By Lasisi Olagunju, April 7, 2025
On 9 June, 1913, Lord Friedrick Lugard minuted on a document that Lagos “could never be made a healthy place.” It was his reaction to a proposed sewage scheme estimated to cost £186,000. He believed that that amount was too vast to expend on an unworthy Lagos. He was Governor of Southern Nigeria at that time.
On January 1, 1914, Lugard became Governor-General of the whole of Nigeria. Thomas S. Gale, who was very critical of his ways, notes that one of Lugard’s first acts “was to close the popular Ereko dispensary in Lagos. He also approved the cancellation of plans for a badly-needed Lagos maternity home” because Lagos people” insisted that it be staffed with indigenous personnel.” Lugard always referenced what he described as “the inherent racial qualities of the coast negro” as justification for the ‘apartheid’ he prescribed for Lagos.
The soil is the crop; the planter the yield. That is why I am writing this. This week marks the 80th anniversary of the death of Lord Lugard. He was the British colonial administrator variously blamed – or praised – for ‘creating’ Nigeria and its principal structural problems. I read him each time I get exasperated by Nigeria; whenever I wonder why we are where we are.
From 1900 to 1906, Lugard was High Commissioner of the Northern Nigeria Protectorate. His blitzkrieg conquered the North but the North counter-conquered him with bewitching love. He was pleased with northern Nigeria and never hid his love for the region and his appreciation for its loyalty to him and to the British crown.
The southern part, particularly Lagos and its environs which he later added to his portfolio, Lugard found very insufferable. His words for the people there share meaning with savagery and its synonyms. Probably if we understand our leaders, past and present, we can design our escape route out of their failure and foibles.
What were Lugard’s legacies in the North? His North had no western schools when he got there and he did very little to alter that situation throughout his years there. Check paragraph 161 of his ‘Report on Amalgamation’ published in December 1919. He later established two schools for the Muslim area of the North. There were 43 mission schools which Lugard wrote were “confined to the non-Muslim districts.” These mission schools, he wrote, enjoyed neither government’s financial assistance nor inspection and control. Lugard did so ‘well’ here for the North such that “at the time of amalgamation, the total number of pupils in government or mission schools was between 700 or 800 out of a population of some nine million.” Those were his words.
The man was lucky. With no Western-educated elite, he had no opposition, and he did not have to worry about the emirs. They cooperated with him on everything and he reciprocated their good behaviour by not allowing Western culture and its Christian missionaries to disturb their region and religion. Earlier in 1903, after he conquered Sokoto, his speech to the new Sultan and his people ended with a charge that he had no issues with Islam. When he conquered Bida “a walled town that had been giving trouble”, his final words were to the effect that “every man was free to worship God in his own way.” He was wise. He later empowered the emirs with indirect rule which came with lucrative salaries and other inducements.
He was wise. He had superior weapons but he didn’t use them after defeating the north in battle. For these, he was respected in palaces and on the streets. He became the lord of the north, his word was law. Then, he was made governor of southern Nigeria in 1912; he came down to Lagos and encountered a set of Africans – negroes who argued with him. He did not find it funny and he acted and reacted so throughout his years in power.
On 28 March, 1913, Lugard, apparently after encountering the educated elite of Lagos, strongly counselled against giving western education to Africans outside Africa. He wrote in a memo: “It appears to me that residence in Europe is bad for the African. He returns at best an insufferable prig; at worst, he is a very objectionable person.”
The amalgamation he midwifed was not for any negro to enjoy. It was for his country’s treasury to breathe and for it to use one slave to sustain another in perpetuity. And he said so. In an August 16, 1915 memo, Lugard wrote that “a great native city lives its life as its forebears did and is little affected by progress. Such a community has no desire for municipal improvement. It neither appreciates nor desires clean water, sanitation, or good roads or streets.” He said more than this. You can read it and other things he said and did in Thomas S. Gale’s ‘Segregation in British West Africa’, page 502. That was the man who led northern Nigeria into today’s Nigeria.
Lord Lugard is sorely hated in the South and, I think, very celebrated in the North. The man died on 11 April, 1945. He was 87 years old. When he died, a flurry of reactions and reviews followed his transition. His official biographer, Margery Perham, who wrote in 1945 that Lugard “stands out too far above human stature” denounced some liberals who denounced Lugard “as a dangerous buccaneer.” I saw that in Perham’s ‘Lord Lugard: A General Appreciation’ published in July 1945. The man’s other friends wrote beautiful tributes on him. I read ‘Lugard’ by H. R. Tate, John Eaglesome and Selwyn Grier; published in the July 1945 edition of ‘African Affairs’. If you are interested in what his critics thought of him, you should read ‘Lord F. D. Lugard: An Assessment of His Contribution to Medical Policy in Nigeria’ by Thomas S. Gale. It was published in 1976. For a deeper read of the man and his service to slaves, slavery and slave trade in Nigeria, read ‘Slow Death for Slavery: The Course of Abolition in Northern Nigeria, 1897–1936’ written by historian Paul E. Lovejoy and economist Jan S. Hogendorn. Or read the review ‘Lugard: the Devious Years’ by Barbara M. Cooper. When you read the last two here you can then imagine what sort of leader outlaws slavery without freeing slaves. What kind of man does that?
Lasisi Olagunju is a columnist with Nigerian Tribune
