ABSTRACT
The Nigerian Forest Authority's assessment of forestry activity in the country during World War II notes that:
[t]he war demand within the country was strictly limited to poles and sawn timber for hutments, buildings and the tin mines, to sawn timber and shooks for boxes and packing cases and to great quantities of fuel made necessary by the concentration of large bodies of men ... for military or production purposes. With the exception of such derived products as paper and matches, it was met for all practical purposes entirely within Nigeria (NFA, 1947: 24).
Referring to the difficulties associated with recruiting labour, the Authority notes disarmingly, that '[t]here were inevitable difficulties in recruiting labour but they were not insurmountable, are normal to the expansion of controlled and localised schemes in a peasant country, and do not require comment' (ibid.: 90). Finally, of the 'manner of meeting deficiencies and increased demands during the war', this voice of official or state forestry observes with minimum comment, not only that 'the private consumer naturally suffered for essential war needs'; but also that' [t]he difficulty, in fact the impossibility, of supplying the small consumer under these circumstances, created an artificial impression of timber and fuel shortage which was not justified in fact' (ibid.: 22 and 80).