ULTITI
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
Reference :-
C.O. 885
22 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC-
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It is of stamp of European for the posts of instructor and revenue surveyors. paramount importance that only picked men should be appointed, especially in the school.
Personally I should like to see a retired military or naval officer appointed. I think a suitable officer could be obtained for very little more than it would be necessary to give a picked non-commissioned officer of the Royal Engineers, for the former would be in receipt of a service pension of £200 a year, and would probably be willing to come out on a salary of £400 to £500.
Failing this, a non-commissioned officer of the Royal Engineers should be very carefully selected. I know of several men of the class required, with the necessary experience of tropical service, and the necessary characteristics.
As will be seen on reference to paragraph 18, the non-commissioned officer selected for the post of revenue surveyor of the Kano Province should also be a carefully picked man, as his duties include relief of instructor during leave.
NOTE. Paragraphs 17 to 34 are omitted as being out of date.
35. Expansion of Surrey School. The organisation of the Survey School as with outlined in this memorandum is merely sufficient to supply the Nigeria survey the number of mallams required for land assessment, general surveys, and drafting. I recommend that the school, so soon as it has got into thorough working order, should be expanded to enable it to provide surveyors and draftsmen (the latter especially) for other Government Departments.
The Public Works, Railway, and Marine are in constant need of both good mallam surveyors and draftsmen. Under existing conditions these Departments either train their own men or import them. Either system is bad. In the former there is lack of supervision, owing to the want of a European whose special work is instruction, with the result that slipshod methods are acquired by the apprentices. The system of importing is also bad, for, though a good man may be obtained occa- sionally, the best men do not, as a rule, leave their own country. Hence the men obtained are generally below the average in technical skill, and very often in moral character. The latter fact is of great importance, for the presence in the Protec- torate of the wrong stamp of foreign native cannot but have an injurious and deteriorating effect on the younger generation.
This fact alone, and putting aside the value of systematically-educated mallams, leads me to urge the extension of the school in the near future. Given a second European instructor, there would be no practical difficulties in the formation of special classes for such items as engineering and architectural drafting, railway surveys, and hydrographic surveys,
APPENDIX V.
MEMORANDUM No. 3 ON KANO REVENUE Survey.
NOTE. His Excellency the Governor-General's remarks are in brackets and italic.
Remarks and Proposals by Major F. G. Guggisberg, Acting Surveyor- General, May 3rd, 1913.
(His Excellency agrees with S. G.'s para- graphs 1 to 6.)
1. All the framework will be supplied at first by the Survey Department; when native surveyors are available for the revenue section most of the minor frame- work will be supplied by the section itself. The section will work generally under the Resident, but technically under the Survey Department (see para- graph 3).
2. Much as it is desirable, it will be several years before sufficient native
Proposals by W. F. Gowers, Resident, Kuno, March 14th, 1913.
1. The principle is that the skeleton data are supplied by the Survey Depart- ment, and the details filled in by a locally- trained native staff under the orders of the Emir of Kano.
2. For their training the Survey De partment should be responsible, and their
surveyors will be available to execute the topographical survey.
3. The revenue survey section should be under the general control of the Resi- dent, but the technical side of the work should be entirely under the Survey De- partment. To place partially-trained men, as the mallam assessors will be, under the technical control of anyone but a professional surveyor would be im- possible from a survey point of view (see paragraph 4 of memorandum No. 2). The revenue section should be a survey unit placed entirely at the disposal of the Resident; he would indicate the area of its work, and prescribe its general conduct and dealings with the inhabi- tants; the section would be responsible for executing the survey, and providing the Resident with data in such a form that the land taxes could be equitably assessed.
I do not suggest for a moment that the assessment should be under the Survey Department, merely the technical control of the survey. I should like to alter Mr. Gowers's suggestion that the section should be under the supervision of a Poli- tical Officer, for, no matter how distinctly it was laid down that he should not inter- fere with technical work, it would be against human nature for him not to do so in time. I would rather suggest that the Political Officer charged with assess- ment duties should accompany the section to the district or sub-district where the survey is to be made, should see that the proper machinery for point- ing out boundaries of holdings and villages was present, and having made all arrangements for the smooth working of the section, should content himself with periodical visits of inspection. These visits would become less necessary as the revenue surveyor became more experienced in the customs of the country, and also if he is a university man of the class and training described in paragraph 11 of memorandum No. 2.
With regard to the amount of techni- cal supervision required; this does not depend entirely on the accuracy aimed at, though it may almost be said that the less accurate the survey the more skilled should be the supervision. The adjust- ment of errors, the supervision of survey records, the compilation of revenue maps, all require professional control.
I have no hesitation in saying that if the revenue survey section is not main- tained as a survey unit more than 50 per cent. of its work will lose all permanent
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3.
methods will presumably be so adjusted as to render the work of the native sur- veyors as useful, topographically, as possible.
Their employment will, however, be entirely controlled by the local admin- istration. They should be under the supervision of an officer of the Political Department who has received a special training, as the revenue survey is so inti- nately associated with the administra- tion of the Emirate that dissociated de- partmental control is inadmissible. So is control even by a survey officer placed under the general control of the Resident, unless he is intimately conversant with the customs of land tenure, and the language of the Emirate. The extent of technical supervision required appears to depend largely on the degree of accu- racy required for the cadastral as dis- tinct from the topographical survey.
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