There was a suspicion that the British were more instinctively inclined towards the north. Fredrick Lugard was believed to have harbored contempt for the educated and Europeanized Africans of the south, and had once recommended moving the capital from Lagos to the northern city of Kaduna. Even if this bias was not based in fact, it was widely believed to be true by Nigerians. The Nigerian Civil War of 1967 was a direct result of these tensions. As early as 1912, the British socialist E.D. Morel observed that the “Southern Nigerian system is turning out every year hundreds of Europeanized Africans,” but the “Northern Nigerian system aims at the establishment of an educational system based upon a totally different ideal.” Nigeria has remained a seething pool of diverse — and often conflicting — peoples due in part to its arbitrary construct by its colonizers (Kwarteng,
There was a suspicion that the British were more instinctively inclined towards the north. Fredrick Lugard was believed to have harbored contempt for the educated and Europeanized Africans of the south, and had once recommended moving the capital from Lagos to the northern city of Kaduna. Even if this bias was not based in fact, it was widely believed to be true by Nigerians. The Nigerian Civil War of 1967 was a direct result of these tensions. As early as 1912, the British socialist E.D. Morel observed that the “Southern Nigerian system is turning out every year hundreds of Europeanized Africans,” but the “Northern Nigerian system aims at the establishment of an educational system based upon a totally different ideal.” Nigeria has remained a seething pool of diverse — and often conflicting — peoples due in part to its arbitrary construct by its colonizers (Kwarteng,