Title: The Amalgamation of Nigeria’s Northern and Southern Protectorates: Blessing or Curse?
Author: Mathias Chukwudi Isiani & Ngozika Obi-Ani, University of Nigeria, Nsukka.
Summary
This study is a creative examination of the interesting results of the merger of Nigeria’s two protectorates in 1914. This remains as controversial as the partition of Africa, reflected in particular in the grouping of several heterogeneous nationalities into an unsavory whole. The study shows that these heterogeneous groups distrust each other.The merger was an administrative order of Nigeria issued by the British colonial ruler for economic and administrative reasons. The predominantly Muslim and animist Northern Protectorate and the predominantly Christian Southern Protectorate have aggressively “Westernized”.
The two protectorates were culturally separate, but in 1914 Lord Frederick Lugard united them. In fact, the Northern Protectorate was the poor neighbor of the Southern Protectorate; has no market for exporting its agricultural products or importing basic goods, but needs revenue to expand its railways and improve its social infrastructure. . A frugal British colonial administration, unwilling to provide the necessary resources, found a practical means of helping the Northern Protectorate through forced unification in 1914.
The post-independence political and religious unrest lends credence to the perennial question of whether the merger of the Northern and Southern Protectorates in 1914 was a curse or a blessing. This study attempts to answer this question using primary and secondary sources such as official documents, newspapers, magazines and articles on development and underdevelopment theory. According to the study, while the 1914 merger may have its strengths, its weaknesses appear to outweigh the positive aspects, but in order to create a larger Nigerian state, the study says more attention should be paid to ways to consolidate a stronger union at the same time it is those problems that increase the differences between emerging nationalities.