Sir Graeme Thomson

Sir Graeme Thomson (1875–1933) was a career Colonial Office administrator who arrived Lagos in 1925 after a tour as Governor of British Guiana and Ceylon. His Nigerian tenure was dominated by the global slump and the consequent collapse of palm-oil and cocoa export revenues on which the colony's budget depended.

His decision to extend the head-tax regime introduced in the North into the South-East — using the Native Court / Warrant Chief system imposed by Lugard — was the proximate trigger of the Aba Women's War (Ogu Umunwanyi) of November–December 1929. Igbo and Ibibio women in Owerri, Calabar and Aba provinces marched in tens of thousands against Warrant Chiefs and Native Court buildings; at Opobo and Utu Etim Ekpo the colonial police opened fire and killed at least 55 women. The Aba and Birrell Gray Commissions of inquiry that followed were forced to abolish the Warrant Chief system in the South-East and to roll back the planned female taxation.

Thomson was recalled to London in 1931 and replaced by Sir Donald Cameron, who began the reorganisation of indirect rule the Aba uprising had forced on the colonial government.