Nigeria

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Precolonial History of the Savanna

The Nok culture, which flourished between 500 bc and ad 200, is the earliest identifiable civilization in Nigeria’s north; the Nok are also the earliest of West Africa’s known ironworkers. (Their real identity unknown, the Nok are named for a village where miners first unearthed their artifacts.) Their famous figurines—finely crafted people and animals in terra-cotta—have influenced centuries of central Nigerian sculpture. Today the art of several central Nigerian peoples continues to reflect Nok style.

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The Kanem-Bornu Empire

The northern region’s first well-documented state was the kingdom of Kanem, which emerged east of Lake Chad in what is now southwestern Chad by the 9th century ad. Kanem profited from trade ties with North Africa and the Nile Valley, from which it also received Islam. The Saifawas, Kanem’s ruling dynasty, periodically enlarged their holdings by conquest and marriage into the ruling families of vassal states. The empire, however, failed to sustain a lasting peace. During one conflict-ridden period sometime between the 12th and 14th centuries, the Saifawas were forced to move across Lake Chad into Bornu, in what is now far northeastern Nigeria. There, the Kanem intermarried with the native peoples, and the new group became known as the Kanuri. The Kanuri state, centered first in Kanem and then in Bornu, is known as the Kanem-Bornu Empire, hereafter referred to as Bornu.

The Kanuri eventually returned to Chad and conquered the empire lost by the Saifawas. Its dominance thus assured, Bornu became a flourishing center of Islamic culture that rivaled Mali to the far west. The kingdom also grew rich in trade, which focused on salt from the Sahara and locally produced textiles. In the late 16th century, the Bornu king Idris Alooma expanded the kingdom again, and although the full extent of the expansion is not clear, Bornu exerted considerable political influence over Hausaland to the west. In the mid- and late 18th century, severe droughts and famines weakened the kingdom, but in the early 19th century Bornu enjoyed a brief revival under al-Kanemi, a shrewd military leader who resisted a Fulani revolution that swept over much of Nigeria. Al-Kanemi’s descendants continue as traditional rulers within Borno State. The Kanem-Bornu Empire ceased to exist in 1846 when it was absorbed into the Wadai sultanate to the east.

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The Hausa-Fulani

The Hausa cultures, which as early as the 7th century ad were smelting iron ore, arose in what is today northwestern and north central Nigeria, to Bornu’s west. The origin of these cultures, however, is a mystery. Legend holds that Bayajidda, a traveler from the Middle East, married the queen of Daura, from whom came seven sons. Each son is reputed to have founded one of the seven Hausa kingdoms: Kano, Rano, Katsina, Zazzau (Zaria), Gobir, Kebbi, and Auyo. Various Nigerian groups explain their origins in similar legends involving migrations southward across the Sahara or from the east or west through the savannas, followed by intermarriage and acculturation. These legends serve to highlight the importance of such interchanges in the cultural, economic, and political development of many Nigerian societies.

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However founded, the seven city-states developed as strong trading centers, typically surrounded by a wall and with an economy based on intensive farming, cattle raising, craft making, and later slave trading. In each Hausa state, a monarch, probably elected, ruled over a network of feudal lords, most of whom had embraced Islam by the 14th century. The states maintained persistent rivalries, which at times made them easy prey to the expansion of Bornu and other kingdoms.

A perhaps greater, if more subtle, threat to the Hausa kingdoms was the immigration of Fulani pastoralists, who came from the west to make a home in the Nigerian savanna and who permeated large areas of Hausaland over several centuries. In 1804 a Fulani scholar, Usuman dan Fodio, declared a jihad (holy war) against the Hausa states, whose rulers he condemned for allowing Islamic practices to deteriorate. Local Fulani leaders, motivated by both spiritual and local political concerns, received Usuman’s blessing to overthrow the Hausa rulers. With their superior cavalry and cohesion, the Fulani overthrew the Hausa rulers and also conquered areas beyond Hausaland, including Adamawa to the east and Nupe and Ilorin to the south.

After the war, a loose federation of 30 emirates emerged, each recognizing the supremacy of the sultan of Sokoto, located in what is now far northwestern Nigeria. The first sultan of Sokoto was Usuman. After Usuman died in 1817, he was succeeded by his son, Muhammad Bello. Militarily and commercially powerful, the Sokoto caliphate dominated the region throughout the 19th century.

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Precolonial History of the Forest and Coast

Nigeria’s oldest archaeological site lies in its forested region, at Iwo Eleru near Akure in southwestern Nigeria. Stone tools and human remains at the site date from 9000 bc.

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The Yoruba

The first well-documented kingdom in what is now southwestern Nigeria was centered at Ife, which was established as the first of the Yoruba kingdoms in the 11th or 12th century. Over the next few centuries, the Ife spread their political and spiritual influence beyond the borders of its small city-state. Ife artisans were highly skilled, producing, among other things, bronze castings of heads in a highly naturalistic style. Terra-cotta, wood, and ivory were also common media.

Shortly after the rise of Ife, the kingdom of Benin emerged to the east. Although it was separate from the Yoruba kingdoms, Benin legends claim that the kingdom’s first rulers were descended from an Ife prince. By the 15th century, Benin was a large, well-designed city sustained by trade (both within the region and, later, with Europe). Its cultural legacy includes a wealth of elaborate bronze plaques and statues recording the nation’s history and glorifying its rulers.

At about the same time as Benin’s ascendance, the major Yoruba city-state of Oyo arose. Situated northwest of Ife, Oyo used its powerful cavalry to replace Ife as Yorubaland’s political center. (Ife, however, continued to serve as the spiritual center of Yorubaland.) When the Portuguese first arrived in the late 15th century, it was the Oyo who controlled trade with them, first in goods such as peppers, which they secured from the northern interior lands and transferred to the southern coast, and later in slaves. In Oyo, as elsewhere throughout coastal West Africa, the traffic in slaves had disastrous results—not just on those traded, who were largely from the interior, but also on the traders. As African nations vied for the lucrative commerce, conflicts increased, and other forms of advancement, both agricultural and economic, fell by the wayside. As a result, when Britain banned the slave trade in the early 19th century, Oyo was hard-pressed to maintain its prosperity. The Oyo state of Ilorin broke away from the empire in 1796, then joined the northern Sokoto caliphate in 1831 after Fulani residing in Ilorin seized power. The Oyo empire collapsed, plunging all of Yorubaland—Oyo, Ife, and other areas—into a bloody civil war that lasted for decades.