ABSTRACT
The extension of colonial authority patterns to the entire Niger basin is synonymous with the “second phase of the overthrow of indigenous authority” in the nationalities that inhabit it (Anene 1966). In Britain, the architects of classical colonial rule in the Niger basin were faced with diverse socio-political circumstances in the indigenous nationalities. However, all of them held fast to a construct quite pervasive at the time amongst Europeans which posits that without proper European supervision and guidance, Africans “were incapable of ensuring good government for their peoples” (Afigbo 1972: 82). This construct is responsible for why policy makers in the British government who subscribed to views by proponents of classical colonial rule in Africa instituted the norm of excluding the inhabitants of the Niger basin from participating in their own governance. But given the relentless energy invested by these advocates of classical colonial rule, one could say that their quest to bring the inhabitants of the Niger basin under a single political umbrella was driven by the desire to exclude them from not just only their own governance but from the process of creating that single political umbrella more then anything else. The desire to exclude indigenes from the task of creating one political umbrella for inhabitants of the Niger basin became the underlying rationale, which informed all the efforts that went into the formulation of the authority patterns as well as influence relations that supported colonial rule in the Niger basin.
