Nigeria and the Death of Liberal England by Peter J. Yearwood

Author:Peter J. Yearwood
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9783319905662
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Lagos Traders Protest

While representations continued to be made in London through firms such as Taylors, traders were now protesting in Lagos as well. By doing this they propelled themselves into the tumultuous politics of the Nigerian capital during the war, and into the nascent West African nationalist movement. The Lagos élite was still a small one in which everyone knew each other, and it was markedly cosmopolitan. In medicine and the law Africans might advance to positions which Europeans had to acknowledge and even to a degree respect. Journalism gave others the chance to express stirring ideas in the orotund phrases of their time and place. It was a field which Europeans did not enter. While the Colonial Office dismissed the local newspapers as rags, 64 historians have long acknowledged their role in promoting and inspiring a modern sense of African identity and pride of race. 65

In Lagos, there were five papers with a combined circulation of about 2000. 66 Ajasa’s Nigerian Pioneer broadly supported the government. The four other papers were highly critical of Lugard and his administration. Ajasa’s origins were obscure and disputed. In 1912, he claimed to be “a native of Lagos and related to the native chiefs of Lagos and the reigning prince”. 67 He is often depicted as a conservative, as “The African mouthpiece of the Nigerian colonial oligarchy…”, and as an “African Reactionary”. 68 Nevertheless he was a man of strong character, an early cultural nationalist who had Africanized his name. 69 He saw Nigeria’s future within the British Empire, but supported the claims of the Lagos white cap chiefs before the West African Land Committee in 1916. 70 A decade later, the young Nnamdi Azikiwe would first be impressed by his “dignity and gentility”, but then follow his contemporaries in finding that he lacked the necessary dynamism. Eventually, much later, he “learned to appreciate him as a great man”. 71 George Williams edited the Lagos Standard. Of Egba ancestry, Williams had originally come as a trader from Sierra Leone. He was a strong cultural nationalist, a proponent of the Yoruba language, and one of the nine founders of the United African Native Church. A later historian would remark on his “assertive and fearless opposition to the colonial government…”. 72 He was quite ready to attack the “high-handed tyranny” and the “fatuous eccentricities of the present administration…”, and urge the election of a representative Legislative Council at least for Lagos. 73 Nevertheless, according to the Red Book, the Standard always tried “to present matters on the broadest principles and to unite both whites and blacks in community of interest and welfare”. 74 The Nigerian Chronicle was the paper of Christopher Josephus Johnson, who had studied economics at the University of Liverpool, and maintained a high academic tone, which may have led to its failure in 1915. 75 He urged the “peaceful evolution along modern lines of African institutions, especially those in Yorubaland…”. 76 In contrast to his characterization of Williams, Allister MacMillan could not find his usual words of fulsome praise for Johnson.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.