COLONIALISM, URBANISATION AND THE GROWTH OF ONITSHA, 1857-1960

Abstract

There is no gainsaying that colonialism changed the patterns of urbanisation in Africa. What this means is that there were existing patterns of urbanisation in most African communities before colonial incursions and these have inspired scholarly researches of various depth and volumes. Considering an identified problem in African historiography, which tends to give minimal attention to the exigencies that led to changes in patterns of urbanisation in particular African communities, this paper adopts the historical research method, with effective use of primary, secondary and tertiary sources of data that were subjected to qualitative interpretation, to document and analyse the processes of urbanisation in Africa since colonial incursion, with the commercial city of Onitsha as a study area. The study observes that urbanisation in Onitsha was not necessarily an impact of colonialism. Instead, the colonial administration only effected changes on the pattern of urbanisation in the city. Such changes were precipitated by the colonial economic policies, which among other things, used the inland waterways as effective transport facility for primary produce extracted from the various produce centres around the Niger River. However, other factors of change encouraged rapid urbanisation of Onitsha during colonialism in Nigeria. A conspicuous factor is colonial administrative measures, which saw to the establishment of Onitsha as an administrative city.