ABSTRACT
The British colonial policies on agriculture in Jama'are Emirate were
all designed to benefit the colonialist in their bid to obtain raw
materials for their factories back home. Because of this the focus of
the colonialist had always been the production of cash crops with the
neglect of food crop. This was to tell on the diet of the people as well
as on the land. Colonialism has to do with the exploitation of not only
the people but also the land and what was produced on it as the most
important factor of production. This fact becomes clear through a look
at the policies as well as the general activities of the colonialists in
this area. Throughout the colonial period evidence abound as to the
importance of the agricultural produce of this area. It is therefore the
aim of this study to bring this issue out by focusing on the
introduction and implementation of the colonial agricultural policies.
Agriculture has always been and still is the major employer of labor in
Nigeria despite the fact that it is being run by the peasants under
peasant conditions. The coming of the British and the importance which
they placed on this sector did nothing to change this fact and was even
perpetuated by them. It is in a bid to investigate this development and
explain why it is so that prompted this study. This arrangement served a
specific capitalist interest of the relationship between the centre and
the periphery. Colonial agricultural policies were designed to take
care of the factories back at the metropole. The British in their bid to
colonize Nigeria never took cognizance of the local needs of the people
in terms of their economic, social, political, cultural and religious
needs. What has proven to be of significance to the development of all
human societies is, the internal factors harnessed as a result of the
ingenuity and the needs of the people. Independence is an important
ingredient in this endeavour. The advent of colonialism sought to
control the resources of the people. They began to dictate to the people
on all aspects particularly as they claimed that they had come to
civilize the people in the so-called â€-civilizing missionâ€-. Under
Frederick Lugard, the first British High Commissioner of Northern
Nigeria, the British venerated the socioeconomic and administrative
model of the pre-colonial Islamic Sokoto Caliphate, especially its
elaborate system of taxation and economic regulation and sought to
preserve and extend it to other parts of Northern Nigeria. In addition,
the British sought to organize, codify, document, and, where necessary,
modify the fluid and malleable systems of land tenure, agricultural
production, and revenue that existed in the protectorate. The
establishment of British colonial administration brought the
introduction of cash crops economy to Nigeria- as elsewhere in Africa.
In line with the British colonial policy of providing raw materials for
the industries of the metropolitan power, Nigeria witnessed the neglect
of the indigenous economic system which made each family self-sufficient
in food and other socio-economic needs.