Sir Bryan Sharwood Smith's book ('But always as
friends' published by George Allen and Unwin)
appeared at just the right time for those who wish to
learn something of the problems which General Gowon
and other Nigerian leaders faced in working
out a new constitution for Nigeria after its years of war.
Some of the most important peoples concerned are the
northerners, and in this book written by a man with
immense experience of their background, views and
ambitions the countless facets of the problem are fully
dealt with.
Sir Bryan, who first served in Northern Nigeria as
Asst. District Officer, spent over thirty years there
and it was as Governor of the Northern Region that
he retired in 1957. So he had unrivalled knowledge of
the people both in the country villages and in the later
political conclaves of Parliament and constitutional
conferences. Though obviously full of sympathy for the
Northern point of view, and imbued with great affection
for their way of life, their dignity, courage and
hospitality. Sir Bryan was not one of those who tried
to hold back education and economic development. It
would be truer to say that in his view political development
that was not combined with advances in every
other sphere of life would lead to chaos, and that
gradual orderly progress was worth striving for over the
whole field.
His long service in Nigeria gave him an intimate
personal knowledge of all the northern leaders. He
liked them, could see their faults as well as their virtues,
and as is manifest from this book they liked and
respected him. I have little doubt that it was very largely
due to his personal influence that the events of 1953
first in Lagos and later in Kano did not lead to the
secession of the North from Nigeria, and his personal
friendship with the Sardauna and with Sir Abu Bakr
Tafawa Balewa helped very considerably to facilitate
the difficult relationship between the Federal and
Regional Governments.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book and can confidently
recommend it, even at its considerable cost. He
writes in an easy agreeable way and gives a modest and
almost diffident account of what was an outstanding
career. Perhaps it was paternalistic in essence, but was
it any the worse for that?
|
To visit Northern Nigeria, even in the late Fifties, was
immediately to be transported to Northern India -
but to the India of Kipling and Curzon. Dust, heat,
drought, flies; horses, constant travel, the camp-fire, the
bathwater heated in kerosene-oil tins and smelling of
wood-smoke; a cultivated contempt for comfort, for
deskwork, for theory - all this the two settings have in
common.
In both, the sense was strong of something shared
between British Officer and Muslim leader; both
admired courage, chivalrous hospitality, the repression
of emotional display; both felt it was a man's world,
in which women should be kept in the background.
But identification with Fulani aristocrat and Hausa
peasant was closer for the Nigerian District Officer
than for even the most devoted politcal officer with Afridi malik and Waziri Khassadar.
In Nigeria, it seemed as though the system would last
for ever. The British had undertaken to rule through
the Emirs and not to interfere with religion and they
had kept their word. The Emirs reigned in feudal state;
Sokoto or Kano would put on for distinguished visitors
a display of four thousand horsemen in chain mail,
fief-holders bound to give knight's service, their horses
caparisoned as brilliantly as Saladin's.
The mark of the North was what Bagehot calls
"deference" - a readiness by subordinates to accept the
rule of traditional superiors; it was still strong on the
eve of independence. But Ghana became independent in
1957; in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, the
infinitely remote became infinitely close. Southern
leaders demanded independence for Nigeria at once, and with difficulty were persuaded to postpone their
claim till 1959. Even the Emirs decided that instead of
playing for time they should work for independence
quickly before democracy went too far. This is the
background to Sir Bryan Sharwood Smith's modest
and straightforward account of service in Nigeria.
Through his story shines his liking for Fulani and Hausa
and his understanding - though he tried to reduce it -
of their hostility to the Southerners, Yoruba and Ibo,
who filled the posts of clerks and salesmen and inspectors
- posts for which the qualifications were Standard
VI or Cambridge Pass instead of an ability to recite the
Koran. To the North, they seemed arrogant,
emotionally undisciplined; tyrants in office and yet
truly, for all their modern learning, still slaves at heart -
as the Premier of the North once let slip in an unguarded
moment. This is the background to the killings in the
North and to what has happened in Biafra.
Sir Bryan takes his title from a speech by Sir
AbuBakr Tafawa Balewa, the Prime Minster of Nigeria;
the British, said AbuBakr, we have known "first as masters, then as leaders, finally as partners, always as
friends." Sir Bryan prints a most moving letter to
himself from that great and wise man, in which he
speaks of his weariness of politics and asks if it would be
right to come back to humbler work in the North.
"I appeal to you as a son to a father," he concludes. He
was told that his duty lay where he was - he took the
advice and was murdered.
There are many questions to be asked about British
rule in Nigeria. Should we - and if so, could we - have
moved faster in the North? What strains and stresses lay
concealed beneath the "deference" and the external
calm? Sir Bryan does not answer these questions directly
but without some understanding of the picture he draws
a judgment would be likely to go wrong. He was
paternal in the best sense - a loving father who did his
best to understand.
|