Through unknown Nigeria

Previous to leaving the subject of the tin fields it is appropriate a few words are said on the Government administration of that territory controlled from Naragutu.

Leave to prospect in the area known as the tin fields has been suspended, pending a regular survey of the properties pegged out, and as the suspension is temporary, and, moreover, does not apply to other parts of Northern Nigeria, it may not be out of place if the conditions under which minerals can be sought are stated.

The first requisite for anybody who wishes to go prospecting is to obtain permission from the Governor or whoever may be acting for him. If not received before arriving in the country, it can be asked for at Zungeru, the Capital of the Protectorate, or at Lokoja. The former is on the railway journey and the latter on the river route, which are the only avenues by which one can enter. In order not to entail delay of waiting at either place, permission is also to be obtained at Naraguta, after the application has been forwarded to Zungeru from Lokoja, which would be done by telegraph if not made previous to the applicant’s arrival there.

The Governor’s assent is given in the form of a general prospecting right. That costs £5, and the applicant must show he has available locally not less than £100. That done, he has to get a permit from the Resident in each Province where he seeks to prospect. The Resident only withholds a permit if the district is in an unsettled state.

An Exclusive Prospecting Licence comes next. The cost is £5 per square mile, and the prospector must have satisfied the Crown Agents that he possesses £500 in money for every square mile applied for. Whilst he holds the Exclusive Prospecting Licence he has the sole right to have a mining lease of the ground. Before, however, it is taken out, he must submit plans, which have to be passed by the Government Inspector of Mines and the Advisory Committee associated with him, which consists of three or four Government officials, who have power to co-opt non-officials.

Everything being in order and satisfactory, the applicant is granted an Exclusive Prospecting Lease. Following the Exclusive Prospecting Lease comes a Mining Lease. For that he must show he has at command £10 for every acre applied for. A lease is given for any period up to 21 years.

It is incumbent on a man coming out for a company that he shall have a properly-executed Power of Attorney. That is stipulated so as to fix direct responsibility and to avoid disavowal by the man’s principals of steps he might take in their name.

Anybody holding an Exclusive Prospecting Licence cannot sell or transfer it without the consent of the Governor. Should he, the Licence can be cancelled. The object of this measure is to prevent hawking or peddling of Licences and is an endeavour to protect the public against persons who might try to exploit uncertain or valueless land.

Whilst, of course, there is a Mines Department at Zungeru—really a section of the Secretariat that specially deals with mining matters—the office of the Government Inspector of Mines, Mr E. A. Langslow-Cock, at Naraguta. A few facts of the duties he has to perform will not be out of place here. Upon him is focussed most, if not all, dissatisfaction at the mining law and impatience that things are not done or decisions given. Langslow-Cock is too good an official, too loyal a subordinate, to even suggest or infer that he should not be blamed for what he has to carry out or for that at which he must hold his hand. If people blame him let them, he seems to say mentally. His temperament enables him to receive the slings and arrows of criticism with equanimity, and his personal popularity stops marksmen from dipping the points of their shafts into bitterness.

The work of the office has been said to be in a state of chaos. A greater misapplication of words could scarcely be used. If statements of that kind are not completely denied there usually is a suspicion that there is some ground for the indictment. As the term is understood, I say there is none. With the staff the Government Inspector of Mines has, the duties have been expeditiously and well performed. With the exception of the railways, where it is a question of safety of life, there is hardly a department of the public service not undermanned. Until this year the Protectorate has been allowed an Imperial grant-in-aid. Whether on that account or for any other, expenditure on salaries has, in most cases, been kept as low as possible—in many instances much lower than they should be—and too few men in receipt of them for the extent of country occupied. This does not apply specifically to the Government Inspector of Mines staff, but generally.

Naraguta is the centre of administration for the Central, formerly the Bauchi, Province. Naraguta bulks so largely in men’s minds that some persons who have not seen the place regard it as a small town. Nothing of the kind. Except for the scattered houses and offices, all but two of mud, for the half-dozen or so English officials, there is nothing, beyond the alluvial tin operations a few miles round and the native village which has sprung up in consequence, to mark the country from the virgin land it was 10 years ago.

“The office of the Government Inspector of Mines” sounds imposing. That building Mr Langslow-Cock had to have put up by his native servants. No windows or doors are fitted to the mud structure; only openings. I have seen him drawing a Government map whilst rain came through the roof, dropping at the side of the table at which he worked.

The Resident, Mr F. Beckles Gall, has the luxury of a three-roomed stone bungalow. He deserves it. For nine months, when stationed here, which included the wet season of 1911, his dwelling consisted of two circular mud huts, both having merely holes in the walls for light and ventilation, and through them the rain swept night and day. I learnt by chance conversation that his present abode is the first with doors he has lived in for 8 years.

The Naraguta Resident has the attributes which help to make the best form of administrator in a high position: the qualities of open-mindedness, a capacity for taking any amount of trouble in order to fully understand every view-point of a question, and, not least, a sympathetic temperament which inclines him to help people instead of baffling them or putting difficulties in their way in an effort to enhance his own importance.

I think the Government are fortunate in having at Naraguta a man of the type of Mr Beckles Gall, for however indifferent a Resident may be to irritating or causing resentment among people who are not in his coterie, the Government at Zungeru, certainly the Colonial Office at home have no wish to see the resultant friction, bad feeling, and public comments in England. It is bad enough for a person to plume himself on being superior to all mankind; it is infinitely worse to parade belief of that superiority and to try and enforce it by contemptuous acts to those who, though not within his circle, by reason of his position must communicate with him from time to time. The supercilious attitude which I saw to an offensive extent towards non-officials at another place—I cannot help concluding, bearing seeds of possible mischief in the event of trouble with the natives—is altogether absent at Naraguta.

Besides being the chief centre of the mines administration away from Zungeru, Naraguta is the headquarters of the Hill Division, which is that section of the political service which deals with the Pagan tribes of the Province. The department is in charge of Mr C. L. Migeod, who in the course of his service has had two horses killed under him by poisoned arrows aimed at the rider. Those occurrences did not take place whilst hostile measures were being taken against the wild people of the hills. That is a step which every Governor of the Protectorate has frowned upon. Political officers are expected to allay, not aggravate, any resentment natives may feel towards the white man’s presence and to get recalcitrant tribes round to a spirit of sweet reasonableness and an accommodating manner without necessitating the use of troops. Mr Migeod was endeavouring to carry out this policy, and whilst riding up a hill to a village on the top for the purpose of more fully explaining a message he had sent pointing out how nice it would be for the villagers to pay taxes, he received the welcome stated. He was a passenger on the ship by which I left England, but though we spoke freely on board he mentioned no word of what is now related. I only heard of the matter when I came to live in the district.

In a subsequent chapter the method and manner of ruling these Pagan tribes is explained. They, unlike the Fulani, the Hausa and cognate people, have no corporate life.

A single instance is rendered to show the spirit which animates the Government of Northern Nigeria in dealing with the inhabitants of the country.

A native was charged with murdering another and the case came before the Resident at Naraguta for trial. The prisoner, who had been brought in from some distance, was taciturn, but pleaded “Guilty,” that is to say, he declared, “I did kill him.” He repeated the phrase, but would say nothing more. He remained obstinately silent when pressed why he did it. The witnesses could explain no cause. The only reason they knew was that the prisoner and the man killed had quarrelled. Mr Gall did not forthwith sentence the prisoner to death. He reflected that no individual takes the life of another unless there is a strong motive, and he remembered that the poor wretch on the ground in front of his table was, after all, like the rest of us, a human being, though black and friendless.

Although prompt justice is generally esteemed in Northern Nigeria, Mr Gall put the case back and sent one of his native political officers to make enquiries in the district where the crime took place. Those enquiries showed the prisoner to have been provoked and wronged to such an extent that instead of being sent for execution he was given a month’s imprisonment.

I learnt these particulars, not from Mr Gall, but since I have left him, and from a non-Government man, who, as is the way in this country, had not been sufficiently interested in the incident to be able to tell me what was the provocation. “I have my own business to attend to and cannot bother about such details, like you journalists who want to know all of everything; in fact, it was Gall’s splendid fairness to the poor devil that made me notice the thing at all. And good luck to you for putting it down.” So spoke my informant.