The successful implementation of the Lugardian system of indirect rule among the Igbo eluded British colonial officials. In Northern Nigeria the British had effectively used the Fulani aristocrats in implementing the system. The Fulani were believed to represent a superior caste of nomads who possessed superior ideas of centralization, organization, and administration. Since the Aro were able to organize their spectacular slave- trading network in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the British assumed that, like the Fulani, they represented equally superior elements, and so could be used to implement the indirect rule policy in Igboland. Or, if they did not possess a centralized administration as the Fulani, which could be effectively utilized, one could be invented for the occasion.As a result the Aro began to agitate British colonial officers and anthropologists, designing to show their “foreignness” to the Igbo. British officials quickly rejected that the Aro were Igbo. Because the Igbo were acephalous the British had regarded them as very “primitive,” thus incapable of any remarkable organization or innovation. Since colonialism justified itself by the contention that, left alone, Africans were incapable of any meaningful advance, it was only logical for the British to look outside Igboland and Africa for the origin of the Aro. Consequently, Aro colonial historiography became suspect.
Debating Diya: Indirect Rule and the Transformation of Islamic Law in British Colonial Northern Nigeria