SIR EDWIN SPEED

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 18595, 4 January 1935, Page 11

SIR EDWIN SPEED

FORMER NIGERIAN JUDGE

LINK WITH NEW ZEALAND

Former Chief Justice of Nigeria, brother of Colonel Charles Arncy, second in command of the New Zealand Forces in the last stage of the Maori .War, and also godson of Sir George Arney, New Zealand Chief Justice in the ’seventies. Sir Edwin Arney Speed was a passenger by the Oronsay, which called at Wellington in the course of a pleasure cruise. For 20 years Sir Edwin held) high official positions in Nigeria, retiring m 1918. He was Attorney-General at Lagos when that protectorate was a separate colony, and later lie was AttorneyGeneral of Southern Nigeria. Northern and Southern Nigeria and Lagos were amalgamated in 1914 and ho then became Chief Justice of United Nigeria. At one time he was Chief Justice of Northern Nigeria and several times Act-ing-Chief Justice, Colonial Secretary and Deputy-Governor of Lagos. Along with other countries in the world, Nigeria has been through .a period of comparative poverty, but even there things were beginning to look up. Sir Edwin said when interviewed. Giving an instance of the progress made by the country, he said that when he first went there the revenue of Lagos and Southorn Nigeria amounted to about £400,000 a year, derived almost exclusively from the tax on gin. Tp-day the revenue was in the vicinity or £10.000,000 and the sale of gin was pacticully prohibited.