HISTORY OF NIGERIA

HISTORY

People have lived in what is now known as Nigeria since at least 9000
bc, and evidence indicates that since at least 5000 bc some of them have
practiced settled agriculture. In the early centuries ad, kingdoms
emerged in the drier, northern savanna, prospering from trade ties with
North Africa. At roughly the same time, the wetter, southern forested
areas yielded city-states and looser federations sustained by agriculture
and coastal trade. These systems changed radically with the arrival of
Europeans in the late 15th century, the rise of the slave trade from
the 16th through the 19th century, and formal colonization by Britain at
the end of 19th century. Nigeria achieved independence in 1960 but has
since been plagued by unequal distribution of wealth and ineffective,
often corrupt governments.





A. Precolonial History of the Savanna


Nok Sculpture

Nok Sculpture
This terra-cotta sculpture of a female head was created by Nok
artisans. The Nok people inhabited the Jos Plateau of central Nigeria between
900 bc and ad 200.
The Nok culture, which flourished between 500 bc and ad 200, is the
earliest identifiable civilization in Nigeria’s north; the Nok are also
the earliest of West Africa’s known ironworkers. (Their real identity
unknown, the Nok are named for a village where miners first unearthed
their artifacts.) Their famous figurines—finely crafted people and animals
in terra-cotta—have influenced centuries of central Nigerian sculpture.
Today the art of several central Nigerian peoples continues to reflect
Nok style.











1. The Kanem-Bornu Empire

The northern region’s first well-documented state was the kingdom of
Kanem, which emerged east of Lake Chad in what is now southwestern Chad
by the 9th century ad. Kanem profited from trade ties with North Africa
and the Nile Valley, from which it also received Islam. The Saifawas,
Kanem’s ruling dynasty, periodically enlarged their holdings by conquest
and marriage into the ruling families of vassal states. The empire,
however, failed to sustain a lasting peace. During one conflict-ridden
period sometime between the 12th and 14th centuries, the Saifawas were
forced to move across Lake Chad into Bornu, in what is now far
northeastern Nigeria. There, the Kanem intermarried with the native peoples, and
the new group became known as the Kanuri. The Kanuri state, centered
first in Kanem and then in Bornu, is known as the Kanem-Bornu Empire,
hereafter referred to as Bornu.

The Kanuri eventually returned to Chad and conquered the empire lost by
the Saifawas. Its dominance thus assured, Bornu became a flourishing
center of Islamic culture that rivaled Mali to the far west. The kingdom
also grew rich in trade, which focused on salt from the Sahara and
locally produced textiles. In the late 16th century, the Bornu king Idris
Alooma expanded the kingdom again, and although the full extent of the
expansion is not clear, Bornu exerted considerable political influence
over Hausaland to the west. In the mid- and late 18th century, severe
droughts and famines weakened the kingdom, but in the early 19th century
Bornu enjoyed a brief revival under al-Kanemi, a shrewd military
leader who resisted a Fulani revolution that swept over much of Nigeria.
Al-Kanemi’s descendants continue as traditional rulers within Borno State.
The Kanem-Bornu Empire ceased to exist in 1846 when it was absorbed
into the Wadai sultanate to the east.




2. The Hausa-Fulani

The Hausa cultures, which as early as the 7th century ad were smelting
iron ore, arose in what is today northwestern and north central
Nigeria, to Bornu’s west. The origin of these cultures, however, is a mystery.
Legend holds that Bayajidda, a traveler from the Middle East, married
the queen of Daura, from whom came seven sons. Each son is reputed to
have founded one of the seven Hausa kingdoms: Kano, Rano, Katsina,
Zazzau (Zaria), Gobir, Kebbi, and Auyo. Various Nigerian groups explain
their origins in similar legends involving migrations southward across the
Sahara or from the east or west through the savannas, followed by
intermarriage and acculturation. These legends serve to highlight the
importance of such interchanges in the cultural, economic, and political
development of many Nigerian societies.

However founded, the seven city-states developed as strong trading
centers, typically surrounded by a wall and with an economy based on
intensive farming, cattle raising, craft making, and later slave trading. In
each Hausa state, a monarch, probably elected, ruled over a network of
feudal lords, most of whom had embraced Islam by the 14th century. The
states maintained persistent rivalries, which at times made them easy
prey to the expansion of Bornu and other kingdoms.

A perhaps greater, if more subtle, threat to the Hausa kingdoms was the
immigration of Fulani pastoralists, who came from the west to make a
home in the Nigerian savanna and who permeated large areas of Hausaland
over several centuries. In 1804 a Fulani scholar, Usuman dan Fodio,
declared a jihad (holy war) against the Hausa states, whose rulers he
condemned for allowing Islamic practices to deteriorate. Local Fulani
leaders, motivated by both spiritual and local political concerns, received
Usuman’s blessing to overthrow the Hausa rulers. With their superior
cavalry and cohesion, the Fulani overthrew the Hausa rulers and also
conquered areas beyond Hausaland, including Adamawa to the east and Nupe
and Ilorin to the south.

After the war, a loose federation of 30 emirates emerged, each
recognizing the supremacy of the sultan of Sokoto, located in what is now far
northwestern Nigeria. The first sultan of Sokoto was Usuman. After
Usuman died in 1817, he was succeeded by his son, Muhammad Bello. Militarily
and commercially powerful, the Sokoto caliphate dominated the region
throughout the 19th century.






B. Precolonial History of the Forest and Coast

Nigeria’s oldest archaeological site lies in its forested region, at
Iwo Elero near Akure in southwestern Nigeria. Stone tools and human
remains at the site date from 9000 bc.



1. The Yoruba


Beaded Crowns of the Yoruba

Beaded Crowns of the Yoruba
Beaded crowns and other beaded objects were traditionally used by kings
of the Yoruba, southwestern Nigeria. The Yoruba are known for their
crafts, especially woodcarving and bronze casting, an art form they have
practiced since about the 13th century.
The first well-documented kingdom in what is now southwestern Nigeria
was centered at Ife, which was established as the first of the Yoruba
kingdoms in the 11th or 12th century. Over the next few centuries, the
Ife spread their political and spiritual influence beyond the borders of
its small city-state. Ife artisans were highly skilled, producing,
among other things, bronze castings of heads in a highly naturalistic
style. Terra-cotta, wood, and ivory were also common media.

Shortly after the rise of Ife, the kingdom of Benin emerged to the
east. Although it was separate from the Yoruba kingdoms, Benin legends
claim that the kingdom’s first rulers were descended from an Ife prince. By
the 15th century, Benin was a large, well-designed city sustained by
trade (both within the region and, later, with Europe). Its cultural
legacy includes a wealth of elaborate bronze plaques and statues recording
the nation’s history and glorifying its rulers.

At about the same time as Benin’s ascendance, the major Yoruba
city-state of Oyo arose. Situated northwest of Ife, Oyo used its powerful
cavalry to replace Ife as Yorubaland’s political center. (Ife, however,
continued to serve as the spiritual center of Yorubaland.) When the
Portuguese first arrived in the late 15th century, it was the Oyo who
controlled trade with them, first in goods such as peppers, which they secured
from the northern interior lands and transferred to the southern coast,
and later in slaves. In Oyo, as elsewhere throughout coastal West
Africa, the traffic in slaves had disastrous results—not just on those
traded, who were largely from the interior, but also on the traders. As
African nations vied for the lucrative commerce, conflicts increased, and
other forms of advancement, both agricultural and economic, fell by the
wayside. As a result, when Britain banned the slave trade in the early
19th century, Oyo was hard-pressed to maintain its prosperity. The Oyo
state of Ilorin broke away from the empire in 1796, then joined the
northern Sokoto caliphate in 1831 after Fulani residing in Ilorin seized
power. The Oyo empire collapsed, plunging all of Yorubaland—Oyo, Ife,
and other areas—into a bloody civil war that lasted for decades.



2. The Igbo

In southeastern Nigeria, archaeological sites confirm sophisticated
civilizations dating from at least ad 900, when fine bronze statues were
crafted by predecessors of the modern-day Igbo people. These early
peoples, who almost certainly had well-developed trade links, were followed
by the Nri of northern Igboland. With these exceptions, Igboland did
not have the large, centralized kingdoms that characterized other parts
of Nigeria. A few clans maintained power, perhaps the strongest of which
was the Aro; the Aro lived west of the Cross River, near present-day
Nigeria’s southeastern border, and rose to prominence in the 17th and
18th centuries. The Aro were oracular priests for the region and used
this role to secure large numbers of slaves. The slaves were sold in
coastal ports controlled by other groups such as the Ijo.




C. Colonial Expansion

Compared with other parts of West Africa, Nigeria was slow to feel the
penetration of Europe. Unlike in Ghana and Senegal, no European
fortifications were built along the coast, and Europeans—mostly British—came
ashore only briefly to trade weapons, alcohol, and other goods in return
for slaves. It is not clear what portion of the vast number of slaves
taken from West Africa (estimates range from about 10 to 30 million)
came from Nigeria.

In 1807 Britain abolished the slave trade and enlisted other European
nations to enforce the ban. Britain’s motivations were partly
humanitarian—there was a reform movement at home—and partly economic: The British
Empire no longer had American colonies whose economic growth depended
on slaves, and moreover the rise of industrialization meant Britain
needed Africa’s raw materials more than its people. Consequently, trade in
products such as palm oil, which Europeans valued highly as an
industrial lubricant, replaced the trade in humans. Most of Nigeria’s former
slave-trading states were weakened by the loss of income. A few managed
to continue a much-reduced contraband slave trade until the 1860s.
Others used slave labor to farm plantations of oil palm.

British trading companies such as the United Africa Company took
advantage of the weakened empires and established depots at Lagos and in the
Niger Delta. Meanwhile, explorers such as Mungo Park and Hugh
Clapperton of Scotland, John and Richard Lander of England, and Heinrich Barth
of Germany charted the Niger River and its surroundings. The explorers,
some of them funded by trading companies, laid the groundwork for the
eventual expansion inland of the trading companies. Missionaries also
facilitated the process of replacing the noxious slave trade with
“Christian commerce.” Some inland peoples took advantage of new opportunities
to produce goods for the Europeans, but most resisted and were forcibly
subjugated.



1. The Scramble for Africa

In 1884 and 1885 European powers carved Africa into spheres of
influence at the Berlin West Africa Conference. Britain, its claim to Nigeria
affirmed, moved quickly to consolidate its territory. The colony of
Lagos, first declared in 1861, was expanded, and in 1887 a new
protectorate, Oil Rivers (later the Niger Coast Protectorate), was created in the
Niger Delta. The British also waged bloody and ruthless war on resisting
coastal and forest peoples, particularly in Benin, Nupe, and Ilorin.
Its hold in the south was secure by 1897.

While Britain was consolidating these areas, it granted the Royal Niger
Company a trading monopoly in the north. In return the company agreed
to advance British interests, economic and political. The company set
up headquarters at Lokoja, located at the confluence of the Niger and
Benue rivers in central Nigeria, and extended its trade northwest up the
Niger and northeast up the Benue. Treaties were signed with several
African states, including Nupe, Sokoto, and Gwandu, thus depriving French
and German rivals access to the northern region.

In 1900, with the south secure, Britain revoked the Royal Niger
Company’s charter and declared that a colonial government would administer
Nigeria as two protectorates: one in the south and one in the north.
(Lagos was incorporated into the southern protectorate in 1906.)
Simultaneously, Britain went to war against the Sokoto caliphate in the northwest,
conquering it by 1903. Remaining pockets of resistance within the
caliphate and elsewhere in northern Nigeria were quelled over the next few
years. In 1914 Britain joined the two protectorates into a single
colony, and in 1922 part of the former German colony of Kamerun was attached
to Nigeria as a League of Nations-mandated territory.


2. Indirect Rule

Britain governed Nigeria via indirect rule, a system in which native
leaders continued to rule their traditional lands so long as they
collected taxes and performed other duties ensuring British prosperity.
Uncooperative or ineffective leaders were easily replaced by others who were
more compliant or competent, and usually more than willing to enjoy the
perks of government. Britain was thus saved the huge economic and
political cost of running and militarily securing a day-to-day government.

Indirect rule operated relatively smoothly in the north, where the
British worked with the Fulani aristocracy, who had long governed the
Sokoto caliphate and who were able to administer traditional Islamic law
alongside British civil law. In the south, however, traditions were less
accommodating. In Yorubaland indirect rule disrupted historical checks
and balances, increasing the power of some chiefs at the expense of
others. Moreover, although the Yoruba kings had long been powerful, few had
collected taxes, and citizens resisted their right to do so under
British mandate. In the southeast, particularly in Igboland, many of the
societies had never had chiefs or for that matter organized states.
Consequently, the chiefs appointed by Britain received little or no respect.
In Nigeria’s culturally fragmented middle belt, small groups were
forcefully incorporated into larger political units and often ruled by
“foreign” Fulani, who brought with them alien institutions such as Islamic
law.

The British carried out a few reforms, including the gradual
elimination of domestic slavery, which had been a central feature of the Sokoto
caliphate. They also provided Western education for some of Nigeria’s
elite; however, in the main Britain limited schooling as much as
feasible.

Britain redirected almost all of Nigeria’s trade away from Africa and
toward itself, a move that undermined the northern region’s large,
centuries-old trade across the Sahara. Britain further changed the economy
by introducing new crops and expanding old ones, such as oil palm,
cotton, groundnuts, and cacao, almost all of which were sold for export.
Iron and tin were also mined, and railroads were built to transport
products. Because Britain required Nigerians to pay taxes in cash rather than
goods, most Nigerians had little choice but to grow cash-yielding
export crops or to migrate seasonally to areas where paying jobs could be
found.



3. Opposition to the British


Throughout the early 20th century, Nigerians found many ways to oppose
foreign rule. Local armed revolts, concentrated in the middle belt,
broke out sporadically and intensified during World War I (1914-1918).
Workers in mines, railways, and public service often went on strike over
poor wages and working conditions, including a large general action in
1945, when 30,000 workers stopped commerce for 37 days. Ire over
taxation prompted other conflicts, including a battle in 1929 fought mainly by
Igbo women in the Aba area. More common was passive resistance:
avoiding being counted in the census, working at a slow pace, telling stories
ridiculing colonists and colonialism. A few political groups also
formed to campaign for independence, including the National Congress and
the National Democratic Party, but their success was slight. In 1937 the
growing movement was given a voice by Nnamdi Azikiwe, an Igbo
nationalist, who founded the newspaper West African Pilot.

World War II (1939-1945), in which many Nigerians fought for or
otherwise aided Britain, increased the pace of nationalism. The growing
anticolonial feeling was most strongly articulated by two groups, the
National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC), led by Azikiwe and
supported mostly by Igbo and other easterners, and the Action Group, led by
activist Obafemi Awolowo and supported mostly by Yoruba and other
westerners. By the early 1950s, other parties had emerged, notably the
Northern People’s Congress, a conservative northern group led by the
Hausa-Fulani elite. The regional power bases of these parties foreshadowed the
divisive regional politics that would follow colonialism.

Pressure for independence from within Nigeria was complemented by
pressure from other nations, and from reformers in Britain and in other
colonies. In 1947 the British responded by introducing a new constitution
that divided Nigeria into three regions: the Northern Region, the
Eastern Region, and the Western Region. The Northern Region was mainly
Hausa-Fulani and Muslim; the Eastern Region, Igbo and Catholic; and the
Western Region, Yoruba and mixed Muslim and Anglican. The regions each had
their own legislative assemblies, with mainly appointed rather than
elected members, and were overseen by a weak federal government. Although
short-lived, the constitution had serious long-term impact through its
encouragement of regional, ethnic-based politics.

The constitution failed on several counts, was abrogated in 1949, and
was followed by other constitutions in 1951 and 1954, each of which had
to contend with powerful ethnic forces. The Northern People’s Congress
(NPC) argued that northerners, who made up half of Nigeria’s
population, should have a large degree of autonomy from other regions and a large
representation in any federal legislature. The NPC was especially
concerned about respect for Islam and the economic dominance of the south.
The western-based Action Group also wanted autonomy; they feared that
their profitable western cocoa industries would be tapped to subsidize
less wealthy areas. In the poorer east, the National Council for Nigeria
and the Cameroons wanted a powerful central government and a
redistribution of wealth—the very things feared by the Action Group.

The eventual compromise was the 1954 constitution, which made Nigeria a
federation of three regions corresponding to the major ethnic nations.
It differed from the 1947 constitution in that powers were more evenly
split between the regional governments and the central government. The
constitution also gave the regions the right to seek self-government,
which the Western and Eastern regions achieved in 1956. The Northern
Region, however, fearing that self-government (and thus British
withdrawal) would leave it at the mercy of southerners, delayed the imposition
until 1959.

In December 1959, elections were held for a federal parliament. None of
the three main parties won a majority, but the NPC, thanks to the size
of the Northern Region, won the largest plurality. Sir Abubakar Tafawa
Balewa, head of the NPC, entered a coalition government with the
eastern NCNC as prime minister. The new parliament was seated in January
1960.



D. Independence


Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa

Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa
Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa served as prime minister of Nigeria from
1960, when Nigeria gained independence from British rule, to 1966, when
Balewa was killed in a military coup.
Nigeria became independent on October 1, 1960. In 1961 the Cameroons
trust territories were split in two. The mostly Muslim northern Cameroons
voted to become part of the Northern Region of Nigeria, while the
southern Cameroons joined the Federal Republic of Cameroon.

Regional and ethnic tensions escalated quickly. The censuses of 1962
and 1963 fueled bitter disputes, as did the trial and imprisonment of
leading opposition politicians, whom Prime Minister Balewa accused
dubiously of treason. In 1963 an eastern section of the Western Region that
was ethnically non-Yoruba was split off into a new region, the Midwestern
Region. Matters deteriorated during the violence-marred elections of
1964, from which the NPC emerged victorious. On January 15, 1966, junior
army officers revolted and killed Balewa and several other
politicians, including the prime ministers of the Northern and Western regions.
Major General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, the commander of the army and an
Igbo, emerged as the country’s new leader.

Ironsi immediately suspended the constitution, which did little to ease
northern fears of southern domination. In late May 1966 Ironsi further
angered the north with the announcement that many public services then
controlled by the regions would henceforth be controlled by the
federal government. On July 29 northern-backed army officers staged a
countercoup, assassinating Ironsi and replacing him with Lieutenant Colonel
Yakubu Gowon. The coup was followed by the massacre of thousands of Igbo
in northern cities. Most of the surviving Igbo sought refuge in their
crowded eastern homelands.