THE COTTON INDUSTRY OF THE NORTHERN 

 PROVINCES OF NIGERIA. 



By P. H. LAMB. 

 Director of Agriculture, Northern Provinces, Nigeria. 



COTTON has been widely grown in the Northern 

 Provinces of Nigeria from time immemorial. When 

 the earliest European travellers first visited the country 

 they found the Hausas dressed in cotton clothes of their 

 own making. Not only was cotton cultivation general, 

 but spinning and weaving were then, as now, most 

 important occupations of the people. Indigo was grown 

 as a field crop, and dye pits were to be found k every 

 village of any size. All this is still going on, in spite oi 

 the advent of the white man and the opening up of 

 markets where cotton goods are offered for sale. The 

 native in many cases still prefers his hard-wearing home 

 spun to the more showy and cheaper, but less durable, 

 Lancashire cloth. As, however, the manufacturer comes 

 to study more closely the requirements of the people, 

 this state of things will doubtless gradually alter. 



The fact that cotton cultivation had been established 

 for so long in Nigeria may lead many people to suppose 

 that the conditions there must be admirably suited to 

 cotton production on a large scale, and it has resulted 

 in most extravagant statements being made to the effect 

 that Nigeria could in the course of a few years supply 

 the whole of Lancashire's requirements. Those re 

 sponsible for such ideas, however, apparently entirely 

 lost sight of the fact that the conditions necessary to 

 enable the native to grow cotton in sufficient quantities 

 to supply his own requirements were very different from 

 those which would enable him to compete in the world's 

 markets. 



All that the Nigerian native wanted was to clothe 

 himself and his family according to the custom of his 



