Home / News / Local / The consequences of colonialism in Nigeria By Anthony Akubue
Dr. Anthony Akubue

The consequences of colonialism in Nigeria By Anthony Akubue

The attractiveness of Africa in general and the land area that became known as Nigeria in particular to the Europeans was, and still is, the immense natural resource endowment therein. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that Alkebulan, translated “Mother of Mankind” or “Garden of Eden,” was Africa’s original name. Before crude oil and precious metals were discovered in Nigeria, there were palm oil, palm kernel, tin, cotton, cocoa, groundnuts, etc., that the Europeans coveted as trade commodities in the area. The quest to establish their sphere of influence in the area started with George Goldie forming the United African Company (UAC) in 1879, which underwent a penultimate name change to the National African Company (NAC) in 1881, when it was incorporated (granted a royal charter), before becoming the Royal Niger Company (RNC) subsequently in 1886. The presence of the Royal Niger company in the Niger Delta and the real estate around the banks of the Benue and Niger Rivers gave Britain a leverage over France and Germany in gaining control of the area at the Berlin Conference convened by the German Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck from November 15, 1884 to February 26, 1885, to avert imminent war among European countries. The outcome of this conference was European imperial expansion, dubbed the “Scramble for Africa.” The complicity of the Royal Niger Company in what became known as the Brass Oil War in 1895 turned British public opinion against the company, leading to the revocation of the company’s incorporation status in 1899. This culminated in the divestiture of the company’s holdings to the British government for £865,000, or £139,298,043 in today’s value, which included the acquisition of the territory and protectorates that became amalgamated in 1914 as today’s Nigeria. 

The British colonial administration retained the vertical integration approach of the Royal Niger Company of having the manufacture of goods made with raw materials from colonial Nigeria reserved exclusively for the metropolitan factories of Britain. Technological and manufacturing capabilities and industrialization were purposely prevented from gaining traction in colonial Nigeria, and its economy was structured to center entirely on raw material production and export, which is pretty much what we have today in postcolonial Nigeria. 

Today, it seems our leaders, in the last decade, have joined the West in the conspiracy to maintain the absence of technological and manufacturing capabilities necessary for industrialization in Nigeria. One only has to look at the relentless effort of some Nigerian governments and financial institutions to frustrate and destroy Innoson Vehicle Manufacturing Company Ltd., headquartered in Umudim, Nnewi in Idemili South Local Government Area of Anambra State, Nigeria! 

“Infant” industries were sprouting up in the major urban centers in the land before the British arrived. In keeping with the colonial policy of stifling technological and manufacturing capabilities in the colony, these emerging infant industries were readily destroyed to obviate any potential competition with British manufacturing companies from the colony. Simultaneously, the colony was flooded with manufactured goods from Britain, making the colony both a source of cheap raw materials and labor, and an extension market for sales of manufactured goods from British factories. Selling their raw materials cheap and buying the manufactured goods made with their raw materials dear is a prescription for perpetual dependence on Britain and budget deficit.

By flooding the colony with manufactured consumer goods and subsidized farm produce, the British in essence arrested the socioeconomic and technological development and industrialization process of colonial and post-colonial Nigeria. This had the effect of killing off emerging infant industries, innovation, and driving the emerging entrepreneurial class out of the development process. This was in stark contrast to the socioeconomic development and industrialization process of Britain and other European countries, which evolved uninterrupted as they learned by doing through trial and error, and moving one rung at a time up the technological ladder. Failure is an insightful aspect of the learning process. When Thomas Edison was reminded that he failed 10,000 times in his attempts to invent the lightbulb, he retorted that he did not fail but learned 10,000 ways that did not work. 

Unlike what they did in Nigeria, where mostly literary education was emphasized, the British academic curriculum comprised both literary, technical, and vocational education. Literary, technical, and vocational education were considered complimentary rather than contradictory to each other. In colonial Nigeria literary education was deliberately made to look superior to technical and vocational education, to the extent that technical and vocational education were looked down upon. I remember when it was being said that those who could not hack it in literary education shifted to technical, vocational, or trade school education because they were dullards. What a sabotage!  We were impressed by British literary education graduates in Nigeria that were well dressed and working in air-conditioned offices. Seeing this, Nigerian youth aspired to be like them in the future: to work in air-conditioned offices, looking dapper, pushing pen across paper, signing signatures, and producing graduates who can “write but can’t till.” Vestiges of these assimilative effects of colonialism are still evident to this day in Nigeria. Technical and vocational education were falsely and intentionally stigmatized to forestall industrialization, technological, and manufacturing capabilities in colonial and independent Nigeria. Technicians and entrepreneurs are indispensable and necessary for the development of endogenous absorptive capacity, technological, innovative, and manufacturing capabilities. I will focus on the true meaning of technology, technology transfer, and the concepts of indigenous technological capability, absorptive capacity, and internal innovative capability in my next article.

Akubue writes from St. Cloud, MN, USA.

 

About Global Patriot Staff

Check Also

Partnership with Google will turn Nigeria to global tech hub – FG

By Stellamaris Ashinze Lagos, Feb. 13, 2025 The Federal Government on Thursday  said its partnership …

One comment

  1. Nice! Very informative!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *