Pre-Colonial Nigeria

The region sits between the Sahara and the Atlantic, and that position shaped much of its early history. Savannah in the north opened onto trans-Saharan routes toward North Africa; rainforest and mangrove in the south opened onto river and coastal trade. Archaeological evidence suggests iron working and settled farming were established in parts of the region well over two thousand years ago, and terracotta sculpture associated with the Nok finds around the Plateau and Kaduna area is dated by researchers to roughly 1000 BCE to 300 CE.

Much of what is known about the political history of this era comes from a combination of archaeology, later Arabic and European written accounts, and oral tradition preserved by court historians and communities. These sources do not always agree, and dates for founding events are usually approximate.

In the north east, the state associated with Kanem and later Borno grew around the Lake Chad basin, with the Kanuri as its core population and Islam established at court by around the eleventh century. West of it, the Hausa city-states, including Kano, Katsina, Zaria and Gobir, developed as walled commercial and administrative centres in what are now Kano, Katsina and neighbouring states. From 1804 a reform movement led by Usman dan Fodio, drawing heavily on Fulani scholarly networks, reorganised most of these states into the emirates of the Sokoto Caliphate, centred on Sokoto.

In the south west, according to oral tradition Ile-Ife in present-day Osun is the spiritual origin of Yoruba kingship, while the Oyo Empire, centred in what is now Oyo, became the dominant military and tributary power in the region by the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. To its east the Kingdom of Benin, the seat of Edo rule in present-day Edo, governed a wide area and produced a court art tradition in brass and ivory that is now held in museums worldwide.

Between and beyond these states were societies organised on different principles. Many Igbo communities in what are now Anambra, Imo and neighbouring states governed through village assemblies, age grades and title societies rather than centralised monarchy, with ritual authority associated with Nri. In the delta and along the coast, Ijaw, Itsekiri, Urhobo and Efik communities in present-day Bayelsa, Delta, Rivers and Cross River built trading towns whose wealth came from control of waterways. In the middle belt, Nupe, Jukun, Igala, Idoma and Tiv communities occupied the corridor where savannah meets forest, some under kingship and some without it.

None of these polities covered the area of modern Nigeria, and none of them was isolated. Trade, migration, warfare, tribute and religious scholarship connected them long before any external boundary was drawn around them.

Their institutions did not disappear. Emirates, obaships and community councils were absorbed into colonial administration in modified form, and many survive today as recognised traditional and cultural institutions. The frontiers drawn later cut across older political and linguistic areas, which is one reason discussion of Nigerian unity so often returns to this period.