Native Courts of Southern Nigeria Protectorate Number About Sixty

By 1903 the Native Courts of the Southern Nigeria Protectorate numbered about sixty. When Mr Justice M. R. Menendez set out to inspect them in 1903 he covered one thousand six hundred miles and the tour took him one hundred and nine days. This growth represented the rapid expansion of the Warrant Chief System from its coastal origins into the whole of the region between the Niger and the Cameroons boundary, covering a vast and diverse territory with highly varied indigenous political traditions.