What if I told you that the British didn’t just visit Nigeria with peace in mind—but came with full plans to take over everything? Yes, everything. At first, they came like friends—smiling, preaching, and doing small trading. But behind those sweet smiles were secretive powerful plans to control our land, our kings, our people, and even our way of life.
This is the true story of how Nigeria was slowly and forcefully taken over—not in one day, but little by little, using smart tricks, treaties, missionary schools, and when all that failed—they applied raw power and force. From Lagos to Sokoto, from the Niger Delta to Igbo land, the British used one powerful weapon: military strength mixed with sweet talk.
You’ll read how King Jaja of Opobo was tricked and shipped far away, how Lagos was bombed in 1851, how the mighty Sokoto Caliphate fell like a sandcastle, and how entire communities were burned, attacked, and forced to obey. Yet, all this started with just small visits from missionaries and traders.
If you think colonization was clean or fair, this story will shock you. You will see how Britain’s greatest weapon was not just their guns—but their clever use of division, pressure, fear, and control.
This isn’t just history—it’s the real story of how Nigeria was captured. Therefore, pay closely attention as you read and unfold the true life story of how Nigeria was captured.
Chapter One
The year is 1851. John Bickcroft, the British consul for the Bights of Benin and Biafra, holds a meeting with some British missionaries in Abeokuta, southwestern Nigeria. By the end of the meeting, Bickcroft is convinced to use his military powers to unsettle Baikoko, the reigning king of Lagos, in favour of his rival, Itoyo of Iga. Baikoko had been hostile towards the missionaries and the British training activities in Lagos and had made no serious effort to end the ongoing slave trade in the region. Bickcroft hoped that replacing Baikoko with Akitoe would bring an end to the slave trade and stabilise the region for the spread of legitimate commerce.
In December 1851, John Bickcroft ordered the bombardment of Lagos, forcing Baikoko to flee and never return. Akitoe becomes the new Oba and signs a treaty banning all slave trading activities in Lagos. But over the next 10 years, Akitoe and his successors were unable to bring the stability the British had hoped for. In 1861, Lagos was annexed as a British colony under the direct political control of a British governor. The colonisation of Nigeria had officially begun.
From the annexation of Lagos to the occupation of Sokoto, the entire process of colonisation took over 40 years. And since Nigeria was made up of different regions, it also meant that different tactics were attempted to gain control of this region. However, the most effective tool for British colonial expansion was a swiftness to use a superior military might to subdue any opposition offered by the indigenous people. This is the story of how the British effectively conquered Nigeria. Nigeria is Britain’s biggest protectorate, larger than France and Italy combined.
In the early 19th century, the country we now know today as Nigeria was made up of several regions around two predominant rivers, the River Niger from the west and the River Benue from the east. In the north of the rivers lied the Sokoto Caliphate, founded by Usman dan Fodio, who had previously led a brutal conflict that saw the unification of all the Hausa states into one Islamic empire. The once great but now crumbling Oyo Empire and various other Yoruba states lie in the west. In the east were various decentralized tribes, the predominant of which were the Igbo. And in the south and the middle regions were various distinct tribes and kingdoms that were largely autonomous.
Chapter Two
Around the middle of the 19th century, British agents started coming into Nigeria in three forms: Christian missionaries , Traders, Political officials. All with the primary aim of increasing British influence in the region. In 1842, a group from the Church Missionary Society in Britain landed in Badagry, Lagos, and spread to Abeokuta in 1846. And by 1890, they had established themselves as far north as Ilorin. A similar situation occurred around the south and the southeast with the Roman Catholic organization becoming quite successful. But Christianity did not spread significantly in the Islamic territories of the Sokoto Caliphate.
The missionaries established schools focused on teaching English to the locals and also encouraged Christianized Africans who knew the local languages to go into communities and preach the gospel to their countrymen. One of such men, and perhaps the most famous of them all, was Samuel Ajayi Crowder, a former slave captured during the Yoruba conflicts that accompanied the fall of the Oyo Empire. Crowder became a major force for the spread of Christianity, becoming the first indigenous African bishop of the Anglican Church in 1862.
While the rulers of the region sought the Europeans as political allies, the missionaries were more concerned about spreading their religion and ending slavery. They believed that the cultures of the indigenous people were far inferior to theirs and therefore needed a complete overhaul. This was the primary motivative factor for the annexation of Lagos in 1861.
From Lagos, the British made their way inland, slowly bringing Yoruba land under British rule. In 1886, the British ended the terrible Ekitiparapo conflicts, which had been ongoing for 15 years. All sides were weary of fighting themselves and welcomed the British as peacemakers. The British ended the conflicts, but they returned. They issued treaties declaring that all signatories direct future disputes with each other to the British governor in Lagos for resolution. But this was not met without resistance.
The king of Ijebuland, suspicious of the motives of the British, had fought them entirely for most of the 19th century. But when he refused to discuss trade terms with the British governor of Lagos, the British used this as an excuse to forcibly occupy the territory. British troops subdued the entire Ijebuland for four days, sending a message to the rest of Yoruba land that a new supreme power in the region had arrived. The British traders in the region had arrived. The people of the reconstituted Oyo Empire also offered significant resistance to the British. On 12 November 1894, the town of New Oyo was bombarded and brought forcibly under British colonial rule.
Chapter Three
In the south, the Nigeria Delta area and Calabar had been an important region for the sale of slaves, but as a result of the decline in slave trade around the 1850s, the trade in palm products became the most important source of wealth in the region, as it offered fewer barriers to entry. Tensions were so high between the British traders and the coastal middlemen in the region because of the business model of palm oil trade known as the Trust System.
Under the Trust System, the British firms on the coast would pay a certain amount to the coastal middlemen to procure a specific amount of palm oil. The middlemen would use part of the money to purchase palm oil from the interland dealers and bring the palm oil back to the British firms in completion of the bargain. But there were only a select few middlemen doing this, thus giving them a huge monopoly in the market and making them lots of profits in the process.
Seeing the problems with the Trust System, British traders wanted to bypass the middlemen and trade directly with the interland dealers, but two things held them back: Malaria threatened to cut short the life of any European who ventured beyond the coast. Secondly, The British traders didn’t know how to get from the coast to their interland suppliers.
But with the emergence of some British explorers, things were soon to be changed. Originally coming from the Niger to the west, the British explorer Mungo Park, who journeyed from Timbuktu to the Niger in 1805, was the first European to discover that the River Niger flowed to the east. Became deceased at the rapids of Borza, Park was unable to follow the river to its termination. But in the 1820s, another explorer by the name of Yuch Carpenter revealed that the Niger flowed through Ausa land. After Carpenter’s death, his servants, Richard and John Lander, followed the Niger to its confluence with the Benue. In 1854, Dr. William Beffel-Beke led a successful expedition to the interior of the Niger Delta. His expedition made use of quinine, a preventive measure against malaria, and proved that the Europeans could survive the interior.
And now that the British firms could bypass the coastal middlemen, the local economies of big trading port cities in Nigeria, as well as other established British firms that relied on the trust system, felt threatened. Both local traders and British firms looked to the British Council to settle disputes and negotiate balance to the trust system. Through the position of a mediator, the Council achieved a status of great power.
The growing power of Bickcroft, the Consul for the Bites of Benin and Biafra, can be seen in the case of Calabar. The kings of Calabar’s two most powerful towns, Eyo Honesty II of Creek Town and Ayamba V of Duke Town, both welcomed the missionaries in 1846, believing that this would lead to a stronger relationship with the British Consul. But the missionaries expressed concern over the lingering ritual practice of human sacrifice and the killing of twins, and pressured Bickcroft to intervene and put an end to the practices. In 1850, Bickcroft negotiated a treaty with the two kingdoms, banning human sacrifices and the killing of twins. But when Old Town, a weaker neighbour of Creek and Duke Town, sacrificed several slaves in 1855, the British completely demolished the town and forced its king to sign a similar treaty as a precondition for rebuilding.
Chapter Four
In 1853, Bickcroft disposed King Pepple of Bonny, who had been a thorn in the side of the British trading interest for 20 years. Pepple consistently refused to give up his control of the interior markets. He then forced Dapo, Pepple’s successor, to sign a treaty that made his court the supreme judicial authority in Bonny, preventing the king from engaging in trade and waging war without the approval of the British supercargo. Thus, the once great kingdom of Bonny ceased to be the most prominent state in the delta, and another would take its place.
The kingdom of Opobo, led by King Jaja, the most powerful ruler in the Bites of Biafra at that time, became a bustling town for trade and commerce in the delta. Jaja’s ability to control the interland markets from Opobo angered European traders. But soon, even the mighty King Jaja would succumb to the ever-growing pressures of the British supercargoes.
In 1885, Jaja was forced to sign a treaty that placed the Oya River Protectorate in the hands of the United Kingdom. But he later violated the terms of the treaty and continued to deny the British access to his interland markets. For this, he was disposed and exiled to the West Indies as a warning to other local rulers of the consequences of insubordination. The similar fate met Nana, the Isekiri governor, who was disposed and deported in 1894 after refusing British access to the Urubu market of Isintarland.
But after all this, the British were just getting started. Rather than proclaim protectorate status over the Niger and Benue, the British took a different approach, granting a royal charter in 1886 to a formidable British company called the Royal Niger Company, established by this man, Sir George Goldie. The charter gave the company the power to control the politics and the trade of any local territories it could gain treaties with, provided that the company did not interfere with the local religion or customs, except in cases discouraging the practice of slavery. Under the terms of the charter, the Royal Niger Company came to control the trade on the Niger, saving the British government the financial burden of direct colonial occupation. Goldie’s primary objective was to monopolize the entire trade of the navigable rivers of the Nigerian interior. Although the royal charter it received technically obliged him to promote free trade, it also gave him the power to organize trade in a way that would exclude all possible rivals.
In 1879, Goldie drew together the three biggest firms operating in the Niger to create the National African Company, which later became the Royal Niger Company. He also bought three French competitors in 1884 and used the power of the charter to exclude all competition, establishing high tariffs on imports and exports. Such policies made the Royal Niger Company extremely unpopular among the other British supercargoes, who now recognized that Goldie had succeeded in simply replacing the monopoly of the coastal middlemen with that of his own company.
By the end of the 19th century, three events would lead to the downfall of the Royal Niger Company and convinced the British government that direct colonial administration would be the only effective means of governing the Niger territories:
In 1895, the Conservative Party had taken control of Parliament and Joseph Chamberlain, a zealous imperialist, became the colonial secretary under Lord Salisbury’s new administration. Chamberlain was not in support of the government having chartered companies; rather, he preferred the progressive possibilities of a full-scaled colonial rule through his office.
The Royal Niger Company was proving how ineffective it was at promoting peace and stability in the region. The catastrophe that illustrated this occurred among the people of Brass. The mangrove swamps in which they lived was an inhospitable environment for agriculture, and so the people of Brass had always exported items such as salt and fish in exchange for foodstuff from the interior. Their primary channel for trading had always been the Niger, but with the emergence of the Royal Niger Company, it was no longer legal for them to conduct trade on the Niger. So they made attempts to find alternative trade routes, but none were particularly successful. As a result, they eventually began to starve.
On the 29th of December 1894, the people of Brass under the leadership of King Koko revolted against the Royal Niger Company. They attacked the RNC’s headquarters, carrying much of the company’s properties, destroying its warehouses and machineries. They also kidnapped several company employees, whom they later ritually ate as part of a spiritual ceremony to combat the smallpox epidemic that was terrorizing their community. Goldie demanded revenge and asked Claudius MacDonald, the Consul General at Brass, to bring his subject under the gun. MacDonald ordered the town of Nimbé in Brass to be bombarded, but the job was done apathetically and the people of Brass were never fully brought under submission.
Chapter Five
The final nail in the RNC’s coffin was the fallout between Chamberlain and Goldie over the protection of the northwestern frontier of the company from the French. The French had not given up the quest to expand their political influence and develop trading networks on the river.
In 1897, they occupied Borsa, a region close to the RNC’s treaty zone but not technically within it. From this position, they could build up a military strength necessary to challenge the RNC’s control over the Niger region. Chamberlain wanted Goldie to use his company’s forces to secure the territories and drive the French out, but Goldie was reluctant to do this. He wanted Chamberlain to do something to bring the Brass situation under control before he would undertake another expensive military operation. But Chamberlain had no intentions of meeting Goldie’s demands. Instead, he revoked the company’s charter in 1899 and created the West African Frontier Force under Frederick Lugard, Goldie’s former employee. An accomplished colonial officer who had been instrumental in bringing the East African territories of Uganda under British rule, Lugard was charged with mounting a campaign for the colonial office independent of the Royal Niger Company to push the French back from the Niger. His forces succeeded in pushing the French from Bogu, leaving the Niger as firmly as ever in the hands of the British.
On the 1st of January 1900, the Royal Niger Company ceased to be the governing authority of the Niger and Benue. Its southern territories were amalgamated into a new protectorate called the Niger Coast Protectorate. The company’s northern territories became the protectorate of Northern Nigeria with Lugard as its first High Commissioner.
With the Niger secured, the British turned its attention towards the emirate of the Sokoto Caliphate. Two reasons made the Sokoto Caliphate a more desirable region for British colonial expansion: The territories of Bida, Ilori and Yola, which were under the British, were also under the influence of the Caliph. The British feared that a revolt from the people may arise.
The Sokoto Caliphate offered yet another avenue for the French to take over the Niger.
The formidable British colonial officer, Frederick Lugard, fully convinced that the only effective way of securing the Niger Coast Protectorate was the military conquest of Sokoto, disposed the emirs of Bida and Kontagora and replaced them with people whose primary qualification to rule was the willingness to submit to its authority. From these places, Lugard’s forces moved north to Bauchi and Gombe, and by 1892 they had conquered Zaria.
The British forces now faced their greatest challenge in Kano and Sokoto. Lugard’s forces occupied Kano after a few minor resistance on the 3rd of February 1903. But fighting outside the city continued for several weeks. By early March, Kano fell. In Sokoto, Caliph Atayiru put up a stiff fight, but eventually he was forced to flee. Not content to allow the head of such vast empire to reconstitute himself elsewhere, Lugard’s forces pursued Atayiru, killing him finally on the 27th of July 1903, marking the end of Usman Danfodio’s mighty Caliphate.
The Caliphate territories were incorporated into the protectorate of Northern Nigeria under emirs willing to accept British colonial rule. In 1904, the Kingdom of Borno, which had always retained its independence from Sokoto, was occupied by the British forces and added into the protectorate of Northern Nigeria.
Though the conquest of Sokoto was the final act in setting the boundaries of Northern and Southern Nigeria, many parts of the protectorate continued to put up fierce resistance to British rule. But over the first decades of the 20th century, these pockets of resistance were crushed by the British.
In 1901, British forces conquered the Aro people. They believed that the people of Aro were the overlords of the entire Igbo land, but they soon realized that they were wrong. The Aro community was indeed a spiritual power in Igbo land, but the political powers were largely decentralized. Over the next decades, the British still found themselves conquering the interiors of Igbo land village by village.
In certain communities in Western Igbo land, a communal defense movement known as the Ikumeku was a turn in the flesh in a part of British forces. The Ikumeku was a decentralized militant group comprising soldiers from various communities in Western Igbo land. They fought against the Royal Niger Company in 1898 but later dispersed, only to rise again in 1900 to defend Asaba and its interlands against the new government of the protectorate. Defeated in 1902, Ikumeku rose again in 1904 and again in 1909 when the movement was finally annihilated by an overwhelming British force.
By the end of the 19th century and into the 20th, the British extended their colonial grabs over Nigeria more as a result of a superior military mind and the willingness to use violence to achieve its ends. However, the lives of the people of the Nigerian region would forever change, particularly in the latter half of the 20th century.
CONCLUSION
If you’ve read this story up to this point, you deserve a big round of applause. This is not just a story—it’s a deep and painful reminder of how a country like Nigeria was taken over, little by little. The British didn’t just walk in with guns. No. They came with smiles, Bibles, business ideas, and promises. But behind all of that were strong plans to take control—and they succeeded.
It started slowly. First with friendly visits, then with peace talks, and later, full-blown conflicts. They signed papers with our kings, some of whom didn’t even understand what they were signing. They made rules that looked harmless, but behind the scenes, they were already building a new system—one where we were no longer in charge of our land.
Many brave kings and warriors tried to resist. Men like King Jaja of Opobo, Nana of Itsekiri, and the people of Aro and Asaba. They fought hard, but the British had better weapons, stronger armies, and a clear plan. And most importantly—they never stopped.
But let’s be honest—part of the blame is also ours. Too many of our leaders were divided. Some chose power and gifts over their people. Some signed away lands and lives just to stay in favor with the British. And because we were not united, the British took advantage. Thank you for reading. I hope this story opened your eyes the way it opened mine. And remember: the best way to honor the past is to do better in the future.
