The evolution of Nigeria from about 1849 until it attained independence in 1960 is largely the story of the transformational impact of the British on the peoples and cultures of the Niger-Benue area.
The colonial authorities sought to define, protect and realise their imperial interest in this portion of West Africa in the hundred or so years between 1862 and 1960. The British were in the Niger-Benue area to pursue their interests, which were largely economic and strategic. In the process of seeking to realise those interests, there were many unplanned-for by-products, one of which was the socio-political aggregation which is known today in international law as the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
The first critical step in this uncertain path was taken in 1849 when, as part of an effort to 'sanitise' the Bights of Benin and Biafra, which were notori- ous for the slave trade, the British created a con- sulate for the two Bights. From here, one thing led to another for the British, especially to deeper involvement in the political and economic life of the city states of the Bights and to rivalry with the French who also began showing imperial ambitions in the area. The result, in time, was that the British converted the coastal consulate and its immediate hinterland into the Oil Rivers Protectorate in 1885, which, in 1893, transformed into the Niger Coast Protectorate. The apparently irreversible logic of this development led to deeper and closer involve- ment in the administration of the peoples and soci- eties of this segment of Nigeria which, by the mid- dle of the twentieth century, came to be known as Eastern Nigeria.
The second step, along the same path, was taken about 1862 when the British annexed the Lagos Lagoon area and its immediate environs and converted same into a crown colony. According to the British, they did this in order to be better able to abolish the slave trade which used that area as export point. According to Nigerian historians, on the other hand, they did so to be better able to pro- tect their interest in the vital trade route that ran from Lagos, through Ikorodu, lbadan and similar communities, to the Niger waterway in the north and beyond into Hausaland. Be that as it may, by 1897, British influence and power had overflowed the frontiers of Lagos and affected all of Yorubaland which was subsequently attached to Lagos as a Protectorate. The political and administrative unit which came to be known as Western Nigeria in the 1950s came as the end of this second step.
The third and final step in this uncharted path came in 1888. The British administered political 'baptism' on Grenye Goldie's National African Company which had successfully squeezed out rivals, British and non-British, from the trade in the lower Niger, following a trade war of almost unprecedented ferocity. As a result of the 'baptism', Goldie's company became the Royal Niger Company, chartered and limited. It also acquired political and administrative powers over a narrow belt of territory on both sides of the river from the sea to Lokoj'a, as well as over the vast area which, in the 20th century, came to be known as Northern Nigeria.
Thus, by about 1897, the three blocks of territory had emerged, as British colonial possessions, from moves made during the period of the scramble for Nigeria, best characterised as having been marked by fits and starts. The emergence of Nigeria is simply the story of how these three neigh- bouring and interlocked possessions were brought together by the British, first administratively and then politically, as discussed below.
The move towards administrative union or amalgamation (a term that was later to occupy a place of disproportionate importance in Nigerian history) began in 1898 with the appointment, by the British Government, of the so-called Niger Committee chairmanned by Lord Selborne. Its main term of reference was to look into and advise on the future management of the affairs of the three territories, i.e. on the form of administration that would best promote efficiency and economy in the pursuit of British interests in the region. The com- mittee recommended that the administrative goal to be aimed at for the three territories was amalgama- tion, but that for the time being, such a course of action was premature and inadvisable because the experienced colonial administration to preside over the affairs of the large territory that would arise from the union did not then exist. It also felt that the infrastructure for communication, which alone would conduce to efficient administration, did not also exist.
It thus recommended the creation, for the meantime, of two independent provinces, a Maritime Province to be brought into being through the merger of the Lagos Colony and Protectorate with the Niger Coast Protectorate; and then a Sudan Province made-up of territories under the Royal Niger Company. But, before this report could be considered and accepted by the Imperial Government, a vanguard action started by Henry McCallum of Lagos, who was also a member of the Committee, led to a decision to go it easy with the amalgamation of the two Southern administrations.
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