History of Nigeria

the History of Nigeria goes back at least to the 6th century before J. - C., time to which the first known civilizations developed before extending during all Middle Ages.

Europeans, by the means of the Portuguese, discover the area only at the 15th century. The area will be used during three centuries as tank of slaves for the news colonies of North America and of South Africa then is replaced by that of the raw materials at the 19th century.

The country is placed under Protectorat of the the United Kingdom starting from 1886, is baptized Nigeria according to the Niger river, and reaches the statute of colony in 1914.

Nigeria reaches independence in 1960 and becomes in little time the theater of coups d'etat violent one and ethnic civil wars.

Prehistory

Archaeological research testifies to a settlement of the south-west of the Nigeria 9000 years before J. - C., perhaps even earlier in Okigwe, in the south-east of the country. Stockbreeders of the 4th millenium before J. - C. practiced ceramics and the microlithique one. In the south, the populations of hunters-gatherers sédentarisèrent themselves and started to live Agriculture around the first millenium before J. - C. the work of iron is attested at the 2nd century before J. - C. the first civilization known in Nigeria is the civilization nok, appeared on the Plateau of Jos, in the North-East of the country, approximately 1000 years before J. - C.

The first civilizations

Of 900 with 1500, the territory of current Nigeria was divided into several States corresponding more or less to the current ethnicities, of which the kingdoms Yoruba, the kingdom Ibo of Nri, the Edo kingdom of the Bénin, the Royaume Haoussa and the Nupe. Many small States in the south and the west of the Lac Chad were absorbed. The Bornou, initially Western province of the Kingdom of Kanem, became independent at the end of the 14th century. Other States probably existed but are not yet formally attested.

Yoruba kingdoms

Yoruba were the first group dominating western bank of the river Niger. Various origins, they result from several waves of migrations. Yoruba were organized in several patrilineal clans which formed village communities and lived agriculture. As from the 11th century, the adjacent villages gathered in multiple city-States. This urbanization was accompanied by florissement artistic (statues in Ivoire and terra cotta, objects out of metal). Yoruba venerated a multitude of gods, with the head of which was an impersonal divinity, Olorun. Oduduwa was venerated like the creator of the Earth and the ancestor of the kings. According to the legend, it founded Ife and charged its sons with establishing other cities, where they reigned as priest-kings. Ife was in the center of more than 400 Culte S with political dimensions as much as nuns.

Kingdoms of Oyo and the Benign one

At the 15th century, the Kingdom of Oyo and that of the Benin exceeded Ife on the political plan and economic, while the latter kept its statute of religious center. Oyo adopted the governmental model of Ife, with a member of the dynasty to the capacity controlling several city-States smaller. A council named the king and supervised his acts. The capital was located at approximately 100 km of the current town of Oyo. Contrary to the Yoruba kingdoms whose vegetation was primarily forest, Oyo was covered with Savane and its army developed a powerful cavalry, which enabled him to affirm its hegemony on the kingdoms adjacent Nupe and Borgou and to open trade route towards north.

Yoruba installed a community in the zone edophone in the east of Ife, which became about it dependant at the beginning of the 14th century. At the next century, it became an independent shopping mall, blocking the access of Ife to the coast. The king held the political power and religious, and the tradition made of it a descendant of the dynasty of Ife.

Kingdoms of north

The trade was the source of the emergence of communities organized in the north of the country, covered by savanna. The prehistoric inhabitants of the edge of the desert had been largely dispersed at the 3rd millenium before J. - C., when the desiccation of the the Sahara started. Trans-Saharan trade route connected the west of the Sudan to the the Mediterranean since the time of Carthage, and to the the higher Nile since times more moved back much. These cultural exchange and transportation routes remained until the end of the 19th century. It is by these same roads that the Islam was spread in West Africa as from the 9th century.

A line of dynastic States, whose first States Haoussa, were stretched through the west and the center of Sudan. Most powerful among these States were the Empire of Ghana the Empire of Gao and the Royaume of Kanem, which were outside the current borders of Nigeria but which were subject to the influence of it. Ghana started to decline at the 11th century. The Empire of Mali succeeded to him, which consolidated most of Western Sudan during the 13th century. With the fall of Mali, a local leader named Sonni Ali founded the Empire Songhaï, which extended on the center from Niger and the west from Sudan. He took the control of the Trans-Saharan trade thus, basing his mode on the incomes of the trade and the co-operation with the Moslem merchants. Sonni Ali took Tombouctou in 1468 and Jenne in 1473. Its successor, Askiya Mohammed Touré, made Islam the official religion of the empire, builds mosques and made come from the Moslem scientists to Gao.

Although these empires had only little political influence on Nigeria before 1500, their cultural and economic impact was considerable and was reinforced at the 16th century as Islam was spread. Throughout the 16th century, most of the north of Nigeria paid a tribute with the Songhaï empire or the Bornou empire.

Kingdom of Kanem-Bornou

The history of Bornou is closely associated with that of Kanem, which sat its influence on the basin of the lake Chad at the 13th century. Kanem extended to the west to include the area which was going to become Bornou. King de Kanem and his court adopted Islam at the 11th century, which caused to reinforce the political structures and social of the State. Many habits remained however and the women, for examples, preserved a great political influence.

Kanem extended little by little its influence on Bornou. Traditionally, the administration of Bornou was entrusted to the heir to the throne for his period of formation. At the 14th century, dynastic conflicts forced the king and his following to be settled in Bornou, where Kanuri emerged as an ethnicity between the end of and the beginning of the 15th century. The civil war which shook Kanem during second half of the 14th century made it possible Bornou to regain its independence.

The prosperity of Bornou depended on the trade of slaves through Sudan as well as trade of salt and of cattle. The need for protecting its commercial interests encouraged Bornou to intervene in Kanem, which continued to be the theater of battles throughout and at the beginning of the 16th century. In spite of its relative political weakness, the courses and the mosques of Bornou, sponsored by a line of kings scholars, were centers of famous Islamic culture and teaching.

States Haoussa

At the 11th century, some States Haoussa like Kano, Katsina and Gobir had developed active downtown strengthened in the trade and the production of goods. Until the 15th century, these small States were with the periphery of the great Sudanese empires of the time. They underwent the constant pressure of the Songhaï empire in the west and Kanem-Borno in the east, with which they paid a tribute. The armed conflicts generally had economic motivations, as when the coalition haoussa led a war against Jukun and Nupe to the center of the area, to bring back slaves or to control the roads of trade.

Islam was introduced at Haoussa by the Caravane S. the chronicles of Kano bring back the conversion of the reigning dynasty of Kano by clerks come from the Mali, testifying to the Malian influence far in the east. The acceptance of Islam was progressive, and the beliefs animists remained a long time in the campaigns. Kano and Katsina, thanks to the reputation of their schools and their mosques, took a big part with the intellectual and cultural life of the Muslim world. The Fulani, originating in the valley of the river Senegal, started to integrate the Haoussa kingdom about the 13th century.

Slavery

The modern history of Nigeria starts with the Portuguese at the 15th century when a ship accosts in the gulf of Benign in 1472.

The English follow and explore the wild coast with the search for defenses of elephants, peppers and other oils exotic.

Very quickly, of, it is the traffic of human beings by European merchants which supplants all the other trade of the coast. These merchants profited from the remunerated collaboration of warlike tribes as Ashantis which brought to forced march their spoils of war at the African coasts.

In 1712, the English obtain the monopoly of the traffic by the Traité of Utrecht.

In 1807, the British prohibit the trade of the slaves. But the draft still continued in a clandestine way.

The colonial period

It is only starting from 1790 that the English start to explore the territory of the Delta of Niger. The English Mungo Park is the first European to be gone up until Tombouctou.

Expansionism of the companies with charter

It is by the means of the marketing activities that the British explore the interior of the grounds and establish counters. In 1875, the British George Goldie takes again a small house of trade established on the river Niger from which it founds a commercial empire baptized " United African Company" in 1879. He undertakes an aggressive commercial war towards his competitors which he eliminates the ones after the others. In November 1884, he is the Master of Low-Niger.

The Conférence of Berlin on the Partage of Africa ratifies the British domination on the area whereas Goldie, once ensured of the military control of the banks of the river by the means of drain-holes, constitutes a vast sales network extending inside the grounds. With the end of the year 1884, it had concludes more than 37 treaties with the chiefs from African tribe stipulating that the signatories yielded forever the whole of their territory to the " National African Company" and with its descendants all in their ensuring the commercial monopoly.

The company of Goldie henceforth functioned like a government de facto and it did not remain to him any more that to obtain a royal Charte which was granted the July 10th 1886 putting to the day the " royal company of Niger". If the latter could not claim finally with a commercial monopoly on the Niger river, it had right to take taxation and right-of-way on all the ships forwarding of the river.

Two other companies had also profited from royal charter to manage the south of the territory, the " Oil rivers protectorate" and the " Niger Coast protectorate".

In 1894, Frederick Lugard is sent by the royal company of Niger to Borgu to conclude from the treaties with several chiefs of tribes placing their chefferies under British sovereignty.

Lugard is then charged by the British government with ensuring the protection of the area of Lagos against the French, likely to tackle the British positions.

In 1899, the British government repurchases the company of Niger and carries out the transfers of competence to create the " Niger Coast Protectorate" including/understanding the Delta of Niger attached to the area of Low-Niger. The unit is renamed " protectorate of Nigeria of Sud". The name of Nigeria in reference to the Niger river and which means “black” is preferred with that of " Negretia" and with that of " Goldésie" after George Goldie refused that its patronym is not given to the territory. The territory of Nigeria of North is then managed by Lugard as British High-Commissioner with for mission of making accept treaties of allegiance to the sultans of Sokoto and Fula. In 1901, the territory of Nigeria of North is placed under the authority of England. The slavery, which was still practiced there by the local tribes, is immediately abolished. In 1903, the area is entirely subjected in spite of some sporadic risings pitilessly repressed by the troops of Lugard.

In 1906, the colony of Lagos is integrated into the protectorate of Nigeria of the South.

The British colony

Nigeria of North and that of the South were unified in the new colony of Nigeria in 1914. Its first governor is then Frederick Lugard.

In 1952, Nigeria counts 34 million inhabitants including 12.000 English colonists and 250 various ethnic tribes. It is already the country more populated Africa and with its 967.000 km ², the largest English colony.

In answer to the nationalism going up emerged after the Second world war, the British equip the country with a government representative in 1951 then of a federal Constitution in 1954.

Independence

Nigeria obtains its total independence in 1960. The country is then divided into 3 areas having a broad autonomy.

The first republican constitution of 1963 leaves the country in the the Commonwealth.

In 1966, a Coup d'etat fomented by various military groups brings to the capacity the Ironsi general, of Ibo origin, which is assassinated a few months later. The leaders of this new coup d'etat increase the power of the federal government and change the subdivision of the country which from now on consists of 12 States. Ibos, majority ethnos group of the east of the country, are then victims of bloody racial reprisals which lead in 1967 to the secession of the République of Biafra. A terrible war follows which is completed by a capitulation of the freedom fighters the January 12th 1970.

In 1975, new a Coup d'etat, without bloodshed, brings Murtala Ramat Mohammed to the capacity. He promises a rapid return with the Démocratie, but he is killed in a fallen through coup d'etat and is replaced by his second Olusegun Obasanjo.

A new constitution is established in 1977 and the first elections take place in 1979, gained by Shehu Shagari.

A new coup d'etat in 1983 replonge country under the Dictatorship of the supreme military council. In 1993, after elections cancelled by the military government, the general Sani Abacha arrives at the report heading. With its sudden death in 1998, Abdulsalami Abubakar seizes the power and restores the constitution of 1979. In 1999, the first democratic elections for 16 years have been gained by Olusegun Obasanjo, which is re-elected at the time of the turbulent elections of 2003. In 2007 of the once again agitated elections bring to the capacity the designated successor of Olusegun Obasanjo: Umaru Yar'Adua .

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