Through unknown Nigeria

The commercial aspect of Lokoja has occupied the main portion of the preceding chapter, but, of course, a large business centre necessarily attracts other adjuncts of life. The coloured population is 13,484, of whom 11,680 are natives of Nigeria and 1,804 come from Coast towns. The 72 Europeans are composed of 38 Government officials and 34 engaged in the stores and missionary work.

Lokoja is a cosmopolitan town, in an African sense. It is Lagos on a small scale. In it you can see the West African of every kind to be met along the Coast belt, from the educated type of the Coast and portly mammies of Sierra Leone to the Mohamedans of other countries.

There is thorough segregation. Lokoja proper may be described not even as oblong but in the form of a narrow strip—nail-like—parallel with the Niger. At one end of the strip is the native quarter, forming a kind of oval head to the nail-shaped town. A wide thoroughfare—Camp Road—stretches about a mile. At each side and sometimes a little way back are the European stores, and at the further end—the point—the Government offices and residential bungalows, the barracks, and the hospital.

On the excellent principle of keeping European commercial development separate from the purely native administration of the country—so that the former does not disorganise the latter—that is fixed at Kabba. At Lokoja the political officer has the rank only of Cantonment Magistrate, but the heavy duties he performs, the hours I have seen him at his tasks, their multifarious nature, and the way he has of “getting on” with all kinds of people, all mark Mr Bertram Byfield as among the best type of official to be found in British colonies.

He is the Baron Haussman of Lokoja. He takes as much pride in it as did the famous improver of Paris in his own city or as a man might in the garden to his house. Mr Byfield walks along Camp Road and into the native quarter always alert to detect in the course of his peregrinations what may be necessary for public health or convenience. He seems to regard himself as always on duty. In the course of each of my walks with him he noted half-a-dozen things to be done.

He has completely rearranged the market on the plan of Sir Hesketh Bell’s model town-planning. The streets are in straight lines and run sideways and at right-angles to one another. To an eminence high enough to be approached by a zigzag path he has removed the Court house of the Alkali, in order that cases may be heard clear of the turmoil of the market-place. Cheaply-made bridges he has placed across dykes, and so given a short and direct cut between parts of the native quarter formerly connected only by a long detour. Another phase of his daily life is holding his Court for the trial of offences which do not go on the “list” of the Alkali.

The first occasion I called on Mr Byfield he was doing none of these more or less dignified acts, but (also in pursuance of his duties), of all things in the world, haggling over the price of old, disused kerosene cans from the military people! Such is the variety to which the qualities of capable officials in Northern Nigeria have to be turned.

What has the Cantonment Magistrate—he really should be a Resident—to do with cast-off kerosene cans? you ask. This. Although there is a sort of native Mayor and municipality—all appointed by the C.M.—for the native quarter of the town, the C.M. must see that they carry out his directions, for he would be held answerable if a serious outbreak of illness occurred. They needed the tins for hygienic use. But, again, why haggle over 3d. more or 3d. less per can? Because the strictest economy is the order of the day in Nigeria, and if when the accounts came to be overlooked the Governor saw that the C.M. of Lokoja had paid more than somebody elsewhere, His Excellency would demand the reason why.

You may remark that the procedure is straining a principle to pedantry, as the expenditure merely transfers money from one public department to another. Your assumption would be incorrect—at all events, incomplete. The outlay on military needs comes out of the general funds, raised by Customs, and by further revenue on all classes of the population, European as well as other; whereas such local requirements as the cans are discharged by direct native taxation. British administration says that whilst it is fair and proper that indigenous dwellers should pay taxes for increased advantages to themselves, every care must be exercised that the money of these people is laid out with scrupulous economy.

A historic figure is Abigah, King of Lokoja, with whose son I had the illuminating conversation on domestic felicity detailed in Chapter XIV. Mr Byfield kindly sent for the old man to meet me in the market. I had, of course, known that the King had been brought by Dr Barth to Europe and that he had visited England and seen Woolwich Arsenal. He told me that Dr Barth also took him to Berlin, and introduced him to the Emperor William I. (then simply King of Prussia), who, noticing Abigah’s strong and healthy appearance, tapped him on the chest and declared he was “a piece of black mahogany.” Although more than 50 years have passed, Abigah is still as active in walking as a young fellow. He speaks English quite well, not in the pidgeon manner.

I omitted to ask what the King’s means are. As he must be over 70 years of age and has been useful to England since Barth visited Lokoja, I hope the Government of Nigeria will take care that the old man’s latter days are not embittered by poverty. This remark is made as I had heard up-country he was badly off. I am sorry the matter slipped my memory when speaking to Mr Byfield. In maintaining our rule in Northern Nigeria we depend so much on the cordial co-operation of the native, natural leaders of the people that it would be a great pity to jeopardise our good name for fair-dealing towards those whose supreme functions we have taken over by failing to be not only strictly just but somewhat generous in a case where that would be no more than discharging an obligation of honour, for Abigah has always been a staunch friend of the British.

At the other end of the town is the hospital, which fills an exceptional place in a mental survey of Nigeria. There are two routes from the Coast to the interior. One is by the railway from Lagos, the other the river route from Forcados. Along the former line, besides the large hospital at Lagos, there is a similar establishment at Zungeru, as well as a smaller one at Ibadan, and, all being on the railway, a patient living near the line is within easy reach of any of them.

On the river route, and then beyond it from Baro right up inland, there is no hospital approaching to that of Lokoja in size, technical resources, and with the unspeakable blessing of feminine nursing.

Do not, however, expect an institution the dimensions of those in English cities. The term Lokoja Hospital really means two hospitals—for Europeans and for natives. The first is of wood, bungalow shape, raised from the ground and resting on iron pillars with stone foundations. There is accommodation for 10 beds in wards made mosquito-proof, as is also the nurses’ sitting-room.

Everything is done in a thorough, systematic way, for which purpose a laboratory and an operating room are provided. One of the patients came from Forcados. When there he was ill. Not sufficiently so to be invalided home but too low in health to remain. So he had been sent the 337 miles up the Niger to Lokoja Hospital to be nursed and was about to be returned “as good as new.”

The staff consists of a senior medical officer, a medical officer, four nurses, and two Sergeants of the Royal Army Medical Corps, who are storekeeper and dispenser.

The hospital for natives is several hundred yards away. A brick building 90 feet long, it holds 35 beds, of which 2 (in a separate room) are for women, though there are seldom in-patients of that sex. The principal complaints which bring men towards the end of the year are sciatica, lumbago, and bronchitis. Malaria is always represented, but the most common case is tape-worm, due to dirty food. The operating-room and dispensary are in buildings apart from the wards.

The two white doctors have as assistants here—all natives—a wardmaster and three dressers, and also as dressers one Corporal and three orderlies of the Northern Nigeria Regiment.

In no part of Northern Nigeria is the native population, in health or in sickness, more solicitously watched than in Lokoja.

There are two further features of life in Lokoja which should not be ignored. One is the military, the other the missionary. The former is dealt with in Chapter XXXIII; as to the latter, I make no pretence about looking upon that aspect of European influence, as a rule, with disfavour. In one case I have criticised with perhaps extreme severity. All the same, I hope I have the spirit of fairness, and it is only bare fairness to say what is done by the Church Missionary Society in Lokoja.

The compound in which the house stands presents the gladsome sight of trees bearing oranges, guava, mangoes and sweet cassava. The only other orange tree in any part of the town is at the local headquarters of the Public Works Department. Apart from bananas, native cultivation of fruit in those parts of Nigeria through which I have passed is practically nil. But wherever there is a branch of the Church Missionary Society there you will see fruit trees. That is due to the late Bishop Crowther, in whose day all missionaries in Nigeria were, like himself, blacks. He insisted on every station showing at least one fruit tree flourishing.

It has been said, times out of number, in Nigeria and in many other lands, that the net result of even secular missionary education in most instances spoils the natives; that their innate reliable qualities are destroyed, and only the rote, not the practice, of ethics adopted instead. I merely express what is stated by opponents of the movement, without confirming or denying. But it is proper that the other side of the question should be given at a place where I had a better opportunity than anywhere else of learning what was being done there. The station at Lokoja is in charge of Archdeacon J. L. Macintyre.

The allegation of denationalising the native is warmly repudiated, as is that of spoiling him by unduly indulgent treatment and by overpaying those who may be employed and thus making them discontented for service with anybody else. I give a plain statement of the educational scheme carried out at Lokoja. No child is allowed to learn English till he or she can read their own language, i.e., Nupé, Yoruba, or Hausa. When passed in vernacular reading, children enter Standard I. and begin to learn English, though all the teaching is in the native tongue. On emerging satisfactorily from Standard IV., which is as far as is taught in the C.M.S. schools, a boy of good character may be engaged as a pupil teacher for three years. He is paid 7s. 6d. a month during the first year, increasing to 10s. and 12s. 6d. monthly in the second and third years respectively. A simple, native dress is provided. The pupil teachers teach five hours a day in school and receive two hours’ instruction out of school hours. They are given quarters and shown how to play cricket and football. At the end of the three years’ course the boys are free to leave. The majority go as clerks to Government offices or merchants’ stores, but some stay as assistant schoolmasters at £1 a month, that amount rising annually 2s. 6d.

These details are set out for the reason stated above, and, I am informed, far from young natives being spoilt by the C.M.S., the grievance of the officers of that body is that their efforts to retain and conserve the simple habits of the country are frequently nullified by the action of those who disseminate the complaints.

Elsewhere I have been so severe a critic on the lay issues of missionary work that the least I can do, in the attempt not to be one-sided, is to pay a tribute of reverence to those who labour in what they regard as a sacred purpose. An example of their self-sacrifice is Archdeacon Macintyre. When with him he was in anything but robust health. Really, he should go to Europe to recuperate. The doctor urged that course, but Mr Macintyre was trying his utmost to avoid peremptory invaliding orders. A few days earlier he had got up from a sharp and trying attack of malarial fever, and was about to take a trip down the Niger, to be followed by a week on an Elder-Dempster liner at anchor off the mouth of the river, in the hope that the double change would patch him up for the remainder of his term. Twice he has had the dangerous blackwater fever. Disagree as one may from the outlay and the result of missionary efforts in West Africa, one must admire and honour the spirit shown by the noble men and women who give health and life for the cause, sacrificing these precious possessions in silent and obscure countries as freely as a soldier dies in a blaze of glory and renown.

I had several talks with Mr Macintyre, who, of course, had been made aware of my views on the subject of his work. We discussed it unreservedly. I said the position seemed to me that he was wearing himself out to small attainment, when there were so many heathens of our own colour, so much pain, poverty and misery in the great cities of Britain. Why, I asked, could not he and others look there instead of perceptibly putting themselves into the grave in malarious West Africa?

Mr Macintyre, whose age is probably about the thirties, replied that there were plenty of regenerating agencies in England if properly systemised and organised. He had been a curate, he related, in a poor district, and the various religious and philanthropic bodies tumbled over each other there in discharging their several tasks. There were more than enough persons to do all that was called for in England. There was no opportunity to break new ground. In West Africa, however, a man could feel he had fresh, untouched, unspoilt material to work upon and consequently facilities for tangible achievement; a man could be sure of doing something.

To do this something you see splendid fellows, of whom J. L. Macintyre is a type, sacrificing strong frames to a wasting condition, enfeebled and weak. He is paying still higher, for I gather that he has the happiness of a wife and a home in England. He is here on what he looks upon as his duty. I repeat, splendid. But, with much admiration and personal esteem, I remain unconvinced.

Four clear days were spent at Lokoja. In no corresponding period of the journey did I make more friends; at no place experienced a greater willingness to assist in obtaining information. Nowhere did I receive more individual kindness in the time; nowhere met better fellows. The four days were strenuous ones, spent amidst a torrid, damp atmosphere, but each hour was fully enjoyable and I said au revoir with regret at parting.