How Did Britain Ruined Nigeria

How Britain Ruined Nigeria

In the fateful year of 1884, the Berlin Conference convened (Berlin Conference). The Nigerian natives did not know this, but, because of that meeting and many other factors, they would soon be conquered by Britain, pressured to convert to an alien religion, and would hurt culturally and economically not just during their time as a colony, but even after they achieve independence, with the their future political system inefficient and hard to reform as an added bonus. To begin, this paper’s goal is to reveal the symptoms of Britain's reign over Nigeria and how they continue to be a huge nuisance even today in the form of huge economic, ethnic, and political difficulties.

However, before you can understand the symptoms, you

have to understand the cause(s). To emphasize the significance of one the major ones, here is a quote from a great ABC-CLIO article titled “New Imperialism” (the title of which is what the conquering of Nigeria and many other African and Asian areas/countries is called, during the late 19th century): “Imperial competition became a favorite subject of a nationalistic popular press, and the rise or fall of a political administration could be tied to the success or failure of imperial ventures.” As the quote aptly explains, a very important reason for the conquering was the considerable popularity of conquering, with the most significant others being European countries’ hypersensitivity to status and wanting of secure markets in case of a new depression, militarily-strategic colonies to protect more valuable ones, and relatively safe converting of the native peoples to Christianity (New Imperialism). Nevertheless, there were some dissenting voices: Some clergymen thought that imperialism was immoral and business people and, especially, observant taxpayers much disliked the new taxes that governing an empire would necessitate being put into place and doubted an empire’s profitability (New Imperialism). To synopsize, the New Imperialism was caused by many overlapping economic, religious, and political reasons. Also, even though the majority of Europeans and Americans were in favor of imperialism, there were a few protestors (business people, observant taxpayers, and a few of the clergy).

Now, since the general causations for Britain conquering Nigeria are now understood, this paper can focus on the symptoms of Britain's reign, which is accurately described by Okonkwo, from Things Fall Apart: “[The white man] came quietly and peacefully with his religion.

Now he has won our brothers, and our clan [Umuofia] can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart” (Achebe 176). As this quote clearly describes, British colonialism did tear apart Okonkwo’s clan, and also many others similar to it. By attempting to forcefully convert the natives to Christianity, they destroyed the natives’ culture since culture and religion are usually intrinsically tied (Ogunbado 52). In addition to culturally suffering, Nigeria was also economically suffering, in the form of becoming more and more dependent on exporting and the forming of an increasingly non-creative and non-enterprising workforce (produced by the Britain's colonial governing system) (Duke II). In summarization, while British colonialism did help a few people, the vast majority of Nigerians were, quite frankly, much better off economically and, particularly, culturally without the British ruling

them.

Though Nigeria was able to gain independence and rid itself of the British, it still carried the economic, cultural, and political burden of British colonialism. As for one last quote, this one from a truly didactic scholarly article, “The Impact of Colonialism on the Development of Management in Nigeria”, will work just fine: “In view of [its colonial background], the Nigerian civil service, despite several attempts at modern reforms, has hardly provided a fertile ground for the cultivation of indigenous management principles and theory” (Duke II 69). As this quote accurately describes, because of the its status as a British colony (specifically because of the colonial administrative set up by Britain), Nigeria’s political system is not very efficient or adaptable to change at all. Similarly, because of other measures Britain unfortunately took, Nigeria is still a very poor country today (because of its general lack of development) and has ethnic strife as a major problem (because of its original, artificial colonial borders and many other factors) but almost no believers of the pre-colonial faiths (admittedly greatly assisted by Islam) (Nigeria; Berlin Conference). To condense this sad paragraph into one, sadder sentence, despite the fact that Nigeria received its independence from Britain some 55 years ago, it still greatly hurts economically, politically, and culturally today thanks to Britain (Berlin Conference).

To finally conclude this paper, because of Nigeria’s British, colonial past, it suffered then and even today from rampant economic and societal problems and, after independence, political ones as well. In addition, probably the most ironic thing about Britain’s Nigerian conquest was that, though one of the main justifications for Britain to do it was the idea of making the inhabitants better off and more “civilized”, all it really did was inflict harm on the future country that is still sadly felt today (New Imperialism).