IMPACT OF BRITISH COLONIAL AGRICULTURAL POLICIES ON JAMA’ARE EMIRATE, 1900-1960

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Author

Presented To

Department of Arts

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 ―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.