Through unknown Nigeria

Although Jos is chiefly known for the Niger Company’s trading store and Finance Department, there are two other phases which should not be omitted. They are the Company’s Mining Department and the headquarters of the medical officer, who is supposed to be engaged by most, if not all, the mines, whereas he is really the officer of only a few. The Mining Department, is, to an extent, explained by its title. There may, however, be people in England who are not acquainted with the part the Niger Company has taken in development of the tin fields, and it is for these persons that this short story is given; not in any tone of exaltation, simply an unvarnished tale with tone and shade to present what seems to me a true picture. Nothing like a complete history of the movement is being rendered; merely a thin outline for better understanding of how the position of to-day has been reached.

In 1901 Mr Walter Watts, Agent-General—a West African title corresponding to General Manager—of the Niger Company asked Sir Frederick Lugard, High Commissioner—Governor—of Northern Nigeria for a concession to send prospectors for tin. The High Commissioner refused, on the ground that there was no mining law to regulate the situation. The position was altered the following year by the promulgation of the Mining Proclamation, and on Sir Frederick returning from furlough in England Mr Watts followed him to Jebba and obtained the first issued Exclusive Prospecting Licence, which related to 1,000 square miles with Badiko as centre. The same day Mr George Macdonald was granted a similar E.P.L. for 3,000 square miles surrounding that ground.

On receipt of information from Mr Watts that he had secured a Licence, the London office of the Niger Company despatched Mr G. Nicolaus to test the existence of tin. He located the Deleme River deposits at Tildi Fulani as a payable portion. Mr Nicolaus was on the tin areas only a few weeks, but his reports led the Niger Company to send Mr H. W. Laws to ascertain definitely whether the areas were of commercial value.

In 1902 Mr Macdonald commissioned Mr Probis to test the land the former had acquired. The resultant report on the prospects generally induced Macdonald not to proceed with the work.

The investigations of both Nicolaus and Probis were confined to the north of the Plateau.

Meanwhile, in the early part of 1902 Mr, now Sir, William Wallace, then in the service of the Niger Company as Political Agent, accompanied the expedition against the Emir of Bauchi. At the close of operations, by means of messengers he obtained about a quarter-of-a-hundredweight specimens of tin from the Deleme River, at Naraguta, which is six days’ journey from the place whence Mr Wallace had sent his emissaries. That, apparently, was the first tin obtained by a European in Northern Nigeria, although about the same time Mr George Macdonald led a prospecting party into Bauchi territory and brought back tin.

Mr Laws arrived towards the end of 1903 and formed his principal camp between the present Naraguta Mine and Naraguta Extended, in fact where Naraguta village now stands. His expeditions practically discovered the configuration of the Plateau and located tin at Jos, in the neighbourhood of Bukuru and at N’Gell. At the close of 1905 Mr Laws took out plant and commenced systematic tin-winning at Naraguta.

Having discovered ore, the next question to be decided was what should be done with the acquisition? Whilst the Niger Company had every wish and interest to see the tin fields, and the country generally, grow and flourish, it had no desire—so I gather—to add to its commercial responsibilities that of mining on a large scale. It preferred that should be done by people who could concentrate on that form of activity.

There was, however, this difficulty, that scarcely any outside attention was given to the subject. No notice seemed to be taken of what was being done. The Company was, therefore, faced with the alternative of itself working the mineral deposits or abandoning them. The latter course would have been a criminal one—speaking in a figurative sense—against the shareholders, to whom the discoveries belonged, and steps were taken for Mr Laws to demonstrate what was in the ground; in other words, for the mining staff to indefinitely work the centres where tin had been found in payable conditions. Still, scant notice was taken by outside bodies, notwithstanding the results. In March, 1907, Lord Scarbrough, Chairman of the Niger Company, told the shareholders that during the previous 15 months 240 tons of tin oxide, of £30,000 value, had been obtained from the Naraguta property, and the following year a corresponding amount was won. It was effected without machinery, by the antiquated methods of ground sluicing and calabashing.

Not until 1910 did the possibilities of the tin fields attract the consideration which has since given them so much prominence. At this point the wider question is left for future treatment, as I do not purpose now writing a full account of the short history of tin-mining in Northern Nigeria.

The policy of the Niger Company appears to have been only to develop a mine until other people saw the thing “good enough” to take up. That is the rôle of its mining staff, which have headquarters at Jos, quite distinct and some little distance from the trading store. I believe that all the earlier properties have been disposed of, but the further potentialities of the country are still being tested in various directions.

It may be asked why the Niger Company gives to second parties, even by sale, the opportunity of making a profit which it might itself reap. Whilst I am no more empowered than any other investigator to speak for the Company, I should say that the reason is the one stated above. No doubt the Company is only on the threshold of the advance to be made in trading development—trading in agricultural, sylvan, and other produce—in Southern and Northern Nigeria, and to do that adequately is, to use an inelegant but expressive term, to bite off as much as it can chew. The fact should be remembered that it gains by everyone’s prosperity.

On surrendering the Charter, the Government agreed to give the Company half of its 5 per cent. royalty on the export of all minerals. Besides the river and road transport, prosperous communities, white and black, mean increased trade for the stores, for although there are a number of such new arrivals in Northern Nigeria the Niger Company maintains an incalculably premier position.

Present regulations for mining are explained in the next chapter.

The health of every white man on a mine in Northern Nigeria is a serious matter for each owning company. Flesh and blood is not as cheap as in some parts of industrial Britain; it cannot be replaced at a day’s notice and to an illimitable extent. A man, whether he be manager or in any intermediate grade to the most junior rank, is brought out at no little expense. If he becomes altogether incapacitated at an early stage of his service the persons in whose engagement he is lose what the double journey costs, for he will probably not have rendered sufficient work to recoup them; whilst if he goes temporarily on the sick list as long as he remains there he, of course, is not earning anything for the firm which has paid his expenses. Men of use in Northern Nigeria are therefore valuable, as horses are where it costs money to replace them, though perhaps in the same place there is so great a supply of human animals that their living or dying is of no economic consequence.

The question is put at its lowest commercial basis so that the importance of health may be seen from every point of view, and in setting the position in that light I rely on my meaning not being misinterpreted to read that men in the service of mines are only rated as horses. I desire to show that a mine—or, for the matter of that, any other employing concern—in most cases loses by the breakdown of a member of the staff. Here the mines’ employees are alone being dealt with.

Were the tin fields camps clustered in one or two small areas the problem would be easy of solution. They are not. They are scattered over the country, in some instances more than a week’s journey by road from one another. Special medical provision for the mining staff is therefore not an easy programme to carry out unless a fairly large number of doctors were appointed, and at present the quantity of men who might require their attention is too few to justify that course. There are the Government medical officers, but they are stationed where they can be of most use to officials, and that may be 30 miles or more from a mine camp.

Under all these circumstances some of the mining companies, and the Niger Company as the only European trading firm in that part of the country, decided to provide special medical facilities for their employees in the Bauchi tin fields region. There are two doctors: Dr Watson, who is stationed near Juga, and Dr Arthur Emlyn, who is at Jos, regarded as the headquarters and within range of more mines than any other situation would be.

I have looked over the hospital at Jos. Previous to it being built patients were accommodated in tents and in small but comfortable huts. The hospital was put up by Dr Emlyn, and, except for two weeks when he was ill and his assistant, Dr Watson, supervised the native workmen, the whole scheme was effected by the former, who combined the parts of builder, nurse, housekeeper, and medical attendant. I find that during the two years the hospital has been in existence there have been 65 European patients, of whom two have died. The official records show that one was in hospital two days and the other two-and-a-half hours. The cases may therefore be regarded as having reached a critical stage before coming to the hospital. I have not had time to obtain the total visits of European out-patients, nor of natives, which far exceed those of the whites.

Strengthening the medical service in Northern Nigeria is a measure which should be well pondered over by the Government at Zungeru. The value of a hospital can be gauged from what is done by the establishment at the Capital of the Protectorate. The necessity of a hospital is not to be estimated by the fatal cases which come under its roof. An overwhelming majority of sickness among whites is that of fever. The great chance of a cure is taking the indisposition in time and nursing, and no nursing on this earth equals the nursing of a sympathetic woman. A nurse of the best kind is the nearest picture we can imagine of one of God’s angels. The light, feminine movement; the exquisite solicitude for suffering; the sisterly soothing influence on a pain-racked brain; the gentle, yet not tiresome, attention to unexpressed wants, all these seem almost divine qualities which appeal to even my dull, unimaginative mind. They impress me, who had never needed them; they are qualities not possessed by one man in two millions; they are qualities to be found in several places in West Africa; they have counted in many recoveries to health.

The Zungeru hospital is spoken of as a sanatorium. That is because men go there when early symptoms of malaria declare themselves, and frequently after a few days’ treatment—which may be described as rest, change, and the inestimable frequent medical examination and attendant nursing—the aforetime invalid returns to his duties thoroughly well. There must have been hundreds of lives saved by hospital treatment in West Africa, lives which would have been lost but for prompt entry into a hospital.

Those of us who have seen men stricken with fever in some out-of-the-way spot in the bush, lying on a camp-bed in a mud hut many miles from the reach of a doctor, ourselves doing in a rough way all the nursing we could, we know what a relief it would have been to welcome the appearance of a skilled man versed in the art of healing.

In Nigeria, North and South, most of the Government medical officers are as splendid fellows as you would wish to meet. In Southern Nigeria some of the cherished personal friendships I have made in the course of journeys are among that profession; and in Northern Nigeria if I have not come in contact with so many they have been sufficient to show that the same spirit prevails. I gladly remember two who went out of their way to render me acts of kindness: Dr Johnson, of Zaria, and Dr Costello, of Naraguta.