The colonial administration as a parasite on agriculture: The example of Asaba Division with particular reference to the 1930s

Abstract

One of the major motives of British colonial conquest of Nigeria had been the search for industrial raw materials to feed, their (British) industries at home. However, it is demonstrated in this study that while the agricultural sector in Nigeria was expected to play a key role in the fulfillment of this motive, the sector was deprived of the resources generated within it. The mayor instrument of deprivation in the Asaba Division was colonial taxation with the statutory requirement that half of the general Tax Revenue be paid into the State Treasury. Apart from colonial taxation, the budgetary system ensured that a greater part of whatever that was left was spent on the local administrative bureaucracy, while a scandalously insignificant part of the fiscal. revenue; allocated for Development Expenditure was spent on Agriculture in spite of its status as the socio-economic substructure of the Division. Thus, the fiscal policy and budgetary orientation of the Administration vis-a-vis Agriculture amounted to killing the goose that laid the golden eggs.