The Sons Of Lugard

The Sons of Lugard is a brightly written, readable, and thoroughly authentic tragedy/comedy that tells the remarkable story of Lord Lugard, his three negroid adopted sons, and their venture: The Nigeria Holdings. It is a story of treachery and betrayal fueled by greed, selfishness, religious bigotry and ignorance. The Sons of Lugard's strength lies in Ellakkawi's recalling a life that is, at once, recognizable to most Nigerians and yet extraordinary in its scope and texture. In today's harsh, things fall apart scenario of Nigeria, the account offers hope for Nigerians who tremble as they contemplate the geographical entity called Nigeria. The legendary author George Orwell once said that, "What I have most wanted to do thorough out the past ten years is to make political writing into an art. " The Sons of Lugard is an example of where political writing had been turned into an art.

Sir Frederick Lugard ranks as one of Britain most distinguished colonial administrators, although he remains a controversial figure. During his five years as Governor of Hong Kong -- a brief spell in the middle of a long and dramatic career in Africa -- Lugard found in educational reform the scope he needed to make a lasting impression and give play to his imperialist theories and instincts. The University of Hong Kong owes its existence to the initiative and tenacity of Lugard. His purpose in founding the University was to produce a new, highly educated middle class trained in Western technology and the English language: a vanguard of increased British influence in the east. This book paints a very human picture of Lugard as a working governor in the relative stability of Hong Kong against a backdrop of the Chinese empire being torn apart by revolution.

Nigeria is potentially one of the giants of Africa and indeed the world. Myopia and acrebral waste by functional semi-illiterate military dictators in khaki has ruined Nigeria and continues to ruin the country. The instinct of the military is akin to those of armed robbers, as they operate by force of arms over unarmed and defenceless civilians. Military rule imposed by force of arms against unarmed and defenceless civilians is government of the people, not by the people, and not for the people. Civilian rule is not always democratic rule. Civilian rule imposed upon the people by vote-rigging machines called political parties are as effective as guns as an instrument of oppression of the people and looting of the treasury. Civilian government of the people, not by the people, and not for the people, is exactly the same as military government, as they are the masters of the people. The people did not appoint them, and the people cannot sack them. Nigeria should be governed with the best interests of children at the forefront of all that is done. Their anticipated future needs must be the pillar of every plan. Nigerians are the country’s most important natural resource, and will last far longer than its gas and oil reserves. Treat the people well and the country will respond in kind. Above all, give the poor and their children the “tool” they need to fly Nigeria above the dark clouds that cover it.

First Published in 1965. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Originally published in 1974, a comprehensive history of Nigerian Education, from early times right through to the time of publication, had long been needed by all concerned with Education in Nigeria, students, teachers and educational administrators. No one was better qualified than Professor Fafunwa to provide such a book, and in doing so he gave due emphasis to the beginnings of Education in its three main stages of indigenous, Muslim and Christian Education. Nigerian Education had been considered all too often as a comparatively recent phenomenon, but this book points out from the start that ‘Education is as old as Man himself in Africa’ and that both Islam and Christianity were comparative newcomers in the field. A historical treatment of these three strands which have combined to make up the modern Educational system was vital to a clear understanding of what was needed for the future, and most of the first half of the book is concerned with these Educational beginnings. The imposing of a foreign colonial system on this framework did not always lead to a happy fusion of the systems, and the successes and the failures are examined in detail. There was no shortage of documentary evidence in the form of reports and statistics during the decades prior to publication, but this evidence was frequently scattered and inaccessible to the student, so that the author’s careful selection of key evidence and reports, often drawn from his own personal experience, will be invaluable for those wishing to trace the development of Education in Nigeria up to the early 1970s. A knowledge of the history and development of the Nigerian Education system, of the numerous and intensely varied personalities and beliefs which have combined and often conflicted to shape it, is indispensable to all students in colleges and universities studying to become teachers. It is this knowledge that Professor Fafunwa set out to provide, drawing on his wide experience as teacher writer and educationalist.

In the long history of the British Empire there are few stories as singular as that of Margery Perham. From the moment she first set foot on African soil in 1921, to her death over sixty years later, Perham was focused on the ways and means of Britain's administration of its African empire. She acquired an unrivalled expertise in all aspects of this branch of empire: its systems of governance and those who administered them; its economic impact; its geo-strategic implications and its effect on Africans, including their sense of nationalism and attitudes towards the end of empire. From the 1930s until the 1960s it is unlikely that anyone in the administrative apparatus of the British Empire, and almost assuredly anyone in the world of academia, had as nuanced an understanding of how Britain's African empire actually worked as did Margery Perham. Her road into Africa led from British Somaliland in 1921, where she went to visit her sister, the wife of a local British district commissioner. From such beginnings was spawned a career at the centre of British governance of empire. In 1928, as a Fellow of St Hugh's College, Oxford, she was awarded a travelling fellowship, which she used to study colonial administration. So long and thorough was her tour that she had to sacrifice her teaching post, but so expert did she become in the subject that, in 1935, Oxford appointed her research lecturer in the field and a few years later she was appointed the first official and only female Fellow of Nuffield College. For the next 30 years, Perham delved deeply into every aspect of British Africa. She was an adviser to the Colonial Office and became director of Oxford's Institute of Commonwealth Studies. She wrote extensively and prolifically and publicly debated the future of Africa in the press. As the era of African independence and decolonization began, she advised newly independent governments about post-colonial governance and corresponded with leading African nationalists. Appointed DCMG in 1965, Dame Margery Perham died in 1982. Her life provides a unique window into the workings of the British Empire in Africa for most of the time it was fully operational. In this new biography, the first of its kind and based primarily on Perham's extensive private papers, C. Brad Faught tells her life story in all its richness while throwing fresh light on Britain's twentieth-century imperial experience.