THE PRINCIPAL PRODUCTS OF NIGERIA
The difficulty in estimating the producing capacity of the enormous
territory of Nigeria is not in stating what _natural_ products of
economic value grow there, but what do not. Nigeria is the tit-bit of
West Africa, and practically every form of vegetable growth peculiar
to West Africa, or shared by West Africa with other and less favoured
tropical portions of the globe, is to be found within its extensive
limits. A soil of surpassing richness; numerous waterways, a prolific,
industrious population—all the elements are there to make of Nigeria
under wise management a second if smaller India, but an India unvisited
by drought, or those fearful scourges which are so terrible a drawback to
the internal prosperity of India; perchance a happier, richer India.
With the exception of the oil-palm industry, everything is in its
earliest stages in Nigeria. Development is rudimentary. Deducting palm
oil and kernels, the value of the whole of Nigeria’s exports in 1900—the
only year available—amounted to the relatively small sum of £212,457.
Rubber, ivory, timber, ground-nuts, fibres, coffee, cocoa, gum copal
and shea butter are amongst the other products exported. The white
sweet-smelling flowers of the rubber vine are one of the commonest sights
in the forests of Nigeria. The tree, shrub and vine rubber are all met
with. The value of rubber exported from Nigeria in 1900 was £137,289.
It may increase to almost any figure if the authorities will but take
warning by the sad experience of Lagos, enlist a brigade of trained
rubber-workers to instruct the chiefs in the science of collecting,
and prevent—which they can easily do—grossly adulterated rubber from
leaving the country, and so preserve a high standard of quality, for,
in the present sorry condition of the rubber market, low-class rubbers
are almost unsaleable. Here, again, one is compelled to preach, if it
be for the fiftieth time, co-operation between the officials and the
merchants. In French Guinea, the evils of adulteration (for which, by
the way, the merchants were, I am afraid, primarily responsible) have
been successfully combated by a working partnership, so to speak. It is
not necessary to impose restrictions upon the freedom of the native in
collecting this product in his forests, but it is essential to maintain a
_permanent_ staff of native rubber-collecting instructors. It would cost
very little, and the experiment, if patiently and intelligently pursued,
would give magnificent results.
Next in importance to rubber comes ivory, which, however, must be
regarded as a temporary commerce. Almost the whole of the ivory trade
of Nigeria hails from the Binue region, and for many years Yola was the
principal buying depôt of the Niger Company, as much as forty tons being
sometimes purchased there in the course of the year. The consequences of
the Anglo-German Agreement of 1893 and the Franco-German Convention of
1894 are calculated to greatly diminish the trade. The ivory business
is entirely in the hands of Hausa traders, who make, or used to make,
most of their purchases in the famous markets of Banyo, N’Gaundere, and
Tibati, carrying the teeth overland to the Binue and then conveying them
across the river, to dispose of either at the Niger Company’s pontoon at
Yola or factories at Ibi, Lake Bakundi, Lau, and Amageddi, or at Kano,
where it was sold for cloth and found its way eventually to Europe,
_viâ_ the desert route and Tripolitan ports. This is still done, but,
for the reason stated, the volume of trade is almost certain to diminish
as the years go on. When the ivory is sold to the Niger Company, English
manufactured cloths are purchased in exchange, and this again is bartered
by the Hausa traders against the superior article of native make in Kano.
Sometimes salt, tobacco, copper-rods, and gunpowder are in request
by the ivory traders, instead of cloth. It is always an open question
with Hausa traders which pays them best, the single transaction if they
sell direct at Kano, or the double transaction involved by sale to the
Niger Company. The chief currency of these regions is now the cowry
shell, and cowries have a native market price just like anything else;
for example, a hundredweight of salt will equal 25 heads of cowries, or
roughly 12_s_. 6_d_. When a tusk is brought to the factory it is weighed
on a butchers’ steelyard. The tariff per pound is 10 heads of cowries.
If the tusk weighs, say, 28 lb., it fetches 280 heads of cowries, about
£7, or £560 per ton in barter goods, but the price actually paid for
mixed ivory in the Binue has been under £500 per ton for many years past.
The arrival of an ivory caravan is always the occasion for a great deal
of excitement. Some of these caravans stretch over a mile in length.
First comes the trader and his friends on horseback, followed by the
trader’s wives and the various members of his household. Behind them
come the slaves, weary and footsore (slaves of Hausas be it noted—not of
Fulani), struggling under their valuable loads. The tusks are carried
sometimes on the heads and sometimes upon the shoulders. Of course, these
caravans can only travel in the dry season, for during the rains the long
marches would be attended with enormous difficulty. There are plenty of
tricks in the ivory trade, and our Hausa friend is very fond of putting
heavy substances in the hollow of the tusks, knowing well that if he is
undetected the increased weight will add to his profit. The Hausas call
ivory “owry”[85] and elephants “giwa.” They very often bring the flesh of
the animal, which fetches higher prices in the native markets than beef
or mutton.
Gums, of which there exist many different kinds in Nigeria, also
constitute a source of future riches. There is gum arabic (_Acacia
senegalensis_) which oozes from the bark—much like sap from a venerable
cherry—and the “copals” found in solidified, translucent lumps, by
digging at the roots of acacias, and which sometimes fetch as much
as £80 per ton on the European markets. Very beautiful some of these
specimens are, varying in colour from pale lemon to deep orange-yellow,
and clear as the finest amber. These graceful gum-trees form in many
places a notable feature of Binue scenery, and abound in many parts of
Bornu, and it is not an unusual circumstance for a Bornuese cavalcade,
including several individuals wearing the old-world surcoats of chain
armour which has so excited the interest and curiosity of travellers in
that country, to arrive at a trading-station on the Upper Binue with a
load of gum arabic for sale. The natives of Hamarua (Muri), too, are
noted gum-collectors. As in the case of almost all Nigerian products,
the absence of competition among European purchasers (the Niger Company,
it must always be remembered, has been the sole trader in these regions)
has hitherto prevented the natives from bringing in very large quantities
of gum, and where ivory is to be got, it is hard to induce Hausas to
go in for laborious gum collecting and picking. There can be little
doubt whatever that the gum trade is susceptible of being increased to
thousands of tons per annum. The supplies must be almost inexhaustive.
After many years of assiduous collection, the Kauri pine forests of New
Zealand still furnish 8,000 to 10,000 tons per annum of fossil gum, more
or less similar to the West African “copals.” It can be said without
fear of exaggeration that there are hundreds of thousands of tons of
this valuable product in West Africa waiting to be dug up. One fine
day the fact will be better realised than it is at present, and we may
then expect to see a remarkable development in the product. Among other
valuable trees freely growing in Nigeria, but of which the economic
aspects have not yet been thoroughly studied, two at least deserve
special attention. They are the Kedenia (Kedenya) or Shea-butter tree
(_Butyrospermum_ or _Bassia parkii_[86]—the _beurre de Karité_ of the
French), sometimes, and erroneously, called the tallow-tree, and the
papain or paw-paw (_Carica papaya_). Shea butter has of late appeared as
a regular if small export from the Niger.[87] Large forests of it are to
be found in the Lagos hinterland, and also in Dahomey, where the French
hope to exploit it when their railway enters the zone of production.
Shea butter fetches about £24 to £26 per ton in Europe. It contains
certain medicinal properties of a purgative nature, I believe, and is
said to form a component part of the well-known Elliman’s Embrocation.
By the inhabitants of Nigeria the butter of the Kedenia is held in high
esteem, and is put to a number of varied uses: medicinally, for cooking
purposes, &c. The Fulani dose their horses internally with it, and
also rub it on the sores which the cumbrous high-peaked saddles of the
country frequently produce on the backs of their steeds. The Kanuri, or
Bornuese, use it to light their lamps with, and other tribes believe
it to be a sure cure for rheumatism. There seems to be a possibility
of the shea-butter tree being put to a second use; recent experiments
have shown that the latex furnished by this tree contains properties
similar to gutta-percha.[88] The butter- or tallow-tree (_Pendatesma
butyracæ_), which is often confounded with the shea-butter tree, is an
entirely different tree, belonging to the genus _Guttifera_, whereas the
shea butter is of the genus _Sapotacæ_. The French appear to have been
the first to make any economic use of this tree, and for the first time
last year, when a trial shipment of nuts was forwarded from Conakry to
Marseilles by the leading French firm of merchants in the former place.
The nuts when crushed were found to yield a valuable oil possessing
ingredients which render it particularly applicable for the manufacture
of candles. That wise and brilliant administrator, the late Dr. Ballay,
Governor-General of French West Africa, left a legacy of priceless worth
behind him in the shape of officials reared in his school and imbued with
his sentiments, and M. Cousturier, the present very able Governor of
French Guinea, has taken up this subject of the tallow-tree nut—“lamy”
as it is called—most energetically, in co-operation with the council
of merchants established in that Colony. My latest information on the
subject is that further shipments of “lamy” nuts from French Guinea have
taken place to Marseilles, Hamburg, and Bremen, and that the prospects of
disposing of the nuts to seed-crushers at remunerative prices is assured.
It remains to be seen whether the nut can be produced in adequate
quantities in French Guinea. I have not been able to positively ascertain
whether the tallow-tree occurs in Nigeria, but there is every probability
that it does, and if so, it will be another vegetable product of value to
be added to Nigeria’s long list.[89]
Seldom is it that on village market-days in Nigeria the golden
pear-shaped fruit of the _paw-paw_ does not appear for sale. The natives
look upon paw-paw fruit in the double light of a delicacy and article
of considerable utility. The juicy milk of the fruit, and the large,
handsome leaves contain the singular property of making hard meat tender,
a peculiarity which has given rise to many “travellers’ tales” on the
coast. The toughest steak is rendered soft and agreeable to the palate
by being rubbed with the juice of the paw-paw, or wrapped round in its
leaves. The active principle of the dried juice of the paw-paw is
somewhat akin in nature to pepsin, and is regularly used as a substitute
for the latter in France and Germany. So far, the demand is small, but
there seems every likelihood that it will increase. In connection with
the future development of the paw-paw in Nigeria, it is interesting to
note that a small factory for the preparation of pepsin from this fruit
has been established within recent years in the Island of Montserrat.
In addition to the trees already mentioned, the kola (_Sterculia
acuminata_, sometimes termed the _Sterculia cola_), the gutta-percha,
the giant baobab (_Adansonia digitata_) or monkey bread-fruit tree, and
the bamboo palm (_Raphia vinifera_) must be briefly touched upon. The
kola-nut is to the Fulani, the Hausa, the Kanuri, the Songhay, &c., what
coffee is to the Arab and opium to the Chinese—a never-failing panacea.
So indispensable is the kola to the daily existence of the native of
Northern Nigeria, so enormous the demand, that the Hausa journeys
thousands of miles to the districts of the Niger bend (the Gold Coast
hinterland chiefly), and even to the Gambia hinterland and the valley of
the Senegal, to barter his blue cottons for this much-sought-after fruit.
European science will, no doubt, eventually succeed in so improving the
quality of the Nigerian kola as to make these long journeys yearly less
necessary. Kola plantations should then become a lucrative feature of
Nigerian industry.
Gutta-percha is as valuable an article of commerce, and as greatly
in demand for European manufactures, as rubber itself. In Nigeria
gutta-percha is collected immediately the rainy season is over, the sap
at that time of year flowing more freely from the tree. In coagulating,
the milk assumes a reddish tinge.
The baobab has been aptly termed the monarch of the African vegetable
kingdom. From the bark of the _kuka_, as the Hausas call it, excellent
ropes and strings for musical instruments are fashioned, while the
fruit, when crushed and dried, furnishes the natives with an excellent
substitute for sponges.
[Illustration: A BAOBAB
THE GIANT OF WEST AFRICAN FLORA]
Vast groves of the bamboo palm (_R. vinifera_) exist in many parts
of Southern Nigeria, and although but little utilised at present,
experiments have demonstrated that the fibre derived from the branches
of this palm is capable of producing an excellent and durable bass[90]
somewhat similar in quality to that which is obtained from the allied
spices, the _Raffia ruffia_ of Madagascar, the demand for which on the
European market is already extensive.
Date palms, dum palms, and cocoa-nut palms, lemons, bananas, plantains,
sweet potatoes, yams, sugar-cane, hemp, tobacco, benni seed,[91] pepper,
cassada, castor seed, capaiva—Nigeria produces all these in more or less
abundance, according to the locality, and also ground-nuts and large
quantities of capsicums (red pepper). The valuable indigo plant is widely
cultivated by Hausas and Fulani, and Kano owes much of its wealth to the
dyeing industry carried on by the natives. The native-woven Kano cloth,
dyed a deep indigo blue, is renowned all over Northern, Western and
Central Africa. With European skill, the cultivation of indigo in Nigeria
may possibly have a future before it, although the present outlook is not
encouraging.
The cotton shrub grows luxuriantly in Northern Nigeria, and the cloth
manufactured from it by the natives can favourably compare, for
durability and fineness of texture, with the best Manchester article.
There may yet be a great cotton industry in Nigeria, but the subject of
cotton cultivation in West Africa is sufficiently large to justify a
special chapter.
Ebony, mahogany and other valuable cabinet woods abound in the enormous
untapped forests of Southern Nigeria, and if no peddling restrictions are
placed upon the development of the timber industry, it should reach large
proportions. Sapelli is beginning to have some importance as the foremost
port of shipment for Southern Nigeria timber.
Nigeria also produces cereals in plenty, such as maize or Indian corn,
millet, rice, barley, guinea corn, gero, &c., and on the high plateaux
coffee, tea, and perhaps vanilla could be grown.
As far as minerals are concerned, silver,[92] tin, antimony and stone
potash[93] are known to exist in several parts of Nigeria, but none
of them, save the latter, have been worked. When the country has been
better explored and surveyed, gold and copper may also be found (small
quantities of gold dust are sometimes sold by the Kanuri to Fezzan and
Ghadamseen merchants), but their presence in any extent is at present
problematical.
Tin is known to exist up the Binue, and an English Syndicate has been
formed to explore and report upon the tin-bearing possibilities of
certain districts. The Niger Company are about to start prospecting
operations, and the Germans are also said to be studying the same subject
at Garua.
Such, briefly enumerated, are the chief natural products of Nigeria,
the most fertile and prolific portion of the Central African Continent,
towards which has gravitated a commercial movement from north, east and
west for centuries past. Such eminent authorities, in their respective
ways, as Barth, Nachtigal, Monteil, Thomson, &c., speak in terms of
unbounded admiration of the fruitfulness and the beauty of these regions,
and all the information brought by travellers and explorers of lesser
importance only tends to confirm the assertion of the great geographer
Reclus, that the countries of the Chad Basin are the richest in Africa.