West African chiefly authority traditionally required popular council consent to function

Evidence

We should recall that the village chief, or the one so-called, is generally nobody and the village council is everything. We will remember that the canton chief is but little if he does not have the support of his private council and the confidence of his cantonal assembly. We should try not to forget that a chief cannot truly exercise power if he has not received the investiture of the competent assembly and that the word of a chief even legally exercising his functions has no value unless it expresses the opinion of the people represented by their traditional spokesmen. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 688

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to arguments over indirect rule — chiefs as merely nominal versus genuinely consensual leaders in British and French African colonial debates.
• CANDY: The memorable inversion — the chief is nobody, the council everything — is a crisp elevator line about actual precolonial governance.