VI.

History

Little is known about the history of Nigeria in ancient times, but archaeologists have discovered evidence of a Neolithic (c. 800 bc-ad 200) culture at Nok, south-west of the city of Jos in central 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.

F.

The Protectorates

Neither of the two protectorates was under full British control at the time of its establishment. It took another 20 years to establish effective British administration over all of the territory of the original British Oil Rivers Protectorate (1885); Igboland resisted until 1906. It was also not until 1906 that Lugard completed the incorporation of Bornu in the north-east into the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria. The entire area of present Nigeria was, however, acknowledged to be British under agreements with Germany and France made during the 1890s.

In 1906 the governments of Lagos and of the Protectorate of Southern Nigeria were amalgamated to form the Colony and Protectorate of Southern Nigeria. In 1912 Lugard, who had been pushing for the amalgamation of the northern and southern protectorates, was made governor of both. In 1914 he achieved his ambition of a united Nigeria when the two administrations were merged as the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria. For administrative purposes the country was divided into the Colony of Lagos and the Northern and Southern provinces.

Lugard became the governor-general of Nigeria. He retired in 1919; his successors until independence were all known as governors. During his years as Governor of the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria, Lugard had had too few British staff to rule the region directly. Instead, he utilized the sophisticated administrative and tax-collection systems of the Fulani emirates to control northern Nigeria in a system known as indirect rule. The emirs were left to rule their peoples within certain limits of British law (such as the prohibition of slavery) and under the supervision of a British resident attached to each court. The emirs were also allowed, as Native Authorities, to keep up to half the taxes collected in their emirates—provided they kept proper accounts and budgets. The other half went to the small central administration to finance services, such as roads, railways, and medical facilities, considered best provided by the British.

As governor-general of the whole country, Lugard tried to introduce indirect rule into southern Nigeria. In Yorubaland there were clearly defined states with rulers who could be recognized as Native Authorities. Elsewhere, however, the situation was very different. The large cities and towns of the south had fluid and mixed ethnic structures which made direct rule necessary in the form of European-style municipal authorities. The diffuse and egalitarian society of the south-east provided no obvious traditional rulers. The British tried to impose rulers, but the results were disastrous. Eventually the British administration agreed to recognize the traditional councils of the region as the Native Authorities for implementing indirect rule.

In 1922 the League of Nations mandate of Cameroons was added, administratively, to Nigeria. In the same year the Nigerian legislative council, which had limited legislative authority over Lagos and the southern provinces, was inaugurated; the northern provinces remained under the jurisdiction of a British governor. The former League of Nations mandate of Cameroons became a UN trust territory in 1946 and remained under British administration until 1961.

G.

Independence

Nigerian demands for self-government after World War II resulted in a series of short-lived constitutions. The first, in 1947, established provincial legislatures with limited participation in the government by Nigerians. By succeeding constitutional changes, Nigeria was provided with a federal type of government and the provinces were consolidated into three regions (Eastern, Western, and Northern), each with a measure of autonomy. In 1954 Nigeria became a federation and each region was given the option, dependent on certain safeguards for the federation, to assume a self-governing status. Internal self-government was granted to the Eastern and Western regions in 1957 and to the Northern Region in 1959.

On October 1, 1960, Nigeria became independent within the Commonwealth of Nations. On October 7 it was admitted to membership of the United Nations. The first prime minister, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, headed a coalition government representing the major parties of the Northern and Eastern regions. The governor-general was Nnamdi Azikiwe, who became president when Nigeria adopted a republican form of government on October 1, 1963. Meanwhile, on February 11 and 12, 1961, the northern section of the former British Cameroons had voted to become a part of Nigeria.

H.

Internal Strains

From the early days of independence, ethnic rivalries and religious and political differences seriously strained the unity of the federation. In 1962 a major political crisis developed in the Western Region, which was dominated by the Yoruba and their political party, called the Action Group. The Action Group, which had constituted the chief opposition bloc to the ruling coalition in the federal parliament, split in two during the year. Its parliamentary leader, Obafemi Awolowo, who had expressed fear of a federal plot to break the party’s power, was indicted for treason in 1963 and sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment. Meanwhile, as the result of a referendum held in mid-1963 in two districts of the Western Region where non-Yoruba peoples were a majority, a new Mid-West Region was formed.

I.

Civil War

Political bickering and corruption, which left young army officers increasingly impatient, finally culminated in a military coup in January 1966. Prime Minister Balewa and two regional premiers were killed. A military government was established by the army commander Major-General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, who abolished the federal system. In July northern officers led a countercoup and killed Ironsi. His successor, Major-General Yakubu Gowon, revived the federation. During the 1960s thousands of Igbo living in the north were killed or sought refuge in their homelands in the south-east.

Relations between the northern-dominated federal government and the Igbo deteriorated as a result. In May 1967 the federal government announced its intention to split the Eastern Region, where the Igbo were the majority of the population, into three states—a move which would leave the Igbo without access to the sea and cut them off from the region’s oil-rich areas. The Eastern Region, led by Lieutenant-Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu, then seceded and proclaimed itself the Republic of Biafra. Civil war broke out in July and lasted for two-and-a-half years before the Biafran leadership signed a formal surrender on January 15, 1970. During this time an estimated one million people died in Biafra as a result of starvation caused by war-induced food shortages.

J.

Oil Wealth

As life in the south-east returned to normal, Nigeria enjoyed four years of rapid economic growth, fuelled by expanding oil revenues; the country became the world’s fifth-largest oil producer. Continued military rule, however, despite promises of return to a civilian government, led to renewed political instability. Gowon was ousted on July 29, 1975, in a bloodless coup led by Brigadier Murtala Ramat Muhammad. Muhammad was himself assassinated in an unsuccessful coup attempt on February 13, 1976. His successor, Lieutenant-General Olusegun Obasanjo, presided over the preparations for a return to civilian rule, which culminated in the promulgation of a new constitution and in the election of a new president, Alhaji Shehu Shagari, in the summer of 1979.

The Shagari government, like its predecessors, tried to use oil income to fund ambitious development programmes. In addition, Shagari sought to implement a “green revolution” which would stimulate agricultural productivity and lessen the nation’s increasing dependence on food imports. The weakening of the oil market in the early 1980s dealt a crippling blow to these efforts. Revenues from oil exports, which exceeded US$20 billion in 1980, declined to US$10 billion in 1982, and Nigeria was unable to repay its short-term debts. With foreign exchange scarce, the country could no longer afford essential imports; the economy, already weakened by mismanagement and corruption, sank into severe recession.

In January 1983 the government ordered the expulsion of all unskilled foreigners. At least one million people left, although many soon returned. That August, Shagari was re-elected president; his political organization, the National Party of Nigeria, also showed commanding strength in subsequent voting for the federal legislature and for state offices, although there were widespread allegations of vote-rigging. Nigeria’s economic position continued to worsen, and in December 1983 Shagari was deposed in a coup led by Major-General Muhammadu Buhari.

K.

Return to Military Rule

Buhari installed a rigid austerity programme, in an attempt to revive the economy, which alienated many people. In August 1985 he was ousted in a bloodless coup led by Major-General Ibrahim Babangida, who rescinded the most unpopular decrees.

Babangida renegotiated some of Nigeria’s commercial debts and eased government controls over business, thus improving the economy. In early 1990 he thwarted a coup attempt. As part of a programme for a return to civilian rule, local elections were held in 1990 and parliamentary elections in 1992. Elections for a civilian president were held in June 1993. Moshood Abiola, a millionaire businessman, was the apparent winner, but Babangida annulled the election results. In August, Babangida stepped down as president, relinquishing power to an interim government, headed by Ernest Shonekan.

L.

The Abacha Regime

Nigeria’s defence minister, General Sani Abacha, overthrew the transitional government in November, banned all political activity, and imprisoned many of his opponents, including Abiola. However, under pressure from Nigeria’s creditor governments, he subsequently announced that there would be a phased return to civilian rule, beginning in January 1996, with the lifting of the ban on political activity.

A National Constitutional Commission, set up in 1994, endorsed a new draft constitution in April 1995, providing for the presidency to alternate between a northerner and a southerner. However, it also reversed the decision that party politics should resume in January 1996, saying that it was too soon to have the necessary mechanisms in place, and indicating that any return to civilian rule would be gradual. In October 1995 Abacha confirmed that the military were planning to stay, when he announced that any transition would take at least three years to achieve.

The slow pace of democratization and Abacha’s actions against political opponents led to increasing international condemnation of his regime during 1995. Abacha continued to keep Moshood Abiola and his aides imprisoned, despite the intercession in April of South Africa’s President Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, then Anglican Archbishop of South Africa. During the previous month General Olusegun Obasanjo, head of state from 1976 to 1979, had been placed under house arrest for allegedly plotting a coup. Four months later, on July 14, 1995, the government confirmed that Obasanjo and 39 others had been convicted in a secret trial of the alleged coup plot. Following the prosecution, the British government warned that Nigeria was unlikely to be welcome at the Commonwealth heads of government meeting in November. The month before the Commonwealth meeting Abacha commuted the death sentences imposed on the alleged coup plotters.

M.

Execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa

Criticism of the regime intensified dramatically after the execution on November 10 of writer Ken Saro-Wiwa, despite international pleas for clemency. Eighteen other campaigners for the rights of the Ogoni people in the oil-producing Rivers State were hanged with him. The heads of the Commonwealth, meeting in New Zealand, immediately voted to suspend Nigeria from the organization; if there was no return to democracy within two years, Nigeria would face expulsion. At the same time, the National Democratic Coalition (Nadeco) and other Nigerian political groupings stepped up their demands for a return to democratic government. The European Union subsequently began enforcing sanctions against the country. Abacha decried the foreign criticism and Commonwealth action as interference in Nigeria’s internal affairs. However, a few days after the hangings two of Abiola’s aides were released; another was reportedly released in December.

N.

Commonwealth Exclusion

In the opening weeks of 1996, Abacha’s son Ibrahim was killed in an air crash and bombs exploded at Kano airport and at a hotel in Kaduna. Abacha subsequently accused foreign governments of providing exiled opponents of the regime with money and weapons. Efforts were made to implicate the exiled Nigerian Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka in the bombings, and it was revealed that another 19 Ogonis faced trial. Following an investigative mission sent into Ogoniland by the UN in 1995, a number of Commonwealth sanctions were imposed on Nigeria, including suspension of air links.

In July 1997 the military government released an elections timetable for the eventual transfer to civilian rule by October 1998, a deadline that had already been set by Abacha in 1995. In October 1997 Commonwealth leaders meeting in Edinburgh decided to prolong Nigeria’s suspension for a further year, stating that oil sanctions would follow if the promised transition to democracy failed to occur on time. On November 8, the fourth anniversary of the military coup, Abacha dissolved the Cabinet; in December, it was claimed by the regime that a military coup attempt had been defeated, but this claim was seen by Nadeco as a means of purging opponents of Abacha. A new Cabinet consisting of some former ministers was appointed on December 15.

O.

Invasion of Sierra Leone

In February 1998 Nigerian forces invaded Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, in a bid to oust the ruling junta. Abacha maintained that his forces were trying to restore the country’s elected government to power as part of the regional peacekeeping force, Ecomog, but Nigeria’s quest for regional hegemony was thought to be the main reason for the invasion, as well as a means of acquiring Sierra Leone’s rich deposits of alluvial diamonds. Nearly 750,000 civilians were trapped in the city centre and many thousands had to flee the capital. On February 13 the Nigerian forces captured the presidential state house in Freetown, and by the end of the month the intervention force had evicted the military junta. Fighting continued elsewhere in the country and the UN brought in emergency aid.

P.

End of Abacha’s Rule

In April it emerged that August’s presidential election would have only one candidate—Abacha, who secured the backing of the last of the five officially approved political parties, in effect turning the election into a referendum requiring voters to vote only on whether they would support him. Each party agreed to be given US$250,000 (about £150,000) and was told to nominate Abacha for the presidency. This prompted the Commonwealth countries meeting at the October 1997 Edinburgh summit to impose sanctions, already implemented by the United Kingdom, if democracy had not been restored by October 1998. General Abacha’s sole candidacy made it clear that this would not happen.

At the end of April a Nigerian military court sentenced to death six people, including the former deputy head of state, General Oladipo Diya, for trying to overthrow the military government in the December 1997 coup. Abacha died of a heart attack on June 8, 1998. General Abdulsalam Abubakar took over as president and said that he would adhere to the transition programme intended to return Nigeria to a form of civilian rule in October 1998.

In July the Cabinet and a number of institutions associated with the purported transition to democracy that had been initiated by Abacha were dissolved. Abubakar released a draft of a civilian constitution in September, which had been prepared by constitutional conference in 1995 but suppressed by Abacha. In local elections in December, which were the first free elections since 1993, the recently formed centrist People's Democratic Party (PDP) achieved a landslide victory. The PDP achieved a similar success in state and gubernatorial elections in January 1999, gaining control of 20 of the 35 states, and in the legislative and presidential elections in February, with healthy majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate. Former general Olusegun Obasanjo, now leader of the PDP, was victorious in the presidential election.

In May Abukabar promulgated a new constitution, which gave substantial autonomy to the country's constituent states. This coincided with Nigeria's readmission to the Commonwealth. Obasanjo was inaugurated as president in May, and in June, when the National Assembly sat for the first time, he appointed a new Cabinet.

Q.

Challenges for Obasanjo

One of Obasanjo’s first acts was a radical purge to remove from office all senior military officers who held positions of power between 1985 and 1999. He also instigated an investigation into alleged human rights abuses committed during that period, and put forward an anti-corruption bill to try to tackle one of Nigeria’s major problem areas.

Late 1999 and early 2000 brought internal stability concerns. Controversies arose around the issue of Islamic Shari'ah law, which had been introduced in some states, including Zamfara in January 2000 and the state of Niger in February. Full implementation of Shari'ah was suspended as religious, ethnic, and economic tensions surrounding the issue became unmanageable. In February 2001 Bauchi became the tenth state to embrace Shari’ah law.

In early 2001 Nigeria was successful in obtaining the restructuring of a large amount of its overseas debt after negotiations with the IMF and the Paris Club. Despite this breakthrough, Obasanjo’s ongoing attempts at solving some of Nigeria’s economic problems were being hampered by increasing agitation from militant factions and separatist groups as well as accusations of ethnic and religious bias.

The summer months of 2001 were marked by fighting between Christians and Muslims in Jos and Kano; the violence intensified following the Al-Qaeda terrorist attacks on the US cities of New York and Washington, D.C. In clashes in Benue state over 200 people were killed. Bola Ige, the attorney-general and minister of justice, was assassinated.

An explosion at a munitions depot in Lagos killed over 600 citizens in January 2002; as many as 1,000 people were also thought to be missing. Most of the deaths were caused not by the explosion but by the stampede that followed which led to many people drowning in nearby canals.

The International Court of Justice awarded the oil-rich Bakassi peninsula to Cameroon in the dispute between the two countries. The ruling was challenged by Nigeria despite the fact that the decision cannot be overruled and for many months Nigeria refused to hand over the area. Talks continued to try to end the dispute. In November, rioting over the staging of the Miss World beauty pageant led to the deaths of over 200 people; the rioting was also in response to a ruling passed down under Shari’ah law to stone to death Amina Lawal, a woman found guilty of adultery.

In April 2003 in the first presidential election since the end of military rule in 1999, Olusegun Obasanjo was re-elected to serve a second term. At the same time, legislative elections returned President Obasanjo’s People’s Democratic Party to power with an outright majority. The elections were marred by allegations of vote rigging.

In July 2003 fuel price increases led to a nationwide general strike and rioting in Lagos. The strike was called off after the government agreed to lower oil prices.

Nigeria continued to refuse to comply with the International Court of Justice ruling that the oil-rich Bakassi peninsula should be awarded to Cameroon. UN’s Secretary-General Kofi Annan brokered talks which in October 2003 led to Nigeria’s agreement to hand over 33 border villages near Lake Chad to Cameroon. Despite an agreement in January 2004 to introduce joint security patrols in the disputed Bakassi peninsula, and to open consulates and exchange ambassadors, Nigeria continued to reject the ruling on the status of the territory and failed to hand over the territory by September’s deadline. Finally, in 2006, the dispute was resolved in favour of Cameroon and Nigeria agreed to withdraw troops from the region.

In August 2003 ethnic violence erupted between the Ijaw and Itsekiri people in the port of Warri, leading to around 100 deaths and 1,000 injuries. In September 2003 Amina Lawal was acquitted by an Islamic appeals court in the northern state of Katsina. Her case had been closely monitored by international human rights campaigners. Nonetheless, Nigeria’s human rights record was criticized by the US-based Human Rights Watch in a report published in December 2003; the report accused the government of silencing critics by using violence and intimidation.

President Obasanjo’s attempts to modify the constitution to allow him to stand for an unprecedented third term of office met with failure. Instead, the elections held in April 2007 saw victory for his approved successor, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua of the People’s Democratic Party, with around 70 per cent of the vote; however, international observers doubted the credibility of the vote.