this is just an opinion poll thing.

referencing the development of South Africa, Do you think that the British left us to ourselves too early?

Would we have fared better - infrastructure wise etc.

whats your take?

current situation was intended.

Don't think so.
The cave mentality of most of we blacks made us to be in this stagnant position.

The didn't leave early but our rulers became corrupt too early.

The British left TOO LATE. They should have left in 1925 or thereabouts. Why? Because they did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING for the country in terms of infrastructure, or developing state institutions. Unlike in South Africa where they clearly re-invested the proceeds of exports (because there was a white population), in Nigeria, all they did was export our resources and keep the profits in England. Which was why after 80 years of exporting our cocoa, tin, groundnuts, rubber, palm oil, iron ore, etc, we had just half a university to show for it at independence, no serious infrastructure worthy of the name, apart from a few good roads in GRA and Ikoyi, electricity generation for the entire country stood at a pitiful 270 megawatts, meaning 90% of the country had never seen a light bulb, a total of 49 hospitals served 50 million Nigerians (while 11 served the colonial officers) and an illiteracy rate of 92% which was why most of our grandparents were stark illiterates and peasants.

Independence was the BEST THING to have happened to Nigeria.

ROSSIKE: The British left TOO LATE. They should have left in 1925 or thereabouts. Why? Because they did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING for the country in terms of infratstructure, or developing state institutions. Un;ike in South Africa where they clearly re-invested the proceeds of exports, in Nigeria, all they did was export our resaources and keep the profits in England. Which was why after 80 years of expoorting our cocoa, tin, groundnuts, rubber, palm oil, iron ore, etc, we had just half a university to show for it at independence, no serious infratstructure worthy of the name, apart from a few good roads in GRA and Ikoyi, electricity generation for the entire country stood at 270 Meagawatts, meaning 90% of the country had never seen a light bulb, and an illiteracy rate of 92% which was why most of our grandparents were stark illiterates.

I think you have a point. But what they left behind was enough for our leaders to build on.

It's also not fair that you compare south Africa to Nigeria because the colonialists never left. They built South Africa for themselves without thinking that one day the blacks will take over the political leadership of the country.

afam4eva: The didn't leave early but our rulers became corrupt too early.

Our leaders learned any corruption they knew from the British. It was the British who for 80 years LOOTED the resources of the country and banked the profits overseas, no questions asked. How is that any different from what some Nigerian leaders later did? Don't pretend that corruption only started when Nigerian leaders came to power. If anything corruption REDUCED DRASTICALLY when Nigerians came into power. THAT'S how corrupt the British were. Didn't Nigerian leaders invest in education, building thousands of schools, hospitals and roads right after independence? If the British had been in charge they would have simply siphoned all the funds like they'd done for 80 years.

afam4eva:
I think you have a point. But what they left behind was enough for our leaders to build on.

But our leaders 'built on' what they left behind. Plus more. What exactly did they leave behind?

It's also not fair that you compare south Africa to Nigeria because the colonialists never left.

They never left, but as at 1960 South Africa was more or less a developed country. Why? Because the colonialists re-invested the nation's profits in the country, unlike Nigeria in 1960 which was a barren, undeveloped, malnourished wasteland despite a century of exports of major commodities.

Fact is the British looted the country dry, as they did their other black colonies, and any nostalgia for them is based on little more than colonial inferiority complex and ignorance as opposed to a clear-headed appraisal of their tenure in power.

It's not fair to say that the British left nothing behind. The early years of development that towns like Lagos, Calabar and some others experienced were made possible by the British. But that's not to say they didn't plunder our resources for the Queen.

afam4eva: It's not fair to say that the British left nothing behind. The early years of development that towns like Lagos, Calabar and some others experienced were made possible by the British. But that's not to say they didn't plunder our resources for the Queen.

Excuse me be what development are you talking about? Have you seen pictures of Lagos and Calabar from the late 1950s? These places were little more than glorified villages.

Broad Street Lagos 1950s (Note the barefoot pedestrians) [img]http://1.bp..com/-bscdHm5N65M/SxN3pU99XJI/AAAAAAAAB0U/s4aLcgWI4bk/s1600/02-broad-street-lagos-1951.jpg[/img]


Same street, 1970s
..........................................

Meanwhile, this was Johannesburg in the 1950s under the same British. Why did Jo'burg look like this at the same time Lagos looked like a village, even though the British had been ruling and exploiting both countries for the same period?

Easy: In SA they had a white population, so the British decided not too steal so much money. In Nigeria, the population was black, so the British did not consider the people worthy of any investment.




Now if places like Lagos, Kano, Calabar etc were looking like this in the 50s (as they SHOULD HAVE LOOKED) nobody would have been clamouring for independence. Zik, Awo and co would not have risked their lives to sack the colonial govt. It was because of the gross neglect and looting by the British that Nigerian nationalists were desperate to get them out.

Your premise for this question is wrong:
[size=14pt]The British Never Left[/size]
I know this sounds contradictory, but think about it a little more and you will realize how true.

Nautillus: this is just an opinion poll thing.

referencing the development of South Africa, Do you think that the British left us to ourselves too early?

Would we have fared better - infrastructure wise etc.

whats your take?

Slave mentality, some might call it BUT; looking at were we ARE as a nation today and were we COULD have been had they remained...

i think we MIGHT have fared better.

my 2 cents

koruji: Your premise for this question is wrong:
[size=14pt]The British Never Left[/size]
I know this sounds contradictory, but think about it a little more and you will realize how true.

hmmmm...how do you mean?

Nautillus: Slave mentality, some might call it BUT; looking at were we ARE as a nation today and were we COULD have been had they remained...

i think we MIGHT have fared better.

my 2 cents

YOU are indeed suffering from a slave mentality. PROVE that we would have been better off with your white masters still ruling. And NO - their skin colour does not constitute proof.

torkaka: british or no british a man like ebere jonathan can never think past his brain capacity!!

Bros, this one no konsan Jona nah...

To a large extent, i'll agree with ROSSIKE.

Nautillus:

Bros, this one no konsan Jona nah...

if nigeria was producing good leaders we wouldn't be in this mess would we?

The people who Built South Africa (the White Settlers) saw SA as their Own land, they Fought with the British, shed Blood, and used the blacks to Build SA.... They never realy saw SA as a place they'll leave.. To them, SA was their Home.... After the Discovery of Diamond and Gold, the British took over from the White settlers and that was when the Building of SA really started! The Money gotten from their Resources was used to Develop SA!
Down here in Nigeria, the British had all the ownership, no Serious Challenge or Fightback whatsoever from Nigerians.... They Did just as ROSSIKE said, took all our Resources to build their own Country!
My point is, they left too soon O, they left too early O, it would have still remain the same thing, unlike SA, where the White Settlers were fighting for what they called their new Home!

afam4eva: To a large extent, i'll agree with ROSSIKE.

Thank you very much. You see, many people make the mistake of assuming that simply because a group of people are of a certain race or nationality, that they would 'do a good job' in any given situation. But that is just an illusion. They would do a good job ONLY IF THEY CONSIDER IT TO BE IN THEIR INTEREST TO DO SO. If they DO NOT consider it in their interests to develop your territory, they can rule you for 2000 years and your country will still be a dump.

Same applies to NOT doing a good job. Rulers (of whatever hue) will do a terrible job IF they reckon THAT to be in their interest. Building a modern nation is not rocket science.

I think the issue is not so much the time of leaving as it is the manner in which they left; they practically left us at each others throats, and with so much mutual suspicion simmering beneath the surface (with some ethnic leaders even bold enough to voice openly their hate and suspicion of others); they served a purpose while here of being a sort of 'umpire'......keeping us from tearing into each other, and ruining the country with our elite that weren't prepared for selfless leadership and seeing the whole country (rather than their ethnicity) as their constituency; but most importantly, they left us with a country created solely to service their needs.....a country of strange bed-fellows, built on faulty foundations, the consequences of which we're still grappling with today.

Typing with my phone.

They should never have stepped foot in this region. They left too late. They had all the time to teach our politicians divisive politics and the art of corruption because they stayed for too long.

afam4eva: To a large extent, i'll agree with ROSSIKE.

I think I will have to agree with him too. Damn! Jo'bug looking better even in the 50s than many cities in naija @ present!

Nautillus: this is just an opinion poll thing.

referencing the development of South Africa, Do you think that the British left us to ourselves too early?

Would we have fared better - infrastructure wise etc.

whats your take?

We would never have fared better.
Maybe someone like you would never have had the opportunity to go to university, or even secondary school, if they were still around.

DC Trendy:

I think I will have to agree with him too. Damn! Jo'bug looking better even in the 50s than many cities in naija @ present!

All is the word.

I thank God 4 dis thread. Wat Rossike said is wat I have been trying to explain to some of my friends. In south Africa and other western countries, blacks were used to build their economy. South Africa was a very sad case because white settlers from all over Europe came to look 4 gold. D weather was good, and some hit it big time. D black population were forced to work as slaves on their own land, and any black man dat struck gold was killed.

@rossike, u do have wonderful points, infact I am learning a lot from this thread.

But the problem is u seem to have a lot of hatred for whites, way too much hatred. And thats not good for anybody.

Besides, if the op has a slavery mentality then u have a devil causative one, no offence meant.

U know we are not perfect angels neither are europeans devils who introduced corruption. Heck! They didn't even introduce slavery.
Corruption and slavery existed in africa long before the europeans came.
Their way of life that we adopted might have increased corruption but it definitely did not start it.

So please try to balance ur ideology. Nobody's perfect. They might have had some negative influence but they also had positive ones.

inurmind: @rossike, u do have wonderful points, infact I am learning a lot from this thread.

But the problem is u seem to have a lot of hatred for whites, way too much hatred. And thats not good for anybody.

Besides, if the op has a slavery mentality then u have a devil causative one, no offence meant.

U know we are not perfect angels neither are europeans devils who introduced corruption. Heck! They didn't even introduce slavery.
Corruption and slavery existed in africa long before the europeans came.
Their way of life that we adopted might have increased corruption but it definitely did not start it.

So please try to balance ur ideology. Nobody's perfect. They might have had some negative influence but they also had positive ones.

Dude, I think you should spend your time and energy pondering the effects of colonialism on our people, as the thread title suggests, rather than checking for whether anyone is hurting the feelings of whites here. People come on here and attack Goodluck Jonathan and the Nigerian govt everyday, calling them all sorts of unprintable names, but I'm sure you don't accuse them of ''hating blacks''. But when we call out the British on their crimes, we must hate whites? You need to check yourself.

AjanleKoko:

We would never have fared better.
Maybe someone like you would never have had the opportunity to go to university, or even secondary school, if they were still around.

Very well put. I always tell people when they start this their stuff about how badly Nigeria has supposedly 'failed', that if the British were still in power, statistically, they'd still be in their villages, illiterate, tilling the soil, or at most hunters, carpenters, shoemakers, truck pushers, tailors, or palm wine tappers, not Jeep driving, designer wearing, MSc holding IT engineers, telecoms experts and doctors talking garbage about Nigeria having ''failed'' them.

Today the average Nigerian can decide to leave the country and settle in America, UK, Germany etc, on the basis of the education he received under Nigerian rule. That was unheard of under colonial rule for all but a very tiny few. My grandad could not decide to check out to America in his day, 'for greener pastures'. He didn't even know where America was. All he knew was the way to his farm. And the way to the bush to hunt for prey. And yet someone will come out and say that things were better under colonialism? Better how?

I thought it was obvious, but here goes:
The British never left because rather than hand over the nation to those who really wanted independence and fought for it, they rigged elections to install a government headed by those who had rejected independence. Guess who the latter were supporting - their British masters. The same group of people constituted most of the British force in Nigeria. It would come as a surprise to many that the British never had to use its own soldiers in large numbers to perform their dirty work in West Africa. In Nigeria they found willing fiefdom heads & peoples who became trained in the "colonial" ways.

That generation of "Replacement Colonialists" have never been replaced in Nigeria.
The "Black" British simply took the baton from the "White" British.
Find the Video of Tafawa Balewa and listen to it then read the comments.
You will note that the most common comment was "how British" he sounded.
Find the video of Sardauna ranking the type of people he would employ in the North: 1) Northerners; 2) If we cannot find qualified northerners, he said to the British reporter, we will employ expatriates like yourself. Southerners, in Sardauna's eyes, count or not at all after the British - the "Black" and "White" British - perfect together.
For modern-day examples note how every so often our government official's beg the British to do something for Nigeria because - and this is the part you need to pay attention to - because they were our "former colonial masters". Just the other day, Mr. Senate president said those exact words!!!
There are many more instances of the unmbilical cord attachment to the "crown".
That line of command led directly through most of our rulers down to Mr. GEJ himself - they were all "Black" British.
I recently heard a person describe our rulers as follows - "they behave like aliens who have been sent to take the resources and destroy the country before they leave for home". I think that is a perfect description of the British in Nigeria and our successive governments since dependent independence.
Hence, I submit that the British never left - the "White" British simply "stepped aside" for the "Black" British.

Nautillus:
hmmmm...how do you mean?

koruji: Your premise for this question is wrong:
[size=14pt]The British Never Left[/size]
I know this sounds contradictory, but think about it a little more and you will realize how true.

They did not have to come in the first place. Do not know of any Nigerian community that invited them.Nice pictures of Johanesburg does not translate to the developement of the indigenous population.Infact,the British did not develop South Africa. The Boers,believing they were indigenes of South Africa,did.There is noplace in the world,without a substantial European population, that was developed by them.Almost four hundred years in the Indian subcontinent did nothing for them. What of he West Indies with her long history of slavery and colonialism?Now contrast enclaves like Hong Kong and Singapore. The relative developement in place like Malaysia today was after the British left.They actually arrested the natural course of development for most,if not all,African socieities.