SIR JAMES WILSON ROBERTSON, THE LAST GOVERNOR-GENERAL AND THE FIRST HEAD OF STATE IN NIGERIA 

Did you know that Sir James Wilson Robertson, the last colonial Governor-General of Nigeria was once asked 'Why did you (British} leave so soon before the colonial territories were ready to rule themselves?'?

After Nigeria gained her independence on Saturday, 1 October 1960, Sir James Wilson Robertson, KT, GCMG, GCVO, KBE, KStJ represented the Queen as Head of State from 1 October to 16 November 1960. Before independence, he was a British civil servant who served as the last colonial Governor-General of Nigeria from 1955 to 1960.

Born on the 27th of October 1899, Robertson was educated at Merchiston Castle School in Edinburgh and Balliol College, Oxford. He served a Commission in the British Army with the Gordon Highlanders and the Black Watch, and received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree (LL.D.) from the University of Leeds in 1961.

After Oxford he joined the Sudan Political Service from 1922 to 1953, serving appointments in Blue Nile, White Nile, Fung, and Kordofan provinces and was the Civil Secretary from 1945 to 1953. He was then sent to British Guiana in January 1954 by Oliver Lyttelton, the then-Secretary of State for the Colonies to write the Robertson Commission Report to investigate the current crisis in the country due to the election of the People's Progressive Party, who were seen as too friendly with the Communist organisations that had led to the suspension of the constitution. He was then sent to Nigeria as a result of his good work. His first wife was Anne Mueller.

Roberston wrote a memoir, Transition in Africa: From Direct Rule to Independence, published by Hurst, London, in 1974, that reflects on his nearly 40 years in Africa. It provides detail on both his administrative life and personal observations. 

In a final chapter, "Reflections", he accounts the swift collapse and disintegration of so much of what he and his fellow British servants of the Empire had constructed not only in the Sudan and Nigeria, but in all of Britain's former colonial African territories. 

Commenting on foreign concern about post-independence difficulties, he observed: "Americans have asked me: 'Why did you leave so soon, before the colonial territories were ready to rule themselves?' And when I have answered, 'Partly, I am sure, because of your pressure on us to go,' [they] have answered that they did not know then what they know now, and that we should have resisted their pressure." (p. 253)

Many have argued that Nigeria is no better than it was before independence. If anything to go by, the country's economy has worsened with cases of corruption and a culture of waste being the order of the day. In the book: 'The Struggles of Post-Independence Nigeria, Missed Opportunities and a Continuing Conflict', Ucheoma Nwagbara argues that despite Nigeria’s oil wealth and arable agricultural land, Nigerians are not any better today than they were before independence.

Nwagbara examines Nigeria’s struggles with corruption, reckless government spending, poverty, inequality, crime, and violent insurgency to show how successive Nigerian leadership has failed to utilize the country’s enormous natural and human resources to improve citizens’ lives, eradicate poverty, and deliver broadly shared prosperity, especially to the middle class and the poor. 

Through his analysis, Nwagbara demonstrates that the nationalist ideals of dedicated and accountable leadership behind the struggle for independence in Nigeria have been betrayed as the emergent post-colonial leadership cared only for personal survival and gain. Despite these failures, Nwagbara reveals that Nigeria may still have a chance to improve and recover if Nigerians unite and demand real change through political and social activism.

Robertson made a notable contribution to a 1978 Oxford Symposium, Transfer of Power: the Colonial Administrator in the Age of De-colonisation, edited by A. H. M. Kirk-Greene (published, in 1979, by the Inter-Faculty Committee for African Studies, Oxford University), particularly his "The Governor as the Man in the Middle", (pp. 38–43); and "Summary of Discussion", (pp. 50–59). The Last of the Proconsuls: Letters of Sir James Robertson, edited by Graham F. Thomas, was published in 1994. It is a collection of letters Robertson sent to Thomas over 40 years mainly about the problems towards the end of the British Empire.

Robertson, who died on 23 September 1983, is fondly remembered as the man who handed over power from the British to Nigeria's first indigenous president, Mr. Nnamdi Azikwe.