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Nigeria Development of National Economic Interests to World War II
British rule exacerbated differences of class, region,
and
community in Nigeria. The emergent nationalist movement in
the
19300s was spearheaded by a new elite of business people
and
professionals and promoted mainly by persons who expected
to gain
economically and politically from independence
(see Emergence of Nigerian Nationalism
, ch. 1). The movement first became
multiethnic--although limited to the south--between 1930
and
1944, when the real incomes of many participants in
Nigeria's
money economy fell as a result of a deterioration in the
net
barter terms of trade (the ratio between average export
and
import prices). During the same period, the Great
Depression and,
later, World War II, reduced Britain's investment,
imports, and
government spending in Nigeria.
Once the wartime colonial government assumed complete
control
of the local economy, it would issue trade licenses only
to
established firms, a practice that formalized the
competitive
advantage of foreign companies. Also, wartime marketing
boards
pegged the prices of agricultural commodities below the
world
market rate, workers faced wage ceilings, traders
encountered
price controls, and Nigerian consumers experienced
shortages of
import goods.
Labor activity grew during the war in reaction to the
heavyhanded policies of the colonial government
(see Labor Unions
, this ch.). Among the expressions of labor unrest was a
strike by
43,000 workers in mid-1945 that lasted more than forty
days.
Aspiring Nigerian entrepreneurs, deprived of new economic
opportunities, and union leaders, politicized by the
strike's
eventual success, channeled their sense of grievance into
nationalist agitation. Educated persons, whose economic
opportunities were limited largely to private business and
professional activity, began to demand more participation
in the
colonial government.
Data as of June 1991
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