The orientation of power and its control within a colony is conditioned largely by the imperial master. However, he has to exist and operate in a dialectical relationship with the precolonial and subsisting structures of power and authority. Colonial rulers depended on the mobilisation of indigenous institutions and personnel as intermediary structures of authority providing the links between them and the masses. Local power was used to ensure the security of the colonial regime and the attainment of its exploitative purpose with little or no cost to the metropolis and in the most convenient manner. In this context, both the representatives of the metropolitan power and the intermediaries recruited locally were partners in the same enterprise. As colonial rule developed and social and political awareness grew in colonial societies, the position of the indigenous sharers of power became increasingly awkward. Motes.
