Price Law.' The letter goes on to denounce secret bargains in which parents demand, and receive, over £150 per daughter while inserting only £50, the legal price, in the Bride Price Agreement, as 'quite• unbecoming.' Frustrated suitor that he must be, the writer suggests that the legal price of £50 is too high. 'It should be reduced to £15,' he says.

Another correspondent, possibly a successful suitor—says he 'will have no objections whatever if bride price is raised to £25 in this area.' He adds the provision, however, that the same amount should be refundable to the husband in case of divorce or desertion; very sensible, considering the lightness of the marriage vows and the relative ease with which a divorce can be obtained. A women's movement wants the name 'bride price' changed to 'dowry.' A male correspondent points out that this would be a misnomer. 'Dowry,' he rightly explains, 'is what a woman brings to her husband, whereas bride price is the money paid by the bridegroom to her family.'

To a people whose economy is bound up with Polygamy, the discipline of the Christian marriage law is disrupting. The chief of a pagan tribe wished to embrace Christianity. The missionary pointed out that, to be acceptable, he would have to content himself with one only of his fifteen wives. The chief said this was impossible. What would become of the others? The missionary was adamant—one wife only, or no Christianity. The chief had an idea. Could not his wives be made Christians? After all, they had only one husband.

Since Africans progressed from tribal warfare to the more insidious game of politics, in their efforts to weld Nigeria into a nation, the emancipated women have shown themselves more united than the men. Unencumbered by political slogans and promises and ideas of grandeur, they are still in touch with the basic needs of their people. In two of the regions women have the vote, but not in the Moslem north, where the politicians say there is no demand as they are not conscious of it, pointing out Switzerland as a criterion.

Very occasionally women are elected, or rather, co-opted, to one of the newly formed town councils. They have the strong money-making instinct common to all West African women. They are making good progress in education. As Sylvia Leith-Ross writes in an article in International Social Science Bulletin, 'They are inclined to move forward at their own pace.'

Honour Among Thieves - A Nigerian Experience

Culled from the Spectator - 3 May 1991

Edward Theberton finds the Nigerians as endearing and as corrupt as ever in Port Harcourt, Nigeria

'WHAT about me?'

'What about you?' I replied to the policewoman who had attached herself to me at Lagos Airport, had seen me through immigration and was now waiting for my luggage to appear.

Of course, I knew what she meant, and I gave her £3. She looked at the coins.

`Dis uniform no cheap o,' she said. 'I am not a two-naira woman.'

The naira standing at 23 to the pound, I pointed out that she was, in fact, a 69-naira woman. This mollified her, and we went through customs together like a knife through butter. I have never had better value for money.

Nigeria hasn't changed much since the last time I was here two years ago. The Young Shall Grow Transport Company has a new bus, but otherwise the trucks and buses look the same, painted with their pious slogans: The Gift Is From Above, All Things Shall Be Possible, No Money No Friend, Salutation Is Not Love. The Ultra-Modern buildings still smell of mould. When I asked my driver how things were going in Nigeria, he said with a broad 'Hail Macbeth, thou shalt be an 0-level set book hereafter.' smile, 'We are suffering'. That is exactly what he said two years ago, and two years before that. He tells me that the Structural Adjustment Programme (a series of IMF type reforms) is filling the hospitals with children with kwashiorkor: but he said the same thing two and four years ago.

When I visit his village in the river delta, shoals of children come out to greet me. Shamefacedly, my mind turns to A Modest Proposal. The government is trying to carry out a census: I wish it luck. The Muslims want to prove that they are more numerous than the Christians, and vice versa; every state in the federation wants to inflate its population to justify a bigger share of the government budget. In Nigeria, nothing is straightforward or a matter of brute fact.

I am glad to see that the Eternal Sacred Order of Cherubim and Seraphim (whose communicants dress up in white robes on Sundays) maintains its rivalry in the village with the Brotherhood of the Cross and Star, and that the Native Doctor still guarantees automatic relief ('Why die in silence?') from gonorrhoea, weak organ, utching, scratches, pregnancy, belly boiling and organ pinching. It is rumoured that the delta villages still sacrifice a child to the river god (the crocodile) once a year, but as with everything else in Nigeria, I have no idea if this is true.

Anyway, the children are malnourished and have protuberant bellies, probably full of parasites, but they rush around naked and laugh and play as if they were happy. It is surely high time we sent qualified workers to teach them to be miserable.

In the cities, every big oga carries his prosperous stomach proudly before him like a pregnant woman. It is his badge of success, and as it says in Ban i and Company, the immensely popular soap opera about a typical Lagos rogue, 'What's the point of having a radio if you don't let everyone know you have one?'

Everyone knows where every big oga's money comes from, of course, but somehow no one really minds because everyone also knows that he would do the same if he had the opportunity. Here, any man who doesn't use his position to accumulate quick wealth is not only a fool but a bad man, who is failing to do his best for his family and the community from which he comes. The endless protestations to the contrary in the newspapers and by the government are purely formal, the same kind of protestations that the Portuguese and the Spanish slave traders used to make to the British Navy after the British had given up the trade for themselves: para que los ingleses vean, so that the English may see, as their contemptuous phrase had it.

Corruption has its advantages and disadvantages, so long as you have money: in the words of another Native Doctor, it makes the impossible to be possible. On the other hand, it is disconcerting when the traffic police climb into your car to demand a bribe to prevent them from imprisoning your driver on a wholly trumped-up charge.

The Nigerian press is as lively as ever. My favourite is Lagos Weekend, a scandal sheet which fears no libel action and which makes the News of the World look reticent. Auntie Gina, 'Africa's Greatest Advice Columnist', still answers questions such as, 'Why do lots of girls want to give the impression that they are virgins when they are not?' and 'Am I a nymphomaniac?' Omo Saloro still interprets dreams. 'Seeing a living dog eating a dead one signifies that you will defeat your enemies.' To menstruate in dream is bad. It is handiwork of satan. It always makes women barren if not quickly stopped. Also it brings stomach ache to some people.' And the classified advertisements offer hope to the hopeless. 'Dr Mahatma (Indian) offers Highly Spiritual correct 4 Draws to win Naira 50,000 JACKPOT', while King Super Barn Agent, under the heading Get Rich In Few Days, asks 'Do you want progress in this year? or to pass any exam local or foreign, love on ladies/boys, detect food or beer poison, Conquer of enemy.' King Super Barn Agent advises readers 'please don't deal with dupers', but send away for his booklet at once.

I know of no society or country with such an obsession with quick wealth, prestige and the appearance of things. Since the advent of oil, Nigeria seems to have been gripped by a cargo cult mentality, which it cannot shake off. No doubt the universal belief in juju (I know a chief who recently found a severed head in his house, delivered by his enemies) also fosters such a mentality, with its assumption that achievement can be secured by the correct performance of arcane ritual without further prolonged effort. This belief invades every aspect of modern life, in which the forms but not the content of an alien but highly attractive culture are imitated. Thus, the author of a booklet entitled How To Organise Meetings And Know The Work Of A Chairman, Secretary, Treasurer, Auditor, Financial-Secretary, Publicity Secretary, Provost & Committees assures his readers that any organisation that follows his prescriptions is bound to be successful. And the Nigerian press discusses, in all seriousness, Nigeria's future as a world power, with its own nuclear programme, as if it were all just a question of the correct forms which until now have been lacking.

Nowhere in the world (outside of communist countries) is thievery so richly rewarded and honoured, and honest, constructive work rendered so nearly impossible. As they say, 'Monkey dey work, baboon they chop' — monkeys work, but baboons eat. Nigeria, then, should be terrible, yet there is something endearing and profoundly human about it. In Nigeria, fantasy rules, untrammelled by reality. One cannot be angry for long in a country where a radio advertisement says, 'Be successful, be important, use Macleans toothpaste!'