post amalgamation

In 1915 Lugard asked Eleko, the hereditary ruler of Lagos, to urge his people to pay the unpopular water rate, but he refused. Macauley helped Chief Oluwa to bring a test case against the Nigerian government before the Privy Council’s Judiciary Committee, which sided with Chief Oluwa. The Government was ordered to pay £22,500 as compensation for the land, and Macauley won popular acclaim. Also in 1915 Garrick Braide inspired the Christ Army Church with his faith-healing and preaching against alcohol, modern medicine, and native witchcraft. When he predicted German liberation from British rule, he was put in prison, where he died in 1918.

In 1916 the Iseyin-Okeiho rebellion was quelled, and eight anti-British leaders were hanged by Lugard’s orders. That year the British introduced paper currency in Nigeria. Introducing direct taxation into Yorubaland provoked riots in Oyo in 1916 and in Abeokuta in 1918.



The Egba’s treaty was abrogated, and in 1918 war chiefs led 30,000 Egba who tore up the railway, cut telegraph lines, and marched to Abeokuta. About 2,500 WAFF troops suppressed the revolt, killing about a thousand rebels. The influenza pandemic took 250,000 lives in Nigeria by 1919. After leaving Nigeria that year Lugard wrote a manual for colonial rule entitled The Dual Mandate in Tropical Africa that was published in 1922. The Lagos Weekly Record was the newspaper of the Jackson family, and from 1890 to 1930 they promoted self-determination for Africans.




In 1920 J. K. Coker wanted to encourage a Christian movement in Egbaland, and he urged a Christian to take the throne of Abeokuta. That year in Lagos the alliance of the House of Docemo led by Herbert Macaulay gained recognition from the Privy Council in London that land is a right of the community. The educated turned against the Congress and supported Macaulay’s Nigerian National Democratic Party (NNDP) that was only in Lagos, but the Congress had four branches in southern Nigeria. In 1922 Nigeria was given a constitution, but Macauley could not stand for election because of a previous prison sentence.
They wanted self-government for Lagos, more higher education, schools for all children in Nigeria, more Africans in the civil service, and free and fair trade. Nigeria had no modern secondary schools until Katsina College was founded in 1922.