The Sources of Formation, An Essay by Fola Fagbule and Feyi Fawehinmi

Our popular history book Formation, The Making of Nigeria from Jihad to Amalgamation was released internationally by Cassava Republic during 2021 and has been extremely well-received by both the academic and general public. We have been lucky to have Formation listed by The Guardian, an important British daily newspaper on its prestigious list of “Books that Explain the World” for 2021. Formation also received favorable reviews in the Financial Times newspaper and the Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs, among other notable academic and general interest publications.

We have also been especially pleased to see several great reviews published by regular readers. Throughout 2021, we were graciously invited to speak at numerous events and forums by readers and listeners who have found the story of Formation to be timely and important. All of these have made for a very exciting 2021, and we are pleased that Formation is generating the exact kind of public interest and conversations that we had hoped for when we decided to write this story.

As we have said to many people, reading the stories to write Formation was as much fun and probably more work than writing the book itself. Between us, we read or researched more than one hundred books and academic papers to establish the raw facts upon which we constructed our narrative of the one hundred years preceding the amalgamation of Northern and Southern Nigeria in 1914. It was very important for us that our story be based on high quality, first-hand, eye-witness sources of evidence. We also wanted these important source books and historical documents to feature very strongly in Formation, because more popular study of these works is essential for continuing the conversation about Nigeria’s rich history. In this essay, we will highlight some of the sources of Formation that most influenced our thinking.

A good place to begin might be with The Niger Journal of Richard and John Lander, which was written by its eponymous authors after their return from an epic journey into present-day Nigeria in 1830. This book is important for many reasons. Firstly, it is one hundred percent based on eye-witness accounts. The Lander Brothers’ journal is one those rare first-hand accounts written in the English Language about what was happening in the lands we now know as Nigeria during the very early 19th century. This was a very important moment in the aftermath of the Fulani jihad led by Usman Dan Fodio and his successors.

Secondly, this book is an epic narrative, which describes this remarkable journey made by two unremarkable young British boys through a vast area of land that was previously entirely unknown and totally misunderstood by the European world. Most importantly, this book tells the story of how the secret of the Niger River and its connection to the Atlantic Ocean was uncovered by white people for the first time, changing the history of Nigeria forever in one dramatic moment. We used The Niger Journal as a critical source for several chapters of Formation, starting with the opening one, A River Runs Through It, and continuing with Mad Men and Missionaries as well as Exit the Bible, Enter the Gun. The Lander Brothers blow-by-blow account is rich in dates, detail and context, even if the relative ignorance of the writers about what they were seeing, and hearing was quite evident in many respects. These young white boys managed to travel relatively unmolested from Badagry at the coast through the Yoruba country, up to Bussa on the Niger River, then down to Lokoja and all the way further down the river into the Niger Delta, where they were promptly kidnapped. They eventually manage to regain their freedom and escape by a hair’s breadth back to Europe via Brass Town. They were the first Europeans to successfully undertake such a journey, after many failed attempts, including the one made by Mungo Park, who died at Bussa in 1806.

Once the Lander brothers returned to London and made the rest of the world aware of what they had seen and heard, particularly the previously unknown connection between the Niger and the Atlantic Ocean, the future of the lands they traveled through became changed forever, in the direction of European influence.

Another eye-witness account that we relied heavily upon is contained in the Journal of an Expedition up the Niger and Tshadda Rivers authored by The Reverend Samuel Crowther in 1855, after he returned from another epic journey from the coast into the interior of modern Nigeria. Written by the future First Black Bishop in Africa, this is one of the most historically significant books about pre-colonial Nigeria. Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther is one of the national heroes of Nigeria, and certainly one of the most important characters in Formation. We consider him to be the most important Nigerian of the 19th century, with no exception.

At the time he wrote this book, Reverend Crowther was a mature and experienced traveler of about 48 years old, who had lived in England and Sierra Leone for many years and was fluent in several local languages as well as the ones spoken by his European sponsors and co-travelers. In his introduction to the second edition of this tome, the sage Nigerian historian J.F. Ade Ajayi from the University of Ibadan wrote in 1968 that: “Crowther visited the Benue River at a time of rapid political and demographic change, and he gives us a graphic picture of what those changes meant in human terms.” Crowther’s invaluable narrative is one of those documents that provide the critical shift in perspective that we wanted to bring across in telling the story of Nigeria’s history, and his writing greatly influenced our views about the impact of the creation of the Sokoto Caliphate on human lives in the far southern frontiers of the Fulani Empire, in areas now known as the “Middle Belt” of Nigeria. Crowther’s journey started at Abeokuta, and he went via Lagos, to the Nun River in the Niger Delta and all the way up the Niger and Benue rivers, past Lokoja and as far up as Adamawa. His knowledgeable writing and linguistic talent shines through the entire document and provides us with some of the best material on the mid 19th century status of affairs in the modern “Middle Belt” area of Nigeria. We found this source document to be extremely important in providing the perspective for writing chapters of Formation like Game of Thrones in the Niger Heartland which is an epic multi-decade story centered around the Nupe Kingdom, and culminating in the 1897 historic Battle of Bida, an incredibly important milestone in the formation of Nigeria.

Nigeria’s “Middle Belt” is an incredibly diverse stretch of land that has confounded Nigerians and Europeans alike for centuries. Simply figuring out who is who in this wonderful ethnic tapestry would be an achievement. Yet, this entry level task proved beyond the range of even the most gifted explorers. Dr. Siegfried Frederick Nadel is one person who gave it a good go. He went to live in the Nupe Kingdom for two years between 1934 and 1936 and somehow managed to start speaking the Nupe language within six months, which was no mean feat, given the tonality of the language. The result of that immersion was his book A Black Byzantium: The Kingdom of Nupe in Nigeria. The book is not perfect. Written in 1942, Dr. Nadel’s book contains what might seem like obvious mistakes today, but this is not down to the all-too-common laziness seen in the work of many Europeans writing about Nigeria. The task was simply too great and perhaps required a lifetime’s commitment. It would not have been possible to write The Game of Thrones in the Niger Heartland, without the understanding of the Nupe Kingdom that was provided by Dr. Nadel’s work.

How to write about an important and complex story such as that of the Sokoto Caliphate? The easy part is that there is no shortage of books and articles on an empire that was at one point, the largest bureaucracy in sub-Saharan Africa. The slightly difficult part is that, as with all complex stories, different accounts often took very different views on what the Caliphate was like. To strike a balance, we relied heavily on Murray Last’s The Sokoto Caliphate and H.A.S. Johnston’s The Fulani Empire of Sokoto. Professor Last is luckily still alive, and his indispensable work takes a more academic approach that is critical to understanding how the Caliphate worked, down to the minutiae of offices — grand and petty — and policymaking. H.A.S. Johnston, who was one of several colonial officials that became historians after Nigeria gained independence, wrote a book which is closer to what we might call popular history.

An immensely enjoyable and easy read, he included a lot of insights and local knowledge gained from talking to several people on the ground and travelling the country. What both authors had in common was having access to the outstanding historian of the Sokoto Caliphate — Waziri Muhammadu Junaidu. The Waziri painstakingly built up the largest archive of materials on the Caliphate ranging from books to letters. In gaining access to him, Professor Last and Mr. Johnston were able to fill in several of their knowledge gaps as outsiders and produce works which we found crucial in writing Formation. Perhaps more than any other, The Caliphate in Session chapter is indebted to these two books. Mervyn Hiskett’s The Sword of Truth: The Life and Times of the Shehu Usuman Dan Fodio was a source of some frustration for us. How is it that there is pretty much only one English biography, and even this shorter than 200 pages, on the life of one of the most consequential people in Nigerian history? While that question remains unanswered, as limited as it is, the late Dr. Hiskett’s work proved essential to us in writing about the life of the Shehu in our Son of the Jurist chapter.

In writing about the Yoruba country during the mid-19th century, very few eye-witness accounts in the English Language are as lucid, graphic, authentic and incontrovertible as that of a young American Baptist Minister named Richard Henry Stone, who lived in the country from 1858 and authored a book called In Africa’s Forest and Jungle or Six Years Among the Yorubans. R.H. Stone’s amazing first-hand account is another one of those perspective-shifting narratives we love, because he observed important historical events from the unique perspective of a large and important settlement called Ijaiye, which was destroyed as an outcome of regional geopolitics among the Oyo, Egba, Ijebu, Ibadan, Dahomey and Ilorin. Our understanding of the intimate details of the so-called Yoruba Wars, including the names, addresses and physical descriptions of key actors in the affairs of the Yoruba country after the collapse of Oyo are greatly enriched by the very personal even if self-indulgent account of R.H. Stone. Personal accounts like Stone’s memoirs and the haunting first-hand portrait of King Ghezo’s Dahomey titled Dahomey and the Dahomans by Frederick E. Forbes combine with more academic resources like Saburi Biobaku’s seminal The Egba and Their Neighbors, and Harry A. Gailey’s Lugard and the Abeokuta Uprising, The Demise of Egba Independence to paint the colorful picture of affairs in this part of Nigeria that we put forward in the chapter of Formation that we called Sunrise Within The Tropics.

Writing about the pre-colonial Igbo Country in the hinterland of the Niger Delta was one of the more difficult aspects of the Formation story, because there are so few eye-witness accounts written in any language at all, never mind in English. But we were lucky that so many excellent Nigerian and foreign historians had done the important work of using oral history sources and dating techniques to bridge this knowledge gap, long before we were born. Nonetheless, we did make a valiant effort to unearth new and perhaps overlooked first-hand historical sources, and we managed to find some. Not least of these is the invaluable personal history authored by George Thomas Basden (later, Archdeacon of the Niger from 1926), who arrived at Onitsha in September 1900 and was probably the first European to live among the Igbo people from that time until he died in 1936. Basden’s Among the Ibos of Nigeria is that rare document, an English language eye-witness account of pre-colonial life in the Igbo country. It is from his account that we can recount a riveting first-hand report of a consultation with the famous Arochukwu Oracle, reflecting the immense power of that longstanding pre-colonial judicial and religious institution on the lives of the ordinary people in the Igbo country.

We combined Basden’s wonderful storytelling with the outstanding academic works of Igbo scholars like Kenneth Onwuka Dike (Trade and Politics in the Niger Delta), Augustine Okwu (Igbo Culture and the Christian Missions 1857–1957), and Don Ohadike (The Ekumeku Movement, Western Igbo Resistance to the British Conquest of Nigeria, 1883–1914) among others, to paint as accurate a picture as we could. Finally, we utilized the remarkably diligent historical work of writers like David Northup (Trade Without Rulers) and Geoffrey L. Baker (Trade Winds on the Niger) to understand the financial and economic perspectives, without which the history of Eastern Nigeria cannot be properly told. Chapters of Formation like The Glorious Incompetents, Exit the Bible, Enter The Gun, as well as Conquest and Discontent benefit particularly from source documents such as these and many more.

Finally, Frederick Lugard. Our problem with writing about this larger-than-life character was an altogether different one. Given how prolific the subject himself was as a writer, and how determined he was to ensure that his own version of history was the one that endured, how could we possibly tell a fair story about him? There is a lot of material on Lugard, almost too much. We were at risk of simply writing a book about Lugard if we took the easy route of just relying on the easily accessible material. Our approach was to group Lugard material into three categories — the things written by Lugard as they happened such as his diaries; the things written by Lugard long after they happened, like his seminal tome Dual Mandate; and the things written by other people about Lugard. This third category could be further split into two sub-categories, people who disliked Lugard and people who admired him. The second category was the easiest to decide on — those things written by Lugard long after the events had happened, or he had left the scene, were mainly to get his version of history on the record. We mostly treated this as hagiographic material and ignored them. His diaries however were invaluable given that he wrote them as the events happened, for example as he travelled through Nigeria. They contain plenty of mistakes and willful misunderstandings, but this added to their value as a tool to transport us into an era far removed from us.

How about the plethora of material on Lugard written by third parties? This was tricky to navigate given how the Marmite Lugard seemed to only ever elicit strong feelings in those who knew him. Dame Margery Perham wrote 1,500 pages on Lugard’s life split across two volumes. The one we relied on the most was Lugard: The Years of Authority which covered the years 1898–1945 and, the era when he had the most influence in Nigeria. Dame Perham no doubt was an admirer of Lugard but over the course of interviewing him multiple times and spending extended periods of time with him, she was able to force him to answer difficult questions about his stewardship in the country, in particular his controversial policies and outright crimes. In taking this rather honest approach to her work, she freed the reader to come to their own conclusions on Lugard. Ours was overall unfavorable, but others may see him differently. Another excellent resource we used was Rory O’Grady’s The Passionate Imperialists. An engineer related to Lugard by marriage, his book does not pretend to be a dispassionate account of the lives led by Lugard and Flora Shaw. But once that is understood, it is very easy to navigate as an easy-to-read account of their lives which leveraged access to some important family documents. These two books and others helped us piece together the chapter of Formation that we called Frederick Lugard: The King in the North.

A few other important books are worth mentioning to illustrate the importance of perspective to us in writing Formation. One of these was an eye-witness account by a European woman named Sylvia Leith-Ross (formerly Sylvia Ruxton) who was born in 1883 and lived in Nigeria off and on from 1907. Her Stepping Stones, Memoirs of Colonial Nigeria (1907–1960) is a rich document which provides an all-too-rare perspective, that of a woman, in the affairs of pre-colonial Nigeria. Other important pre-colonial historical accounts by women that feature prominently in Formation include the works of Cheryl Johnson-Odim and Nina Emma Mba, who co-authored For Women and The Nation, a ground-breaking biography of the great early Nigerian feminist and political leader, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti of Abeokuta. Kristin Mann’s Slavery and the Birth of an African City, written about Lagos between 1760 and 1900 was another, without which it would have been impossible for us to produce the Formation story.

All told, the more than hundred books and papers that we relied upon to produce Formation confirmed several things to us. We came away further convinced that there is no lack of deep and expansive high-quality accounts of Nigeria’s tortuous history for our modern generation to rely on. What is required is a new effort to engage with these historical records and documents, standing on the shoulders of the great post-colonial historians of Nigeria, in a way that “moves Nigeria’s narrative in a different and exciting direction of the 21st century reader” as The Guardian newspaper described our effort in its review.

As we said from the beginning, our sincerest hope remains that Formation will help spur the beginning of a new conversation about Nigeria’s history and help chart a more advantageous future for the humans of Nigeria.