The Second Colonial Occupation: Development Planning, Agriculture, and the Legacies of British Rule in Nigeria

The issue of development in Africa is an extremely lively discourse, not only among academics but also among development experts and politicians. Using extensive archival data both in Nigeria and the United Kingdom, Bekeh Ukelina puts development in historical perspective by arguing that the problems of development in contemporary Africa cannot be understood without understanding its antecedents in the late colonial period. The book focuses on colonial development planning in Nigeria, and discusses how ideological bias and structural imbalances within the colonial system explain the failure of development planning, and the subsequent trajectory of development processes in Nigeria. Tracing the late colonial development approach to Joseph Chamberlain’s ideology of “constructive imperialism,” Ukelina explores colonial development shifts from the 1890s to the 1940s and suggests that Chamberlain’s idea of constructive imperialism called for increased investment in the colonies in the 1890s. This idea, according to Ukelina, was rejected by the imperial government and the first phase of the colonial occupation continued to be characterised by imperial exploitation of colonies without any substantial resource investment.