“Nigeria” - from Library of Congress: “Country Studies”

Current population 119 million.

Number of languages estimated at 350 to 400, many with dialects. Most important: Hausa, Yoruba, and Igbo. Hausa major language in north. English official language used in government, large-scale business, mass media, and education beyond primary school. Several other languages also recognized for primary education. Classical Arabic of religious significance in north.

47 percent of population self-identified as Muslims (chiefly adherents of Sunni Islam), nearly 35 percent as Christians, and more than 18 percent as other (almost entirely adherents of indigenous religions).

Slaving: Portuguese; slaves from Oba at Benin; overtaken by Dutch and then British; Britain became the dominant slaving power in the eighteenth century. Its ships handled two-fifths of the transatlantic traffic during the century. The Portuguese and French were responsible for another two-fifths.

Most of these slaves were Igbo and Yoruba, with significant concentrations of Hausa, Ibibio, and other ethnic groups. In the eighteenth century, two polities - Oyo and the Aro confederacy - were responsible for most of the slaves exported from Nigeria. The Aro confederacy continued to export slaves through the 1830s, but most slaves in the nineteenth century were a product of the Yoruba civil wars that followed the collapse of Oyo in the 1820s.

Abolition of Slave Trade in British Parliament, as the result of a moral movement associated with the name of Wilberforce and Fox, 1807; abolition of enslavement in Nigeria under Lord Lugard’s Commissionership, I Jan. 1900 - not entirely effective in relation to familial slaves.

Oyo experienced a series of power struggles and constitutional crises in the eighteenth century that directly related to its success as a major slave exporter. The powerful Oyo Mesi, the council of warlords that checked the king, forced a number of kings to commit suicide. In 1754 the head of the Oyo Mesi, basorun Gaha, seized power, retaining a series of kings as puppets. The rule of this military oligarchy was overcome in 1789, when King Abiodun successfully staged a countercoup and forced the suicide of Gaha. Abiodun and his successors maintained the supremacy of the monarchy until the second decade of the nineteenth century, primarily because of the reliance of the king on a cavalry force that was independent of the Oyo Mesi. This force was recruited largely from Muslim slaves, especially Hausa, from farther north.

The legitimate trade in commodities attracted a number of rough-hewn British merchants to the Niger River, as well as some men who had been formerly engaged in the slave trade but who now changed their line of wares. The large companies that subsequently opened depots in the delta cities and in Lagos were as ruthlessly competitive as the delta towns themselves and frequently used force to compel potential suppliers to agree to contracts and to meet their demands. The most important of these trading companies, whose activities had far-reaching consequences for Nigeria, was the United Africa Company, founded by George Goldie in 1879 […] Under Goldie’s direction, the Royal Niger Company was instrumental in depriving France and Germany of access to the region. Consequently, he may well deserve the epithet “father of Nigeria” which imperialists accorded him. He definitely laid the basis for British claims.

Lagos adopted as a colony in 1861; Parliamentary report in 1865 urged British withdrawal from West Africa. Colonies were regarded as expensive liabilities, especially where trading concessions could be exercised without resorting to annexation. Attitudes changed, however, as rival European powers, especially France and Germany, scurried to develop overseas markets and annexed territory

Berlin Conference of 1885:  Inevitably, imperial ambitions clashed when the intentions of the various European countries became obvious. In 1885 at the Berlin Conference, the European powers attempted to resolve their conflicts of interest by allotting areas of exploitation. The conferees also enunciated the principle, known as the dual mandate, that the best interests of Europe and Africa would be served by maintaining free access to the continent for trade and by providing Africa with the benefits of Europe’s civilizing mission. Britain’s claims to a sphere of influence in the Niger Basin were acknowledged formally, but it was stipulated here as elsewhere that only effective occupation would secure full international recognition. In the end, pressure in the region from France and Germany hastened the establishment of effective British occupation.

Continued expansion of the protectorate was accomplished largely by diplomatic means, although military force was employed to bring Ijebu, Oyo, and Benin into compliance with dictated treaty obligations. The conquest of Benin in 1897 completed the British occupation of southwestern Nigeria. The incident that sparked the expedition was the massacre of a British consul and his party, which was on its way to investigate reports of ritual human sacrifice in the city of Benin. In reprisal a marine detachment promptly stormed the city and destroyed the Oba’s palace. The reigning oba was sent into exile, and Benin was administered indirectly under the protectorate through a council of chiefs.

Charter of the Royal Niger Company terminated in 1899 as inadequate to occupy Sokoto Caliphate.

Frederick Lugard, who assumed the position of high commissioner of the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria in 1900. His aim: to obtain recognition of the British protectorate by its indigenous rulers, especially the Fulani emirs of the Sokoto Caliphate. Means: use of Royal West African Frontier Force (RWAFF) in 1903 secured capitulation of Sokoto; establishing indirect rule; The old chain of command merely was capped with a new overlord, the British high commissiones.

Regularisation of emirate finances and creation of separate purse; limited the activity of missionaries to maintain Muslim domination.

S. Nigeria becomes a protectorate from 1906. Failed search for indirect rulers; control in hands of colonial officials who antagonised local tribes, espec. Igbos.

Lugard in Hong Kong, 1906-1912; Unification of Nigeria 1914; estab. Nigerian Council, 1916; loose affiliation; in the North Christian missionaries were barred and education efforts harmonised with Islamic instituttions.

High Commissionership of Hugh Clifford, 1919-25, tending to centralise power in British administrative hands, a policy disputed by those influenced by Lugard.  

The Colonial Office, where Lugard was still held in high regard, accepted that changes might be due in the south, but it forbade fundamental alteration of procedures in the north. A. J. Harding, director of Nigerian affairs at the Colonial Office, defined the official position of the British government in its continued support of indirect rule when he commented that ‘direct government by impartial and honest men of alien race . . . never yet satisfied a nation long and . . . under such a form of government, as wealth and education increase, so do political discontent and sedition.’

The ideological inspiration for southern nationalists came from a variety of sources, including prominent American-based activists such as Marcus Garvey and W.E.B. Du Bois. Nigerian students abroad joined those from other colonies in pan-African groups, such as the West African Students Union, founded in London in 1925.

Political opposition to colonial rule often assumed religious dimensions. Independent Christian churches had emerged at the end of the nineteenth century because many European missionaries were racist and blocked the advancement of a Nigerian clergy.

Samuel Adjai Crowther as the first Anglican bishop of the Niger; too lax; succeeded by a British bishop.

Earliest nationalist came from among teachers and lawyers; National Youth Movement led by H.O. Davies and Nnamdi Azikiwe; leader in Herbert Macauley, ed. of Daily News; ascendancy of NYM in Leg. Council (fnd. 1922), 1938; NYM agitating for dominion status within the British Commonwealth of Nations, 1938.

Nigeria’s first political party to have nationwide appeal was the NCNC, founded in 1944 when Azikiwe encouraged activists in the National Youth Movement to call a conference in Lagos of all major Nigerian organizations to ‘weld the heterogeneous masses of Nigeria into one solid bloc.’

1946 a new constitution was approved by the British Parliament and promulgated in Nigeria. Although it reserved effective power in the hands of the governor and his appointed executive council, the so-called Richards Constitution (after Governor Arthur Richards, who was responsible for its formulation) provided for an expanded Legislative Council empowered to deliberate on matters affecting the whole country.

The Northern People’s Congress (NPC) was organized in the late 1940s by a small group of Western-educated northern Muslims who obtained the assent of the emirs to form a political party capable of counterbalancing the activities of the southern-based parties.

The Action Group arose in 1951 as a response to Igbo control of the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) - now led by Azikiwe -  and as a vehicle for Yoruba regionalism that resisted the concept of unitary government.

Separate bodies in three regions; formally self-governing in 1957; ethnic tensions

The most dramatic event, having a long-term effect on Nigeria’s economic development, was the discovery and exploitation of petroleum deposits. The search for oil, begun in 1908 and abandoned a few years later, was revived in 1937 by Shell and British Petroleum. Exploration was intensified in 1946, but the first commercial discovery did not occur until 1956, at Olobiri in the Niger Delta. In 1958 exportation of Nigerian oil was initiated at facilities constructed at Port Harcourt. Oil income was still marginal, but the prospects for continued economic expansion appeared bright and further accentuated political rivalries on the eve of independence. Port Harcourt estab. for oil export.

Election of the House of Representatives after the adoption of the 1954 constitution gave the NPC a total of seventy-nine seats, all from the Northern Region; governor’s Executive Council merged with the Council of Ministers in 1957; The preparation of a new federal constitution for an independent Nigeria was carried out at conferences held at Lancaster House in London in 1957 and 1958 and presided over by the British colonial secretary.

In 1959 election of enlarged House of Representatives Abubakar Tafawa Balewa asked tor form coalition government.

ENG312C2 - University of Ulster