Нигерия: народы и проблемы. Эдмунд Дене Морель

The importance of the export trade in the products of the oil palm may be gauged by the returns for 1910, which show that Southern Nigeria exported 172,998 tons of kernels and 76,850 tons of oil, of a total value of no less than £4,193,049; and yet the capacities of the trade, especially in kernels, are only in their infancy. Many districts, rich in oil palms are unproductive owing to inaccessibility of markets or lack of transport; in others which supply oil, the kernels, for sundry reasons, among which insufficiency of labour to spare from farming operations no doubt predominates, are not collected, although it is commonly reckoned that three tons of kernels should be available for every ton of oil. In considering these figures, realizing the future potentialities of the trade, and realizing, too, the truly enormous sum of African labour which it represents (every nut is cracked by hand to extract the kernel), one cannot but reflect upon the foolish generalities which ascribe “idleness” to the West African negro, whose free labour in this trade alone gives employment directly and indirectly to tens of thousands in England and in Europe, from the merchant and his clerks, from the steamship owner and his employés on land and sea, to the manufacturer of soap and candles and their allied trades; from the coopers who turn out the casks sent out from England in staves for the conveyance of the oil, to the Irish peasants who collect the stems of the common sedge shipped out to Nigeria from Liverpool for caulking these casks.

      The bulk of the oil is exported to England (£1,191,000 value in 1909), but nearly the entire kernel crop goes to Germany, where it is treated by the big crushing mills. It is possible that this state of affairs may undergo considerable change within the next decade, and the reason for it is, incidentally, of considerable economic interest, as it is of moment to Nigeria. Up to within three or four years ago palm kernels were crushed and the oil almost entirely used by the soap trade, but chemistry has now found a process of refining and making palm-kernel oil edible, as it may, perhaps, do some day for palm oil itself, as a base for margarine, for which coprah and ground-nut oil were formerly employed. This has had as a consequence an enormous widening of the home market, and the soap trade has now to contend with keen competition for the supply of one of its staples. The resultant effect is the initiative of Lever Brothers (Limited), who, finding the need of enlarging and giving increased security to their supplies of the raw material, are, with commendable enterprise, erecting three large crushing mills in Southern Nigeria, the one at Lagos being already in a fair way to completion. If the numerous difficulties they will have to face are successfully negotiated, the ultimate result can hardly fail to be that of transferring the considerable palm kernel crushing industry from the banks of the Rhine to those of the Niger, besides creating a new export trade in oil cake from the Niger to England and the Continent.

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      CHAPTER III

      THE FOREST BELT

      Beyond the deltaic region proper lies the vast belt of primeval and secondary forest of luxurious growth, giant trees, tangled vines and creepers, glorious flowering bushes, gaudy butterflies, moist atmosphere, and suffocating heat. Beyond the forest belt again lies, with recurrent stretches of forest, the more open hilly country, the beginning of the uplands of the North. When an authority on forestry recently wrote that “British Columbia is the last great forest reserve left,” he forgot West Africa. That is what West Africa has continually suffered from—forgetfulness. The resources of the Nigerian forest belt are as yet far from being fully determined, but sufficient is now known of them to show that they are enormously rich. Besides the oil palm and the wine palm (which produces the piassava of commerce) the forest belt contains large quantities of valuable mahoganies, together with ebony, walnut, satin, rose, and pear woods, barwood, and other dye-woods, several species of rubber, African oak, gums (copal), kola, and numerous trees suitable to the manufacture of wood-pulp. Oil-bearing plants abound in great quantities, as do also fibres, several of which have been favourably reported upon by the Imperial Institute. The shea-butter tree, to which I shall have occasion again to refer, is an inhabitant of the dry zone.

      The soil of this forest region is wonderfully fertile, and forest products apart, the possibilities of agricultural development are considerable. The three articles under cultivation by the natives the Administration has of late years done its best to popularize have been cotton, cocoa, and maize. For several reasons maize is an uncertain quantity. The land bears two crops a year, the larger crops ripening in July, but a wet August will play havoc with harvesting and storing arrangements, while the amount available for export must always depend upon local food requirements and available labour. The cultivation of cocoa, for which the humid atmosphere, rich alluvial soil, and abundant shade of the forest region seem peculiarly suitable, has, on the other hand, steadily, if slowly, increased since it was started fifteen years ago. In 1900 the quantity of cocoa exported was valued at £8,622. It had risen in 1910 to £101,151. The efforts made within the last few years by the British Cotton Growing Association, supplemented by those of the Administration, to revive on a large scale the export trade in raw cotton started by the Manchester manufacturer, Mr. Clegg, at the time of the American Civil War, has so far been partially, but only partially, successful. The industry has progressed, but far less rapidly than its promoters hoped. Things do not move quickly in West Africa. In all these questions several factors have to be taken into account, for which sufficient allowance is not made in Europe. For one thing, the really immense amount of labour which the Nigerian population is already required to put forth in order to feed itself and to sustain the existing export trade is not appreciated.

      The idea that the native has merely to scratch the earth or watch the fruit ripening on the trees in order to sustain himself and his family is, speaking generally, as grotesque an illusion as that he is a helpless, plastic creature with no will of his own. The native is on the whole an active, hard-working individual, the ramifications of whose domestic and social needs involve him in constant journeyings which absorb much time, and if his soil is prolific in the bearing of crops, it is equally so in invading vegetation, which has constantly to be checked. He is also a keen business man and a born trader, as any European merchant who has dealings with him will bear witness, and he will turn his attention to producing what pays him best. In that respect he differs not at all from other sections of the human race amongst whom the economic sense has been developed, and he cannot be fairly expected to devote his attention to raising one particular raw material which a certain home industry may desire, if he can make larger profits in another direction. The opening up of the country, the increasing dearness of food supplies in the neighbourhood of all the great centres, the intensifying commercial activity and economic pressure so visible on every side, the growth of population, and the enlargement of the horizon of ideas must necessarily lead to a steady development in all branches of production. But the native must be given time, and the country is one which cannot be rushed either economically or politically.

      No sketch, however brief, of the potentialities of the Nigerian forest belt would be complete without a reference to the labours of the Forestry Department, which owes its initiation to the foresight and statesmanship of the late Sir Ralph Moor. Such reference is the more necessary since the work of the department crystallizes, so to speak, the conception of its duties towards the native population which guides the Administration’s policy. No other department of the Administration reveals so clearly by its whole programme and its daily practice what the fundamental object of British policy in Nigeria really is, and in view of the increasing assaults upon that policy by company promoters at home, on the one hand, and the obstacles to which its complete realization is subjected in Africa on the other, it is absolutely essential that public opinion in Britain should become acquainted with the facts and be in a position to support the Colonial Office and the Administration in combining equity with commonsense.

      Briefly stated, the Forestry Department is designed to conserve forest resources for the benefit of the State—the State meaning, in practice, the native communities owning the land and their descendants, and the Administration charged with their guardianship, and while encouraging any legitimate private enterprise, whether European or native, to oppose the wholesale exploitation of those resources for the benefit of individuals, white or black. It aims at impressing the native with the economic value of his forests as a source of present and continual revenue for himself and his children; at inducing native communities to give the force of native law to its regulations and by their assistance in applying them, to prevent destruction through indiscriminate farming operations and bush fires, to prevent the felling of immature