The 1895 federal decree failed because budgets remained under colony control

Evidence

In practice, the 1895 decree was a failure on a number of fronts. The first governor general, Chaudie, found that the military authorities in the Western Sudan continued to act independently. Without control of the budgets of the individual colonies, moreover, the governor general could not deal with economic matters either. … Under Chaudie’s urging, the Colonial Ministry put an end to the military-civilian conflict in 1899, by simply dismembering the Western Sudan to the advantage of the coastal colonies and giving command of all French West African forces to an officer directly responsible to the governor general. The problem of how to finance the infrastructure essential to mise en valeur, however, remained temporarily unresolved. A solution became all the more urgent when Parliament in 1900, in keeping with the dominant economic liberalism of the era, cut off all state subsidies to the colonies. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 131