Last week, Britain’s King and Prime Minister were in the Caribbean amid renewed debate over the country’s historical responsibility for slavery. Caribbean nations are pressing Britain to acknowledge the consequences of its imperial past, while the British government weighs whether an apology should extend to reparative action.
This debate raises a fundamental question: who has the authority to interpret the past and determine its meaning for the present? The irony is that, in Nigeria, over six decades after independence, some still turn to a former colonial Governor-General’s writings to validate their ethnic identities or disparage others.
The circumstances differ, but the underlying question is related. As the 2027 elections approach, verbal combat between Yoruba and Igbo social-media influencers is intensifying. Political disagreements are becoming contests over entire peoples’ worth.
Lord Frederick Lugard, Nigeria’s first Governor-General after the 1914 amalgamation, has been invoked to validate competing claims about Yoruba and Igbo identity. His The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa illuminates colonial assumptions. But why summon a British imperial administrator to settle arguments about the worth of Nigerian peoples, or provide ammunition for claims that other ethnic groups are Nigeria’s problem?
The first question is whether Lugard actually said what is attributed to him. The familiar internet quotation describes the Hausa/Fulani, Yoruba and Igbo in unflattering terms. It is presented variously as a passage from The Dual Mandate (1922) and as an alleged 1918 letter or handover memorandum. Its provenance remains insufficiently established; it should not be treated as an authenticated passage from the book without documentary evidence.
This position is more than historical pedantry. Repetition does not authenticate a quotation, nor does an attribution become credible because it supports an argument we wish to make. Before using Lugard as a witness against any Nigerian people, we must establish what he wrote and in what circumstances.
The second question: Was Lugard an impartial arbiter of the character or worth of Nigeria’s peoples? He is sometimes treated as a detached anthropologist assessing different peoples. Lugard faced an imperial challenge to govern a vast territory with few European officials, maintaining political control and securing economic interests on the behalf of His Imperial Majesty’s government. In “indirect rule”, he invented ways to exercise colonial authority through indigenous institutions and leaders while retaining British sovereignty.
Administrative convenience shaped Lugard’s assessments. Northern Nigeria’s Fulani-administered emirate system was particularly amenable. Its hierarchy, territorial administration, courts, taxation and officials offered a recognisable framework for colonial government. Southern peoples were not so compliant.
It was much harder to incorporate southern peoples’ “political institutions” into colonial rule. They were not as apparent and well defined, to the European’s eyes. His judgements also reflected the intellectual climate of his time. European colonial thinking ranked societies on an assumed scale of civilisation and political development.
He treated centralised authority and formal hierarchies resembling European models as evidence of advancement. Dispersed arrangements, in councils, lineages, age grades and community institutions were harder for colonial administrators to recognise; difference was often mistaken for an absence of political organisation.
This does not mean every colonial observation was wrong or every indigenous institution effective or democratic. But Lugard’s assessments carried the assumptions and priorities of empire. Eurocentric evolutionary ideas portrayed African societies as primitive, static and lacking history or independent reason, helping justify imperial rule and the supposed civilising mission. His descriptions reveal the limitations of his framework. To read them as verdicts on the relative worth of Nigeria’s ethnic groups is to mistake an imperial perspective for impartial historical judgement.
The third question is more fundamental, dangerous and damaging. Why do we need Lugard to tell us who we are? His writings reflected Britain’s concern to govern African territories, extend its authority and develop their resources. They record colonial perceptions, but an outsider’s account is not necessarily authoritative.
The peoples who became Nigerians had histories, political institutions, laws, philosophies and cultural traditions long before Lugard. Their identities did not await British recognition. Their worth did not depend on a colonial administrator’s assessment.
Yet the colonial gaze outlived colonial rule. Officials classified populations as advanced or primitive, deciding which institutions deserved recognition and which required transformation. These classifications shaped Nigeria’s administration and still echo in arguments about identity, authority and national belonging.
We should not disregard foreign scholarship. Historical inquiry requires credible evidence, whatever the scholar’s nationality. The danger is external validation: treating an outsider’s judgement as more authoritative because it carries the prestige of imperial power. Did Lugard know us better than we know ourselves?
Nor should we dismiss everything he wrote because he was a colonialist. That would be as indefensible as accepting every observation as truth. His assertions must be tested against documentary records and subsequent scholarship. We should acknowledge sound observations and demonstrate where interpretations are flawed.
The immediate task is to separate the historical record from claims attached to Lugard’s name. The larger task is to examine how his understanding of the Fulani, Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo informed his search for political structures through which Britain could govern Nigeria with little resistance and primarily in its own interests. This may reveal more about colonial priorities than the caricatures now circulating online.
Our disagreements should not require a colonial administrator to supply evidence, pronounce judgement or validate conclusions. We have the experience and intellectual resources to conduct that inquiry. We should read Lugard to understand colonial Nigeria, not to obtain a certificate of identity from its former ruler.
Dr Richard Ikiebe is a Media and Management Consultant, Teacher and Chairman, Board of Businessday Newspaper
