The Republic
Federal Budgets

Colonial Nigeria1915· £2,703,257 revenue · £3,434,215 spent· Chapter I · Money

Government revenue and spending, 1915

The first full war year. Trade dislocation cut import-duty and railway revenue, while spending included £632,168 on the Eastern Railway and £155,981 in war costs. Revenue: £2,703,257. Expenditure: £3,434,215.

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Actual outturn as reported after the year closed, not the estimate voted at the start of it.

• Revenue: £2,703,257 • Expenditure: £3,434,215

The first full war year. Trade dislocation cut import-duty and railway revenue, while spending included £632,168 on the Eastern Railway and £155,981 in war costs.

Colonial figures are in sterling; hyphenated years (e.g. 1925-26) are April–March financial years. What counts as 'revenue' changed over time — the railway was included from 1925-26 and excluded again from 1936-37 — so compare neighbouring years with care.

What it cost — political & economic reality

The political and economic reality

Nigeria in 1915: who was in charge, the cabinet of the day, the GDP, and the crises that defined the period.

British colonial administration

Sir Frederick Lugard → Sir James Robertson

1900–1960

National reality

Amalgamation of the Northern and Southern Protectorates (1914) under indirect rule. Marketing boards extracted cocoa, palm oil and groundnut surpluses; political agitation built through the press and the trade union movement.

Crises of the period

  • Aba Women's War (1929)
  • Iva Valley shooting of striking miners (1949)
  • Kano riots (1953)

GDP (World Bank)

Pre-independence; no national accounts series

Cabinet (selected portfolios)

Full ministerial roster being compiled.

Government administered by Governors-General and Residents. The first indigenous federal ministers were appointed under the 1954 Lyttelton Constitution.

Source · Toyin Falola, A History of Nigeria (CUP, 2008)

Methodology

Tier 1 · primary

Courts. Gazettes. National archives.

Tier 2 · corroborating

OCCRP. HRW. BudgIT. TheCable.

Tier 4 · tertiary, flagged

Wikipedia only where primary is pending. Always labelled.