The West African Currency Board was established by the Colonial Office on 6 November 1912 and headquartered in London with a regional office in Lagos. WACB notes (£1, 10/-) and silver coins circulated across British West Africa at full sterling parity. The Board's reserves were held in London gilts.
Colonial1912· £1 = 20s = 240d· Chapter I · Money
West African Pound (£)
Administered by the West African Currency Board (Lagos). Sterling parity. Circulated in Nigeria, Ghana (Gold Coast), Sierra Leone, The Gambia.
Sources
- · WACB Annual Reports 1913–1959 (UK National Archives)
What it cost — political & economic reality
The political and economic reality
Nigeria in 1912: 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.
Redline
Wikipedia is never a source.