ABSTRACT
The art of lying, extensively practised in all epochs, reached a very high state of perfection among the natives of the Northern Provinces of Nigeria. The village head may be a cunning, able, unscrupulous fellow, quite capable of lying to deceive the white man and of oppressing his own people at the same time. Many of the Emirs are great and skilful performers. Of course, occupying the positions they do, having to engage in amicable relations with the highest European officials and generally to conserve an atmosphere of haute diplomatie around them, it is necessary that they should be very expert in the art of polite lying. The art lies in so mixing up absolute falsehood with truths, half truths, appropriate inaccuracies, and exaggerations, as to reduce the mind of the recipient to such a condition of bewilderment and bemusement as to render it incapable, for at least some time, of any action at all outside itself.
