A Timeline of Nigerian Independence

For many centuries, numerous tribes and peoples existed in the territories of what is today called “Nigeria”. Time saw the rise and fall of different kingdoms and states, and the constant evolution and dissolution of porous borders between the different peoples. The collective trajectory of this region has always been influenced by a dynamic confluence of internal and externals factors. To sketch a brief timeline of some of these factors that came together to produce the conglomeration known as “Nigeria”, as well as the march of events that led to the transfer of the political power of attorney known as “independence”, is the purpose of this essay. In view of the immensity of information about this subject, this work is naturally not exhaustive.

Motives for colonization

Primary Parties:

1. Christian missionaries: wanted the areas converted to anti-slavery and ultimately to ideas of Christian civilization. They were willing to undertake this task themselves, but felt it would be easier with protection and assistance from British political and military resources. 
2. British trading interests: lobbied for British intervention to regulate the chaotic situation in the Niger region arising from increased competition among British firms and the monopolistic practices of indigenous middlemen, particularly in the coastal states of the Bight of Biafra. 
3. British politicians: began to see the need for a stronger political presence in the Nigerian region as French and German traders and military expeditions moved dangerously close to the British sphere of influence, especially around the navigable rivers of the interior: the Niger and the Benue. 

Proposed strategies for achieving interests:

1. Intermediary action with sovereign indigenous leaders (e.g. treaties).
2. More direct political control.

Timeline to Independence

1450-1850: Contacts with Europeans on the coast result in monumental changes to the political, economic, and social institutions of southern Niger-area states. The trade in slaves dominates relations between “Nigerians” and Europeans at this time, changing the histories of four continents as goods and people engaged in a growing transatlantic trade. 

1804:  Usman dan Fodio fled from Gobir after an attempt was made on his life when relations deteriorated between him and the king of Gobir, owing to the latter’s refusal to institute sweeping Islamic reforms. Dan Fodio prepared his followers for jihad and initiated a revolution against the recalcitrant king that resulted in the creation of the Sokoto Caliphate in Northern Nigeria. 

1805:  Mungo Park, the first European to discover that the Niger river flowed to the east, journeyed from Timbuktu to the Niger. 

1807:  British abolition of the slave trade. Although the trade in slaves continued from southern Nigerian ports for another forty years, trade in palm oil and others forms of commerce expand rapidly. 

1833:  Fall of the Oyo empire that marks the beginning of sixty years of instability and war among Yoruba states in the southwest. 

1841:  The Niger Expedition marks the firm attempt by Europeans and African Christians to spread Christianity into the interior of Nigeria. In 1846, the Church Missionary Society (CMS) missionaries establish a mission at Abeokuta. 

1851:  Direct British interference in Lagos politics begins, when missionaries in Abeokuta convinced John Beecroft (British consul for the Bights of Biafra and Benin) to use his military power to unseat Kosoko, the reigning King of Lagos, in favor of a rival claimant, an Egba royal named Akitoye. Hoping to stabilize the region for the spread of “legitimate” commerce and open Lagos as a port to Abeokuta for the expansion of British missionary and trading enterprise, Beecroft ordered the bombardment of Lagos in December 1851, forcing Kosoko to flee.

1853:  In a meeting of the Bonny Court of Equity (established by the consul whose function was to protect British interests), John Beecroft deposed King Pepple of Bonny, who had been a thorn in the side of British trading interests for years. Pepple’s successor, Dappo, was forced to sign a treaty that made the court of equity the supreme judicial authority in Bonny, prevented the king from engaging in trade himself, and prevented the king from waging war without the approval of the British supercargoes. 

1854:  Dr. William Balfour Baikie led a successful expedition in conjunction with the establishment of the Niger Mission in the Niger delta under Samuel Ajayi Crowther. Baikie’s expedition made use of quinine as a prophylactic against malaria, which made it possible for Europeans to survive in the interior of the region.

1856:  A court of equity was established in Calabar to settle disputes between British firms and local traders. The court was comprised of a group of voting members, a majority of whom came from the major British firms, with the British consul himself as chairman. Due to the make-up of the court, decisions rarely favored local dealers. The Calabar court was based on a similar court established by John Beecroft in Bonny in 1850. 

1857: Macgregor Laird established the first steamer business on the Niger. This opened the possibility for British firms to bypass the coastal middleman who had dominated trade for centuries, and proved that interior trade on the Niger could be profitable. The consequence was an increased interest by firms to penetrate further into the interior. 

1861:  British annexation of Lagos as a Crown Colony. 

1879: George Goldie successfully amalgamated different British trading expedition firms into a single company…United African Company (UAC), and then acted as the firm’s agent in the territory of the Niger area. Goldie’s attempt to secure a government charter was denied in 1881, partially due to concerns about the undercapitalization of the UAC for the expense of genuine colonial administration.

1882: To begin addressing the administrations concerns of lack of capital, Georgie Goldie raised capital and formed the National African Company (NAC), that bought up the UAC and its interests. 

1884:  Germany annexes the Cameroons, and was encroaching upon Calabar and the Benue from the east. 

1884-85:  British consul Edward Hewett traversed the coastal region from Calabar into the western delta. Through the power of his office, he convinced local rulers to sign his treaties of protection. The treaties gave the UK political sovereignty over the signer’s territory, allowed the British to conduct foreign relations on the part of the ruler, and to interfere in local politics in the interests of “peace” and free trade. King Ja Ja of Opobo signed the treaty warily and with reservations.

1884-85:  Berlin Conference on African colonization. The existing NAC operations in the Niger region, as well as its influence (signing hundreds of treaties with local leaders), allowed Goldie to successfully argue for the region’s inclusion into the British sphere of interest. 

1886:  Based on the outcome of the Berlin conference, the British government grants the National African Company a charter. The NAC then transformed into the Royal Niger Company (RNC), which monopolized trade in the Niger basin. 

1887:  King Ja Ja of Opobo exiled to the West Indies for abrogation of Treaty of Protection. 

1891:  Sir Claude Macdonald developed a governing structure for the territory the British were gradually controlling, and began its first consul general. 

1893:  Establishment of a British protectorate over Yoruba territories in the southwest.

1896: Britain’s acting Consul-General in the region, James Phillips, set off for Benin City on a military expedition despite requests from Oba Ovonramwen to postpone their visit. On January 12, the British delegation was ambushed by an Edo force that killed almost the entire party.

1897: Benin Expedition was a punitive expedition by the United Kingdom led by Admiral Sir Harry Rawson in response to the ambush of the British-led party under James Phillips. Dawson’s troops invaded, destroyed, and looted Benin City, exiling Oba Ovonramwen and claiming many of artwork within the royal palace as spoils of war; thus bringing an inglorious end to the west African Kingdom of Benin. Much of the country’s artwork and bronzes can be found in museums today.

1898-1909: Ekumeku underground resistance movement fights against the RNC and British colonial rule. 

1899:  Letter from the British foreign office to the Treasury in June 1899 cites the Anglo-French Convention of 1898 (the Borgu Convention) as the principal factor begin the revocation of the RNC charter. Other factors mentioned in the letter included the need for imperial control of the Frontier Force, complaints of other firms against the Company’s monopoly, and the effect of the monopoly on African traders. 

1900: The charter of the Royal Niger Company was revoked by warrant signed by Queen Victoria, and the RNC became the Niger company. On January 1, 1900, its assets and territories was transferred to the British government for the final sum of £856,895, of which £556, 895 was paid directly to the company. Furthermore, the government agreed to pay the company one-half of all royalties on minerals produced in much of the former Niger territory for a period of 99 years. Therefore, Nigeria effectively started as a business transaction. 

1900: Creation of the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria. Extension of the northern protectorate concludes in 1903 when British forces conquer the Sokoto Caliphate and deposed Caliph Attahiru who fled. Not content to allow the head of such a vast empire to possibly reconstitute himself elsewhere, Lugard’s forces pursued Caliph Attahiru and killed him on July 27 at the Second Battle of Burmi, some 200 miles southeast of Kano on the river Gongola. 

1902-3:  The Aro Expedition, part of the British effort to “pacify” the hinterlands of eastern Nigeria. 

1908:  Protests in Lagos against the water rate, fueled by the reporting of journalists such as Herbert Macaulay, often called the “father of Nigerian nationalism”. 

1912:  Establishment of the Southern Nigeria Civil Service Union, later renamed the Nigerian Civil Servants’ Union. 

1914: Sir Frederick Lugard, as British governor, announces the creation of the new colony of Nigeria, amalgamating the protectorates of Northern and Southern Nigeria and the colony Lagos and abolishing the independent Egba kingdom encircled by it. 

1914-18:  Nigerian troops aid the British cause in the First World War. 

1919:  Lugard returns to the UK; subsequent governors are less committed to his theory of indirect rule. 

1920:  National Congress of British West Africa (NCBWA) founded, representing Africans in four colonies, and sends a deputation to London calling for moves to self-determination, an African Appeal Court, and a West African University; Herbert Macaulay is a delegate. 

1921:  Katsina Training College starts training teachers in a center of Islamic scholarship, the first impetus for western education in the north. 

1922-23: Establishment of the Clifford Constitution, which allowed for elected representation in the governance of Nigeria for the first time through the newly formed Legislative Council of forty-six members, twenty-seven officials, and nineteen non-officials. Of the non-officials, three were to be elected by adult males in Lagos and one in Calabar. The introduction of the elected principle led to the formation of the political parties in Nigeria, the first of which was formed in 1923 and called the Nigerian National Democratic Party (NNDP), led by the late Herbert Macaulay.

1925:  West African Students’ Union (WASU) founded. 

1929-30:  The “women’s war”, or Aba riots, in southeast Nigeria. Led to reform of native courts and an end to imposition of warrant chiefs. 

1931: Establishment of Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT). 

1934: Yoruba businessmen create the National Bank of Nigeria. 

1936:  Nigerian Youth Movement (NYM), a political organization of young nationalists in the Lagos area, is founded. 

1937:  Nnamdi Azikiwe launches the West African Pilot in Lagos, campaigning against racism and advocating self-governance. 

1938:  Following attempts by the NYM to develop a united nation out of the different ethnicities in the country—and thus uniting north and south, southern Nigeria is split in two  by the British for administrative purposes, with the eastern capital in Enugu and the western in Ibadan. 

1939-45:  Nigerian troops play an active part in the Second World War, in East Africa and Burma; Nigeria is a staging-post for supplies from North America for the war effort in the Middle East; Britain depends heavily on tin and other commodities; nationalists are frustrated that Churchill rules out independence for colonial peoples in Allied war aims. 

1944:  Nnamdi Azikiwe founds the NCNC, the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (later Nigerian Citizens), which quickly becomes an influential political party pushing for independence for Nigeria from British colonial rule. In the same year Mrs. Olufunmilayo Ransome-Kuti founds the Abeokuta Ladies’ Club, later renamed the Abeokuta Women’s Union (AWU), to lobby against the injustices of colonial indirect rule. 

1945:  Labor unions, strengthened during the war, call a general strike that results in wage increases and a ten-year plan for economic development. 

1946: The Richards Constitution enacted, providing a central legislature and dividing Nigeria into three regions: North, West, and East. This is the first set of constitutional reforms that ultimately leads to independence for Nigeria. The constitution, criticized in the south and north, strengthens regionalism but does not promote elections. 

1948:  First university in Nigeria established in Ibadan. University College, Ibadan, is founded as an extension of the University of London. 

1948-49:  Northern People’s Congress (NPC), founded in a Zaria reading room and becomes the germ of a political party in the north, is under the leadership of Tafawa Balewa, Aminu Kano, and Ahmadu Bello (the Sardauna of Sokoto). 

1951:  The MacPherson Constitution amends the Richards Constitution, strengthening the regional system, introducing elections, and moving Nigeria closer to independence. Obafemi Awolowo founds the Action Group (AG), a Yoruba-dominated political party in the southwest on the basis of cultural association, which threatens the dominance in southern nationalism of Azikiwe’s NCNC. 

1954:  The Lyttleton Constitution establishes a federal government system for Nigeria, and enables regional governments to set their own dates for self-government; east and west become self-governing in 1957, the north in 1959. 

1956:  Petroleum discovered in the Niger delta region; Shell-BP Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited has initial monopoly. 

1958:  The Willink Commission looks into the question of minorities and human rights; it argues against creation of more states and for an independent electoral commission, but is too close to independence to have binding force. 

1959:  Elections conclude with Northern People’s Congress (NPC) gaining a majority of seats, making Tafawa Balewa the first elected prime minister of a sovereign Nigeria. 

1960:  Nigeria becomes independent from the United Kingdom on October 1, under a government led by Tafawa Balewa and the NPC from the north in alliance with Azikiwe’s NCNC (now strongest in the Igbo east). Azikiwe (initially President of the Senate) becomes ceremonial Governor-General of the Federation of Nigeria at independence, until the country became a republic in 1963, when he became president.

~Ikenna Q. Ezealah

References (* indicates whence timelines are drawn):