Colonial Nigeria1917· £3,492,738 revenue · £3,219,958 spent· Chapter I · Money

Government revenue and spending, 1917

The highest revenue recorded to that date, despite the loss of about £1.47 million a year in duties on trade spirits. Revenue: £3,492,738. Expenditure: £3,219,958.

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

• Revenue: £3,492,738 • Expenditure: £3,219,958

The highest revenue recorded to that date, despite the loss of about £1.47 million a year in duties on trade spirits.

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 1917: 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.