The idea that the native has merely to scratch the earth or watch the fruit ripening on the trees in order to sustain himself and his family is, speaking generally, as grotesque an illusion as that he is a helpless, plastic creature with no will of his own. The native is on the whole an active, hard-working individual, the ramifications of whose domestic and social needs involve him in constant journeyings which absorb much time, and if his soil is prolific in the bearing of crops, it is equally so in invading vegetation, which has constantly to be checked. He is also a keen business man and a born trader, as any European merchant who has dealings with him will bear witness, and he will turn his attention to producing what pays him best. In that respect he differs not at all from other sections of the human race amongst whom the economic sense has been developed, and he cannot be fairly expected to devote his attention to raising one particular raw material which a certain home industry may desire, if he can make larger profits in another direction. The opening up of the country, the increasing dearness of food supplies in the neighbourhood of all the great centres, the intensifying commercial activity and economic pressure so visible on every side, the growth of population, and the enlargement of the horizon of ideas must necessarily lead to a steady development in all branches of production. But the native must be given time, and the country is one which cannot be rushed either economically or politically.

No sketch, however brief, of the potentialities of the Nigerian forest belt would be complete without a reference to the labours of the Forestry Department, which owes its initiation to the foresight and statesmanship of the late Sir Ralph Moor. Such reference is the more necessary since the work of the department crystallizes, so to speak, the conception of its duties towards the native population which guides the Administration’s policy. No other department of the Administration reveals so clearly by its whole programme and its daily practice what the fundamental object of British policy in Nigeria really is, and in view of the increasing assaults upon that policy by company promoters at home, on the one hand, and the obstacles to which its complete realization is subjected in Africa on the other, it is absolutely essential that public opinion in Britain should become acquainted with the facts and be in a position to support the Colonial Office and the Administration in combining equity with commonsense.

Briefly stated, the Forestry Department is designed to conserve forest resources for the benefit of the State—the State meaning, in practice, the native communities owning the land and their descendants, and the Administration charged with their guardianship, and while encouraging any legitimate private enterprise, whether European or native, to oppose the wholesale exploitation of those resources for the benefit of individuals, white or black. It aims at impressing the native with the economic value of his forests as a source of present and continual revenue for himself and his children; at inducing native communities to give the force of native law to its regulations and by their assistance in applying them, to prevent destruction through indiscriminate farming operations and bush fires, to prevent the felling of immature trees, to replant and to start communal plantations. It aims at the setting aside, with the consent of the native owners, of Government reserves and native reserves, and at furthering industrial development by private enterprise under conditions which shall not interfere with the general welfare of the country. In a word, the Forestry Department seeks to associate the native communities with the expanding values of the land in which they dwell, so that for them the future will mean increasing prosperity and wealth, the essence of the policy being that these communities are not only by law and equity entitled to such treatment, but that any other would be unworthy of British traditions. It is what some persons call maudlin sentiment, the sort of “maudlin sentiment” which stands in the way of the Nigerian native being expropriated and reduced to the position of a hired labourer on the properties of concessionnaires under whose patriotic activities the Nigerian forest would be exploited until it had disappeared from the face of the earth like the forests of Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, and Eastern Canada.