International records / OpenAlex research

The debate on legal-status abolition

Although George Goldie was responsible for the decree that abolished the legal status of slavery in 1897, the real architect of slavery policy in Northern Nigeria was Frederick Lugard, who was first on the scene in the Sokoto Caliphate in the famous march on Borgu in 1894 to forestall French expansion and thereafter was a confidant of Goldie. The choice of Lugard to head the West African Frontier Force in 1897 kept him firmly in the picture, and when he became High Commissioner of the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria in 1900, he was able to implement his ideas. Six years later, when he was tra…