The Republic
Federal Budgets

Colonial Nigeria1916· £2,943,134 revenue · £3,609,638 spent· Chapter I · Money

Government revenue and spending, 1916

Spending is derived from the 1917 report, which puts 1917 expenditure at £3,219,957, 'or £389,681' below 1916. Export duties were introduced this year. Revenue: £2,943,134. Expenditure: £3,609,638.

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

• Revenue: £2,943,134 • Expenditure: £3,609,638

Spending is derived from the 1917 report, which puts 1917 expenditure at £3,219,957, 'or £389,681' below 1916. Export duties were introduced this year.

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 1916: 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.