COLONIAL RULE IN NIGERIA: THE AUCHI KINGDOM ENCOUNTER WITH THE BRITISH COLONIALISTS AND THE IMPACTS

Abstract

The British conquest of parts of Africa in the nineteenth century has attracted a lot of studies. Yet, all scholars involved hold different views, especially as to the role of the indigenous African groups in it. There are those who opine that the Africans who resisted the British were patriotic in spite of the futility of their actions, and the Africans who supported the British are portrayed as collaborators or saboteurs that facilitated imperialism. Other scholars are of the opinion that those who took sides with the British were not necessarily collaborators or unpatriotic elements, but that they merely reacted to the circumstances of the time. The incursion of the British to the Auchi Kingdom was part of their general conquest and occupation of Nigeria which was sequel to the collapse of the Nupe imperial control of the Auchi Kingdom in 1897. This was a deliberate act by which the British sought to guarantee their interest in the South West of the Niger. The intention of this paper therefore is to examine the British colonial rule in the Auchi Kingdom. Attention would be paid to the impact of the British colonial rule in the Auchi Kingdom amidst their exploitative intentions. The paper adopts both primary and secondary sources in its analysis. The paper then concludes that despite the exploitative intentions of the British, they still impacted positively on the Auchi Kingdom, unlike the Nupe that enslaved the Auchi people. As the saying goes “Every cloud has a silver lining”.