History of Nigeria
In its initial endeavour to stop the slave trade in West Africa, the United Kingdom gradually expanded its sphere of influence after 1851, starting from the tiny island of Lagos (3 km2) and the port city of Calabar.
Under the British colonial administration, purchasing cartels (of companies such as Unilever, Nestlé and Cadbury) kept the prices of cocoa, palm oil and peanuts artificially low, thereby damaging Nigerian agriculture, but on the other hand ports and an extensive railway network were also built.
In the Kano Chronicle, the history of the Hausa state is traced back to 999 AD.After the collapse of Mali, a local leader named Sonni Ali (1464-1492) founded the Songhai Empire in the Middle Niger region and took control of the trans-Saharan trade.
Archaeological evidence points to a well-planned city with impressive infrastructure, including paved roads and sophisticated drainage systems, a distinctive feature of Ife urban planning was the use of potsherd pavements.
The source of the Aro Confederacy's economic dominance was based on the judicial oracle of Ibini Ukpabi ("Long Juju") and their military forces which included powerful allies such as Ohafia, Abam, Ezza, and other related neighboring states.
After this, there were numerous privately funded forays into the interior, such as the Niger Expedition of 1841 (in which a large number of the European participants quickly died of tropical diseases and which is reported in the diary of fellow traveller Samuel Ajayi Crowther, mentioned again in the next chapter).
[97] William McCoskry, the acting consul in Lagos, together with Commander Bedingfield, convened a meeting with King Dosunmu, Akitoye's successor, on board HMS Prometheus on 30 July 1861, at which the British intentions were explained.
[104] The Berlin Congo Conference of 1885 defined the spheres of interest of the European colonial powers in Africa - without regard to ethnic or cultural conditions and without the participation of the people in the affected regions.
[122][123] Despite the consecration of Samuel Ajayi Crowther as a bishop - or perhaps because of it - European and North American churches refused to accept dark-skinned clergymen, while the mainly Protestant missionary work in southern Nigeria was quite successful.
As the Maliki school of Islamic law makes no distinction between, for example, murder and involuntary manslaughter or the (criminal) offence of vandalism and (civil) damage to property, the British introduced the principle of malice intent.
Travellers from mail steamers could board the "Boat Express" waiting right next to it at the port of Apapa in Lagos and reach Kano in the far north of Nigeria within 43 hours in sleeping and dining cars.
As a "positive" effect of the Second World War, the colonial administration trained war-critical skilled labour such as technicians, electricians, nurses, carpenters and clerks on a large scale during this period.
[166] In addition, the Nigerian troops had been fighting alongside their Indian comrades for several years and there was already a strong and media-effective independence movement against British colonial rule in their homeland under Mahatma Gandhi.
[124] A general strike by railway workers for higher wages and for the release of imprisoned trade unionists such as Michael Imoudu (see above) made it clear in 1945 that the previous colonial administration had to be replaced by a new, national form of government.
Money was collected in a campaign to enable the three most respected compatriots (newspaper publisher Macaulay, trade union leader Imoudu and journalist Azikiwe) to travel to London to present their views (ultimately unsuccessfully) to the Attlee government there.
On the other hand, the south of Nigeria had co-financed the "poor" north in every fiscal year since 1914 (this has not changed until 2023) and even the most ardent advocates of a northern state did not dare to make the necessary tax increases palatable to their supporters.
The new Conservative government in the United Kingdom under Harold Macmillan had been advocating rapid decolonisation in the British Empire since 10 January 1957, following the debacle in the Suez Crisis and in view of the high costs of the loss-making colonial system.
However, unlike nearby Ghana, for example, Nigeria had not fought for its independence; Nigerian sovereignty had virtually slipped out of Britain's faint hand, exhausted by the Second World War, and fallen into the lap of the unprepared colony.
The governor enacted laws and even a constitution in 1946 without the participation of an elected parliament, without responsible ministers and against the justified protest of the most respected Nigerians (such an absolutist form of rule had already been abolished in Great Britain in 1688 with the Glorious Revolution).
Among the conspirators was Don Okafor, who, as commander of the head of government's guard force, was personally responsible for his protection and was on ‘first name terms’ with him; his part in the murder of Balewa, whose body was left by the roadside,[182] shows a particular perfidy.
[124] It should be remembered that the previously murdered Ahmadu Bello was not only the Prime Minister of the northern state, but also a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad and of the ‘black Napoleon’ dan Fodio, as well as Sardauna (crown prince) of the Sokoto Caliphate, a dynastic and religious title.
[187] Theophilus Danjuma's co-conspirators included Murtala Muhammed, Bukar Dimka, Shehu Yar'Adua, Muhammadu Buhari, Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha, a list of future dictators of Nigeria (and those who wanted to become such) - at that time still mostly 1st and 2nd class lieutenants.
Their attempts to cancel the cement contracts and impose an emergency embargo on all incoming ships kept the country busy with litigation around the world for many years, including a 1983 U.S. Supreme Court decision.
(It was not until 2009 that Nigeria began to renovate and lay new tracks again for billions of euros with Chinese aid (see Nigerian Railway Corporation), but the country will still be operating barely more than the colonial line length in 2023).
Shagari relied on large-scale industry and, in agriculture, on the "Green Revolution" that corresponded to the current state of science at the time: preference for large farms, intensive use of fertilisers and pesticides, use of machinery, drilling of deep groundwater, etc.
The security apparatus and secret service he set up may be understandable in view of the fate of military ruler Murtala Mohammed - who was shot unarmed and without bodyguards in an unarmoured limousine in 1976 - but it went beyond the vital protection of the president and did not shy away from political murder.
In the historic 12 June 1993 presidential elections, which most observers deemed to be Nigeria's fairest, early returns indicated that wealthy Yoruba businessman M. K. O. Abiola won a decisive victory.
The Buhari era (as of January 2023) is characterised by a dynamic structural policy, economic diversification, successes against Boko Haram and a decreasing perception of corruption, but also by a rapid increase in armed crime and police attacks.
The construction and profitable operation of the Lagos-Ibadan standard gauge railway since May 2021 as well as the Second Niger Bridge near Onitsha and the Lekki Super Post-Panamax container port, both of which were completed in December 2022, deserve special mention.
Major Nigerian entrepreneurs such as Aliko Dangote (cement), Innocent Chukwuma (Innoson, vehicle manufacturing) and Stella Chinyelu Okoli (Emzor Pharma) no longer take their assets abroad, but invest them at home.
