A COUNTRY TO BE PROUD OF.

Otago Witness, Issue 3019, 24 January 1912, Page 85

A COUNTRY TO BE PROUD OF.

NIGERIA: ITS PEOPLE AND ITS PROBLEMS.

Mr E. D. Morel, whose heroic work for the people of the Congo is one of the best achievements of fearless personality in recent years, has just published a volume of the greatest interest.

It is a fascinating travel boojc; it introduces us to a splendid people; to a magnificent country; to a social life of peculiar interest; to a triumphant piece of work done by Englishmen of which we may all be proud. The book is on ‘‘Nigeria: Its People and Problems” (Smith, Elder, and Co.). —An Immense Empire.—

It is not generally realised that Nigeria ‘‘is not only the most considerable of our tropical dependencies in Africa, but is the most considerable and the wealthiest of all our tropical dependencies (India excepted). It is equal in size to the German Empire, Italy, and Holland.” “Nowhere else in tropical or sub-tropical Africa is the British administrators faced, at least on a large scale, with a Mohammedan population already to be counted in millions.” And this last fact brings Mr Morel to one of the great problems of the day in Nigeria—ls it safe to allow Christian missionaries to inflame the anger of the Mohammedans? “There is so much that is dark and dismal about this missionary effort, inwardly, I me:(h,” writes Mr Morel. “All the African world is black to it, black with sin, black with lust, black with cruelty, and there is its besetting misfortune —it is alien. It preaches an alien God ; a White God, not a Black God. The God that is imported here has nothing African about Him. How can He appeal to Africa? —Night in the Camp.— “I saw a week ago in an English paper that there is to be a crusade against Islam in Nigeria. Emissaries are to come out and check this poisonous growth. That, too, is very strange to read . . . out here, as one listens to the call to God in the evening, and in the morning pealing out to the stars. These people are worshipping the God of Africa. It seems that they ought to worship the God of rmrope; and yet there' is more evidence of spiritual influence out here than in our great congested cities. With the cry of the African priest, the faithful bows his body to the earth out here. The day before I left England I heard the bells ringing out in an old cathedral city. Their note was both beautiful and sad. It was a spacious building, arched and vaulted, noble in proportions. It might easily have held 700 worshippers. Yet when the bells had ceased to ring there were less than a dozen worshippers within. “Yes, it is a great puzzle. All is silent in the camp. The fires have gone out. Over the thatched roofs the bombax towers upwards to the majestic heavens. The whole countryside is flooded with a soft, delicate effulgence, and the Great White Road (to the interior) appears as a broad ribbon of intensive light widening away, away into the infinite beyond. “It’s 11 o’clock. One wonders if London is looking quite so spiritual just now, with its flaming lights, its emptying theatres, its streets thronged with jostling restless crowds.”

—An Ideal for Nigeria. — Mr Morel is a warm friend of the Nigerian. “The native is the important person to be considered,” he says, and he is therefore only in favour of those men whose aim is to make the Nigerian “a better African, not a hybrid.” “A school of thought which sees in the preservation of the West African’s land for him and his descendants; in a system of education which shall not Anglicise; in technical instruction ; in assisting and encouraging agriculture, local industries, and scientific forestry; in introducing labour-saving appliances, and in strengthening all that is best, materially and spiritually, in aboriginal institutions, the highest duties of our Imperial rule. A school of thought whose aim it is to see Nigeria become the home of highly-trained African people, protected in their property and in their rights by the paramount Power, proud of their institutions, proud of their race, proud of their own fertile and beautiful land.”

Mr Morel pays a fine tribute to the essential morals of the Nigerians. “I have yet to see outside our cantonments — where the wastrels’"drift—a single immodest gesture on the part of man or ■woman. Humanity which is of Nature is, as Nature herself, moral. There is no immodesty in nakedness which knows not that it is naked. The Kukuruku girl, whose only garment is a single string of beads round neck and waist, is more modest than your Bond street dame clad in the prevailing fashion suggesting nakedness.

“Break up the family life of Africa, undermine the home, weaken social ties, subvert African authority over Africans, and you dig the grave of African morality. It is easy, nothing is easier, and it may be accomplished with the best intentions the worthiest motives,- the most abnormal ignorance of doing harm. Preserve these things, strengthen them, and you safeguard the decencies and refinements of African life.”

Quo of the most inspiring parts of Mr Morel’s book is that in which he shows what the British Government, through its wise local representatives, have done to help in this direction. In Southern Nigeria there is a splendid forestry department, whose object is to “stand in the way of the Nigerian native being expropriated and reduced to the position of a hired labourer on the properties of concessionaires under whose patriotic activities the Nigerian forest would be exploited until it had disappeared from the face of the earth, like the for -Is of Wisconsin, Michigan. Minnesota, and Eastern Canada.” “The Administration is fortunate in possessing in the Conservator and Deputy

Conservator two men possessed of know- ‘ ledge of native customs and of considerable tact in conducting negotiations with nativtf authorities.” Mr H. N. Thompson, ths Conservator, went to South Nigeria aftel many years in Burma, and enjoys an in j ternational reputation. As an expert h*" tropical forestry he stands second to noiw in the world. His colleague, Mr R. E. Dennett, has contributed more than aj.y other European living to our knowledge of Nigeria folklore, and he understands the native mind as few men of his generation do.”

—A Great Land Act.—

Even more important is the remarkable measure sanctioned in Northern Nigeria this year by the Colonial Office to conserve the native land system, to preserve the status quo. Mr Morel says that ‘‘on January 1, 1911, the most far-reaching measure of constructive statesmanship Vvest Africa has ever known was put upon the Statute Book. ‘The Land and Native Rights Proclamation’ consecrates the three main principles of native law and custom. First, that the whole of the land, whether occupied or unoccupied, is ‘native land.’ Secondly, that the land is under the control and subject to the disposition of the Governor to be ‘held and administered by him for the use, need, and common benefit of the natives of Northern Nigeria.’ Thirdly, that the Governor’s power shall be exercised in accordance with ‘native laws and customs.’ ”

“What this measure does is to provide for the communalising of the communal value of the land, leaving the occupier full control over the use of land and full benefit for his private enterprise upon it, with payment of rent to the community to which the land belongs, instead of to a landlord. At the same time the basis is laid for a land revenue which with the years will be the chief source of income. “For the first time in the history of West Africa the art of governing the ostive on native lines has become consecrated in British legislation.” In fact, a big board has been set up in Northern Nigeria which tells all land exploiters and company promoters that the land of the natives is not available for their well-known plans.