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Nigeria Early Development
The Nigerian army traces its historical origins to
three
nineteenth-century military formations. The first dates
from the
establishment in 1862 by Captain John Glover of a small
Hausa
militia (dubbed Glover's Hausas) to defend the British
colony of
Lagos. Its mission was expanded to include imperial
defense when
dispatched to the Gold Coast during the Asante expedition
of
1873-74. Enlarged and officially entitled the Hausa
Constabulary
in 1879, this unit performed both police and military
duties
until 1895, when an independent Hausa Force was carved out
of the
constabulary and given exclusively military functions.
This
demographic recruitment base perpetuated the use of Hausa
as the
lingua franca of command in Ghana and Nigeria, where it
persisted
into the 1950s. It also marked the historical origin of
the
ethnic imbalance that has characterized the Nigerian armed
forces
to this day
(see Regional Groupings
, ch. 2).
In addition to the Hausa Constabulary, the Royal Niger
Company Constabulary was raised in 1888 to protect British
interests in Northern Nigeria. It later provided the
nucleus of
the Northern Nigeria Regiment of the West African Frontier
Force
(WAFF). A third formation, the Oil Rivers Irregulars, was
created
during 1891-92, later redesignated the Niger Coast
Constabulary,
and formed the basis of the WAFF's Southern Nigeria
Regiment.
In 1897 WAFF was founded under the command of Colonel
Frederick (later Lord) Lugard to counter French
encroachments
from the north. By 1901 WAFF was an interterritorial force
composed of the Nigeria and Gold Coast regiments, the
Sierra
Leone Battalion, and the Gambia Company, and commanded by
a small
number of British army officers and noncommissioned
officers
seconded to the force. WAFF was under the Colonial Office
in
London, but each regiment was commanded by an officer
responsible
directly to the local colonial governor. The two regiments
were
consolidated into the Nigeria Regiment of the WAFF when
the
Northern and Southern Nigeria Protectorates were
amalgamated on
January 1, 1914
(see Unification of Nigeria
, ch. 1). These
colonial units fought in World War I, in the German
colonies of
Cameroon and Togo, and in German East Africa. In 1928 the
WAFF
became the Royal West African Frontier Forces, and in 1939
control of RWAFF shifted from the Colonial Office to the
War
Office.
In 1930 the Nigeria Regiment had about 3,500 men.
During the
1930s, as part of a RWAFF reorganization, its four
battalions
were reorganized into six, and the colony was divided into
northern and southern commands; major units were at
Sokoto, Kano,
Zaria, Kaduna, Maiduguri, Yola, Enugu, and Calabar.
Although
Hausa and their language predominated in the infantry and
general
support units, specialists were recruited mainly from the
south.
For example, the signals company required fluency in
English, so
Yoruba were recruited for that unit.
In World War II, Nigerians saw action in Kenya and the
Italian East Africa and Burma campaigns, and Nigeria was
the
assembly and training site for the two West African
divisions
dispatched to Burma. In 1941 auxiliary groups, consisting
of 630
porters organized into three companies for each infantry
brigade,
were also formed. After the war, the auxiliaries were
disbanded,
but some locally recruited carriers continued to be
employed. In
the 1950s, expansion to a two-brigade army was undertaken,
and
specialized combat and service units such as light
artillery,
communications, signals, medical, engineers, and motor
transport
were formed.
In the postwar years, RWAFF resumed its primary mission
of
internal security. Nigerian units undertook police actions
and
punitive expeditions to break strikes, to control local
disturbances, to enforce tax collection, and to support
police
anticrime operations. They also mounted a major internal
security
operation in the Southern Cameroons Trust Territory to
counter
secessionists rebelling against French colonial authority.
In 1956 the Nigeria Regiment was renamed the Nigerian
Military Forces, RWAFF, and in April 1958 the colonial
government
of Nigeria took over from the War Office control of the
Nigerian
Military Forces. Africanization of the officer corps began
slowly
but accelerated through the 1950s. The first Nigerian
officer was
appointed in 1948; by independence in 1960, there were
eighty-two
Nigerian officers, mostly Igbo from the southeast. This
ethnic
imbalance within the officer corps contrasted with that in
the
rank and file, where northerners predominated.
Data as of June 1991
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