This is a gem of a book, beautifully produced and engagingly written. Anyone
seeking a graphic account of what a District Officer was about in the
remotest corners of empire could do no better than read John Hare's memoir of
his service in Northern Nigeria. Hare had the good fortune not only to spend all
of his service in district administration but most of it in remote, mountainous,
rarely visited, 'one man' stations, such as Tangale Waja in Bauchi and Gembu
on the Mambilla Plateau. His only encounter with the capital was as provincial
marshall to the Bauchi contingent attending the self-government durbar In 1959.
That Involved getting the 1000 participants and camp-followers, 300 horses and
20 camels the 220 miles to Kaduna, looking after them en route and organising
them for the great day, very much a one-off but out of the ordinary task.
Clearly this was the sort of adventuresome life Hare wanted, and while he never
complains, his account brings out factors common to district administration in the
wilder parts of nearly every colony at at least some stage in its development: the
loneliness; the physical demands of constant trekking over difficult terrain; the
all but non-existent communications; the problems of maintaining basic
supplies; the lack of medical facilities; and, above all, the inevitability and
appropriateness of being a jack of all trades and of having to take decisions
without the option for consultation. This is district administration at its lowest,
most basic and most enjoyable level, a job that only those who have
experienced it can really begin to understand, and soon we shall all be gone.
As he demonstrates, much of what Hare was doing would have seemed totally
familiar to his few predecessors over the previous fifty years but the
extraordinary thing about his experience was that half his service was
undertaken after independence and all of it within a period when Nigerian
ministers were responsible for local government. That tells us a lot about Northern Nigeria upon which Hare himself only comments indirectly. We British
were only there for sixty years in a governing capacity and throughout that time
administering through indirect rule. Among the peoples Hare administered were
those who had escaped or resisted Fulani overlordship, some so remote in their
mountain fastnesses that he could still be the first European to visit or to be seen
by any but the oldest men. For a variety of reasons western education had not
caught on in Northern Nigeria as it had in the South and at independence there
was a massive dearth of qualified personnel to take over from departing
expatriates. Interestingly, Hare's service covered the five years in each of which
30 men were selected on a provincial quota basis for training as administrative
officers at the Institute of Administration, Zaria. Some were teachers, some had
clerical and executive grade experience and others had proved their potential in
a variety of ways. They were to hold the fort until graduates came on stream.
Nearly all were married with families and would not have welcomed the postings
Hare enjoyed so much. When the first graduates were appointed they expected
secretariat or provincial headquarters postings and ministers were anxious that
their own officers be seen alongside them rather than be hidden in the remotest
bush. Although Hare handed over Gembu to a Nigerian graduate successor it
was not long before another young expatriate, a graduate VSO by this stage,
followed him - and this was well into independence.
I have two regrets. Among his several useful appendices, including one
explaining why he joined the Overseas Service, is a final one with the first
chapter of Genesis in Pidgin English. Pidgin belonged to the Southern rather
than the Northern Cameroons and was never used in Northern Nigeria. The
Pidgin Genesis was a such regular expatriate party turn in the centres Hare
scarcely visited, and so would not have known, that it really belongs in an
entirely different type of book, of which there have been several, and could
detract from the seriousness with which Hare's account deserves to be paid by
academic researchers. Selfishly, I also regret that he chose to tell us nothing
about his fifteen months national service as a subaltern with the 5th (Nigerian)
Battalion of the Royal West African Frontier Force and nothing about his exploits
in Nigeria after resignation. But given his renowned later championship of wild
camels and crossing of the Gobi Desert, I am grateful that the army posted him
to Nigeria rather than to the mounted camel brigade of the Somaliland Scouts for
which he had volunteered - fortunate for Nigeria subsequently and for those of
us who have the chance to read this delightful account of his service there.
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