ABSTRACT
Native Administration. I propose to take this opportunity, a orded to me at the opening of the Second Annual Session of the Council since I assumed the Government of Nigeria,1 to refer to the system of Native Administration which has been adopted in the dependency for many years past; a system with which the name of Nigeria has now come closely to be identi ed. It has been the practice in the past – unfortunately, in my judgment – to regard the system of Indirect Administration to which I refer in the preceding words of this Address as a purely administrative part of the functions of Government with which this Council had nothing to do, and should have nothing to do; a very de nite view being held in some quarters that it would be highly impolitic to allow the subject of Native Administration to come within the purview of the Legislative Council at Lagos. is policy appears to me to be a mistaken one for several reasons, and, I submit with some con dence, the view which I thus express is in no manner in con ict with the principle that the interests of a large native population should not be subjected to the will of a minority, whether of Europeans or of educated Africans. In the rst place, if the system of Indirect Administration is a real living, healthy growth, a thing generally desired by the people a ected, it should not fear publicity. I introduced the policy of Indirect Administration into Tanganyika Territory and it would, I believe, have been impossible for the Native Administrations there to attain the measure of success which they have attained (as testi ed, I see, by my successor in his speeches to the Legislative Council and in the last Annual Report of the Territory) if I had not at once taken the Legislative Council, the non-native community and the Press fully into my con dence. A Memorandum on the “Principles of Native Administration and their Application” prepared by myself was / laid before the Legislative Council in Dar es Salaam and I have had
it reprinted here and now lay it on the table of this Council.2 At the suggestion of Mr. C. W. Alexander, c.m.g., then Lieutenant-Governor of the Northern Provinces, copies were furnished to Administrative O cers in Nigeria shortly a er my arrival here in 1931.
