Self-Government In West Africa

West Africa

I Transferred from the British South Pacific Administrations to West lAfrica, Mr. G. L. Barrow found some striking contrasts; and he writes of them most interestingly in the July Corona. Here are some extracts that can be read with profit : PORT HARCOURT (carved out of the jungle, far up the Niger) is a modern town, not only in its streets and its port but also in the people who live there.

One expected to find Africans do ing most things in Nigeria, but it was still a surprise to find just how much they do—in banks and shops one never sees a white face unless one penetrates to the manager’s office, and by no means always there.

In public offices the senior official is [generally a European, but very often he too is an African. It is sur prising to find the extent to which the judicial system is in the hands of African judges and magistrates, but after seeing them work one is soon ashamed of having been sur prised.

Then, in this continent of con trasts, one realises that in the swamps only a few miles away a long-standing feud flared up last year with the cold-blooded massacre of over a hundred innocent fisher men, and the tribes concerned still glare sullenly at each other across the mangroves and would be im patiently fingering the butts of their rifles but for the fact that they are forbidden to possess any. . . .

And when one speaks of self-gov ernment one realises with a slight start the extent to which they are already well able to cope with the everyday business of administration.

Where they fall short is rather in the intangibles—the sense of civic duty and public service which is so inbred a part of British life that we tend to forget what a rare and valu able quality it is; the national out look which overrides local tribe loy alties but which in the last resort will bow to the higher dictates of humanity and moral law; the belief in integrity and justice for their own sake and not merely because they pay better in the face of a vigilant police force and an efficient legal system; and above all respect for human rights, rights which people generally are much readier to scream for on their own behalf than to grant to others.

The TEAL east-bound night to Tahiti early in August carried 105 cases of tangerines and a further consignment of fresh tomatoes from Aitutaki. The tangerines were the first ever to be air-freighted to Tahiti, and sold readily on the Papeete market.

Two students of the Takimoa LMS theological college. Rarotonga, were ordained in August and have been appointed pastors in the Group. Pastor William Masters has been assigned to Titikaveka, Raro tonga, and Pastor Samuel Samuela to Puka Puka Island.