Nigeria

A

Early States

The northern part of the present territory of Nigeria was the site of organized states during the Middle Ages. By the 8th century the region south-west of Lake Chad was part of the Kanem-Bornu Empire, which in 1086 adopted Islam. By about 1300 Bornu was a flourishing centre of Islamic culture, rivalling the Mali Empire in the west. Bornu reached its zenith as an independent kingdom under Idris Alooma, who extended his rule over many of the eastern Hausa states that had existed in the area west of Kanem-Bornu since the 11th century; the western states fell under the sway of the Songhai empire.

Following the breakup of Songhai and the decline of Kanem-Bornu in the late 16th century, the Hausa states regained their independence and continued to flourish until the early 19th century. The Fulani pastoralists, who then burst into prominence under Usuman dan Fodio, had been established throughout Hausaland (what is now northern Nigeria) since the late 16th century. In the southern part of the country, the Yoruba had their own states in the west, centring on Ife and Oyo; the Edo ruled in Benin in the present south-central parts; and the Igbo in the east, north of the Niger delta. All these people had functioning states before or around ad 1400.

B

British Encroachment

The Portuguese, British, and others established slave-trading stations in the Niger delta area in the 17th and 18th centuries. The interior of Nigeria was first penetrated by Europeans, primarily British, in the late 18th century. The various expeditions were trying to discover the course of the River Niger, with the aim of opening up the region to European trade and influence.

The first significant information about the river was provided by the Scottish explorer Mungo Park, who led two expeditions in 1795-1796 and 1805. He died on the second expedition when he was drowned near Bussa (now submerged under the Kainji Reservoir in western Nigeria), having sailed 1,600 km (1,000 mi) down the Niger in search of its outlet, then thought to be an inland swamp or lake.

C

Expeditions

British-government-backed expeditions in 1821 and 1825, led by naval lieutenant Hugh Clapperton, failed to further Park’s work, as hoped. However, Clapperton, who died on the second expedition, provided the first European account of northern Nigeria. Richard Lemon Lander, who was Clapperton’s assistant on the 1825 journey, and his brother John in 1830 finally completed what Park had begun when they reached the Niger delta from Bussa.

The other great explorer of the Nigerian interior was the German explorer Heinrich Barth. Crossing the Sahara in 1850, he spent the next two years exploring the north of the country, the central section of the Niger, Lake Chad, and the River Benue, whose source he discovered. His five-volume Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa (1857-1858), with its maps and detailed information, was for many years a standard work on the interior.

D

Trade and Colonization

Helped by medical improvements, particularly the effective treatment of malaria by quinine, traders quickly followed explorers along the Niger. The agreements they negotiated with local rulers established British spheres of influence which paved the way for the eventual imposition of British colonial rule. The process of formal colonization started in the 1860s along the coast. During the first half of the 19th century, palm oil, produced in Yorubaland in the south-west and the Niger delta area, had become a major trade item. It quickly became so important an article of commerce that the delta region became known as Oil Rivers. A British consul was sent to Calabar on the delta, and later to Lagos island, to the south of Yorubaland, where British traders were firmly established. In 1861 Britain took full possession of Lagos Island, establishing the Colony of Lagos, which was administered from the Gold Coast Colony until 1886, when it was given its own governor and administration.

British authority was subsequently extended east and west along the coast. After the conclusion of several treaties with local rulers, the British Oil Rivers Protectorate, renamed the Niger Coast Protectorate in 1893, was established over the eastern delta area as far north as the Benue in 1885—the same year as the completion of the Berlin Conference, which precipitated the “Scramble for Africa” by the European powers. The conference agreement stipulated that no new protectorate or annexation along the coast would be recognized unless accompanied by “effective occupation” by the colonizing power; this rule was extended to the interior in 1890.

The kingdom of Benin in the south-west was added to the Niger Coast Protectorate in 1897. After further expansion in the south-east the region was renamed the Protectorate of Southern Nigeria in 1900.

Yorubaland—south-west Nigeria, south of the Fulani emirate of Ilorin—was brought under the effective control of the Colony of Lagos between 1886 and 1896. This was largely as a result of pressure on the British government by Lagos-based traders. Their businesses were being ruined by wars between the various Yoruba states over control of the trade routes through Yorubaland, and thus over European trade with the Fulani emirates.

E

British Control Extended

The extension of British control over the Fulani emirates of the north and north-west began in 1886. In that year a royal charter was granted to the National African Company (NAC)—subsequently renamed the Royal Niger Company (RNC)—empowering it to administer justice and enforce order in areas where it had treaties with local rulers. The company was the brainchild of Sir George Goldie, a former British army officer with an interest in one of the British companies trading along the lower Niger. For several years, Goldie tried to persuade the leading British companies that the best way to resist incursions down the river by French and German rivals would be to combine forces. In 1879 the United African Company was formed; it was renamed the National African Company in 1883.

Thereafter, Goldie turned his attention to the Fulani states north of the NAC’s advance based at Lokoja. To prevent French and German companies moving into the emirates from the north and west he pushed for the company to be given a royal charter, along similar lines to the British East India Company. In 1885 the NAC signed exclusive trading agreements with the emirates of Sokoto and Gwandu. It was these agreements that formed the British claim at the Berlin Conference (then in session) that the Fulani emirates were under its protection. However, the British government had done nothing to make this protection a reality and was reluctant, for cost and staffing reasons, to extend its direct responsibility further north.

The 1886 charter establishing the Royal Niger Company was a solution to this dilemma; in 1887 a British protectorate was formally proclaimed over those emirates that had signed treaties with the RNC. In 1891 a strip of the Niger Coast Protectorate between the company’s headquarters at Asaba and the Niger delta was handed over to RNC administration. In 1897 the RNC conquered the emirates of Nupe and Ilorin near the border with French-controlled Dahomey. With French troops pushing across the border from the west and down the Niger from the north, the British government in 1897 founded the West African Frontier Force (WAFF) to support the RNC in its territorial ambitions. The WAFF was under the company’s control and commanded by Captain (later Lord) Frederick Lugard.

The WAFF held back the French, and in 1898 the present western and northern borders of Nigeria were demarcated. The following year the RNC’s royal charter was revoked. The British government, already paying for the WAFF, felt it should have direct control over the force. Additionally, it had agreed to give the French navigation rights on the Niger between Bussa and the sea. Because of the RNC’s practice of maintaining a trading monopoly within its area of control—in violation of the terms of the royal charter—it was felt to be inadvisable to give it responsibility for enforcing the navigation agreement. The British government took over the administrative and military assets of the RNC at the start of 1900. Lugard was given the task of establishing a British administration over the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria.