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A History of Nigeria summary

Name: A History of Nigeria
Rating: 4.5 (99 reviews)
Author: Toyin Falola

Toyin Falola

Uncover the history of Africa’s most populous country

4.5 (99 ratings)

31 mins

What is A History of Nigeria about?

A History of Nigeria (2008) documents the millennia-long history of the areas that make up the modern nation of Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country. Going on an epic journey from the region’s precolonial past right up to the country’s recent transition toward democracy, the authors document the riveting history of a nation and, of course, its people – whose future looks bright.

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A History of Nigeria
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What’s in it for me? Uncover the history of Africa’s most populous country – Nigeria!

Did you know that after the United States and India, Nigeria is the largest producer of films in the world? And that Nigeria is home to over 500 different languages spoken by 200 million people, or that it's the seventh most populous country?

Sadly, these phenomenal facts aren’t household knowledge in the Western world. For many in Europe or North America, an often Eurocentric view of history focuses on things closer to home. But the region that would become Nigeria has a long, shared history with Europe and the United States. However, this relationship hasn’t always been equal – during the late seventeenth century, 42 percent of the total number of slaves shipped out of Africa came from Nigeria, with many of them destined for European colonies such as British America. Later in the nineteenth century and through to the present day, British colonialism in the region would go on to be the source of much sorrow and violence.

But Nigerian history is defined by much more than its slave-trading and colonial past. The incredibly diverse nation is an important center of two of the world’s major religions: Christianity and Islam can number their adherents at about 100 million each. So let’s dive in, and learn all about Nigeria’s rich history.

In these blinks, you’ll discover

how slavery in Africa was different than in the United States;
why the discovery of massive oil reserves in Nigeria drove fuel corruption; and
the route that Nigeria took back to democracy, after decades of authoritarian rule.

The history of the region now constituting Nigeria goes back thousands of years.

When looking at the history of a modern country such as Nigeria, people often use the term “precolonial history” to encompass all that transpired before European colonialism arrived in the region. But “precolonial Nigeria” implies that there was some sort of “Nigeria” before European colonists drew up the borders of the modern nation.

This simply doesn’t reflect reality. Over the last 10,000 years, a myriad of different societies, states and empires have existed in the region encompassing modern-day Nigeria – and most of them have no direct connection to the Nigerian state of today.

The first evidence of a human presence in the region, consisting of two ancient rock shelters in southwest Nigeria, dates back to around 9000 BCE. These sorts of shelters would become typical of the Late Stone Age period in the area, which would persist until about 2000 BCE. By 3000 BCE, evidence of pottery could be found in all areas of modern Nigeria, as well as axes and arrowheads.

With hunting and gathering slowly giving way to agriculture between 4000 and 1000 BCE, a transformation began in the region. With food resources now centralized, permanent village settlements began springing up all over modern-day Nigeria.

The villages of the Igbo people had decentralized structures. An age-based hierarchy determined political decisions of individual villages, and groups of villages would come together to exchange goods at markets and take part in intra-village meetings. The Igbo maintained this structure right up until British colonialism in the early twentieth century.

However, around the turn of the tenth century CE, other societies started developing centralized political structures. In the early stages, this meant king-like rulers, with the formerly decentralized communities becoming kingdoms. Urban centers developed and politics, trade and culture flourished. In many ways, these kingdoms were similar to ancient Greek city-states such as Athens and Sparta – but while they traded and interacted with each other, they didn’t develop into any sort of “nation” akin to modern-day Nigeria.

The advent of Islam in the region was a crucial factor in the growth of these centralized states. States run by Hausa and Kanuri leaders – ethnicities still present in Nigeria today – adopted Islam as their state religion in the late eleventh century CE, linking their kingdoms with the larger Islamic world both commercially and academically.

By 1500, both the decentralized village groupings and centralized states within the boundaries of modern Nigeria had developed political and trade relationships, marking the beginning of an integrated regional economy.

By the nineteenth century, the slave trade had become the backbone of the Nigerian region’s economy.

Institutionalized slavery had existed in the Nigerian region long before the fifteenth century, and the states in the northern savannas had longstanding connections to the trans-Saharan slave-trade route. With the route extending further eastward into new markets over the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, profits from the slave trade began to boom.

This market expansion coincided with the increasing power of both states ruled by Hausa-speaking leaders and the neighboring Borno Empire. The result of these parallel developments? Widespread war and raiding by these growing powers, each aiming to take as many slaves as possible to expand their economic and political clout.

The nineteenth century was a time of great social, political and economic change for the Nigerian region.

The ethnicity, language and religion of the various regions of Nigeria continued to be incredibly diverse well into the nineteenth century. Political groupings, on the other hand, began to consolidate around this time. For the first time, the predominantly Muslim northern Nigeria was united with areas in the country’s more religiously diverse south under the Sokoto Caliphate.

Led by the charismatic Usman dan Fodio, the Sokoto Caliphate transformed the society that it ruled. Commerce thrived, unimpeded by the wars that had previously characterized the region. And with Sharia being the official law of the land, already fragmented communities were united under the banner of Islam. For the first time in history, most northern modern-day Nigerians began to see themselves as a cohesive social and cultural unit.

British colonialism in the region began in the nineteenth century and led to the creation of modern-day Nigeria.

With the abolition of slavery and the economic uncertainty it caused, war and political instability became rife throughout southern Nigeria in the early nineteenth century. With this instability threatening British commercial interests in the palm-oil trade, it was only a matter of time until Britain decided to “stabilize” the region by sending in its military, missionaries and political officials.

Britain’s colonial desires in Nigeria coincided with the Europe-wide “scramble for Africa.” Major European empires such as Britain, France and Germany jostled for economic and political control over the African continent and its vast natural and human resources.

Early twentieth-century Nigeria experienced massive social, economic and political transformations under British colonialism.

In 1914, Britain united the previously separate Northern and Southern Nigeria Protectorates. This new state, the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria, was to be led under what its British Governor-General Frederick Lugard dubbed the “Dual Mandate” system. On paper, this system allowed for indigenous self-rule at local levels – as long as decisions made at this level did not conflict with British colonial interests. The British, meanwhile, saw themselves as responsible for the openly racist endeavor of “civilizing” the locals by teaching them European ways of life.

But in reality, the Dual Mandate system led to the complete takeover of Nigeria’s raw materials and labor markets by British economic interests. While British administrators preached progress, civilization and the eradication of slavery toward the betterment of the Nigerian people, many Nigerians saw their standard of living drop. Centuries of smallholder farmers and sharecropping, the backbone of the region’s agricultural economy, were replaced by centralized, British-run plantations that promoted wage labor paid in British currency.

In 1960, nationalist resistance to British colonialism resulted in Nigerian independence.

By the 1930s, British colonialism had brought about a small, privileged class of elite Nigerians, as well as a number of local European-educated intellectuals who felt the benefits of colonialism. But the vast majority of Nigerians felt otherwise. Not only was colonialism eroding their traditional ways of life, cultures and institutions, it also openly exploited their labor in a way that benefited Europeans much more than they.

In the wake of the violent Women’s War of 1929, a number of nationalist unions and movements began springing up all over the country. While some of these were based on pan-Nigerianism, such as the Nigerian Youth Movement, the majority were centered around ethnic lines. By the 1950s, even the pan-Nigerian movements had mostly morphed into regional groupings.

Post-independence Nigeria in the 1960s was defined by corruption, interethnic tensions and civil war.

Hopes were high in the post-independence Nigeria of 1960. It was, after all, the most populous country in Africa, and its discovery of petroleum all but guaranteed it substantial wealth. Many Nigerians thought they were destined to become a beacon of hope for other indigenous peoples still suffering under the weight of colonialism. In the international sphere, it was expected that Nigeria would play a major role in African and even global affairs.

However, a number of issues prevented this optimistic vision from transpiring. Most pressing was the fact that many Nigerians didn’t feel “Nigerian.” The whole concept of “Nigeria” as a nation had been the result of British cartographers drawing lines on maps, and hadn’t taken the multitude of ethnicities, languages and religions of the region into account. So while the world was now introduced to the new nation of Nigeria, Nigerians themselves were still grappling with the question of “Who are we?”

Economic dependence on oil and rampant corruption plagued Nigeria throughout the 1970s.

The military coup in 1966 propelled Yakubu Gowon to power, a charismatic general who went on to rule the nation for nearly a decade. Under his leadership, the military grew from 10,000 to 270,000, propelling them to the forefront of Nigerian politics – this would have serious ramifications later on.

For the duration of the 1970s, the nation’s increasing dependence on oil revenue defined Nigerian political and economic life. And while Nigeria’s petroleum reserves made it Africa’s wealthiest nation of the time, the profit did not trickle down to all sectors of Nigerian society. Corruption was widespread at all levels of government, meaning that only those who had access to politicians determining government petroleum contracts, licenses and revenue benefitted from the oil boom.

After suffering under three military dictators, Nigerians were finally granted democratic rights again in 1999.

The short-lived democratic experiment in Nigeria had failed, and the military was now back in control. Buhari’s coup resulted in a further 15 years of authoritarianism, worsening socioeconomic conditions and, eventually, a strong reaction from civil society that would usher democracy back in.

But 15 years and three dictators had entrenched corruption in Nigeria, and oppression and coercion became the main language of state power and control. Meanwhile, the Nigerian economy continued its downward trajectory. While government officials and their associates continued to steal from state coffers, many ordinary Nigerians turned to crime just to survive. The period from 1983 to 1999 thus saw a huge rise in bribery, armed robberies and smuggling. The vast majority of Nigerians still continued to live lives of rampant poverty.

The 2007 Nigerian elections saw the peaceful transfer of power from one civilian to another for the first time.

On April 21st, 2007, Nigerians headed to the polls. The election resulted in a peaceful transition of power from Olusegun Obasanjo, who had reached his constitutional two-term limit, to Alhaji Umaru Yar’Adua. This was the first time in post-colonial Nigerian history that one civilian had ceded power to another. For many, this indicated that – after decades of authoritarianism, economic woes and rampant corruption – perhaps Nigeria was on track toward becoming a stable and democratic nation. Right before the election, one of the most effective anticorruption purges in Nigerian history led to a myriad of powerful politicians being charged with crimes against the state.

For many Nigerians, the election also indicated the possibility that poverty might soon be a thing of the past. After all, the country was still one of the top 10 exporters of oil in the world. If oil wealth was distributed more evenly – and less corruptly – perhaps ordinary Nigerians would be lifted out of poverty.

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About the Author

Toyin Falola is a Nigerian historian and professor. He is currently the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair Professor in the Humanities at the University of Texas at Austin. Out of the dozens of books and articles he’s penned on Nigerian and African history, a few notable titles include The Power of African Cultures, A Mouth Sweeter than Salt: An African Memoir and the monumental Encyclopedia of the Yoruba.

Who should read A History of Nigeria?

Students of history, international relations or politics
Curious individuals wanting to discover the riveting story of Africa’s most populous nation
Nigerians – or people of Nigerian descent – who would like to learn more about the country’s history

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