Black History Month series: Black History, Not White Lies – Nigeria – by Korrine Sky

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65 years ago, Nigeria celebrated political independence.
But full independence was never achieved.

Britain left behind the architecture of control.
Borders drawn for profit, not people.
Governments beholden to foreign capital.
Economies designed for extraction, not growth.

Nigeria as a single nation only came into existence in 1914, at the Amalgamation of Nigeria.

In 2025, that makes the country just 111 years old.
Much of Nigerian history was written by the coloniser, shaping how independence is remembered.

Here’s the truth rarely said:
The “Father of Nigeria” is a myth, a story crafted by those who benefit from forgetting.

Nigeria was not born of unity or self-determination.

It was forged by British businessmen and colonial architects; men whose names Britain still celebrates as “great” empire-builders.

In Nigeria it was Sir George Goldie and his Royal Niger Company.
Cecil Rhodes in Southern Africa, Ian Smith in Rhodesia.

Different countries. Same legacy of control, extraction, and violence.

These men built empires by
— Bombarding cities.
— Deposing kings.
— Kidnapping communities.
— Destroying towns.
— Signing treaties that gave Britain total control.

They did not come to spread democracy. They came to make Nigeria a business.

Britain paid £865,000 (the equivalent of £46 million today) to buy control of Nigeria.

That was the first deal in a centuries-long project of extraction.
Palm oil, a commodity native to the Niger Delta, became Britain’s industrial lubricant, essential to power the machinery of the world’s first industrialised nation.

By 1870, palm oil replaced slaves as the main export of the Niger Delta.
But Britain was determined to own it all.

Jaja of Opobo, a former slave turned wealthy oil trader, resisted.
King Koko of Nembe resisted.

They were crushed.
Massacres. Exile. Assassination by poison. Resistance was met with blood.

By 1900, Nigeria was a colony.
The Royal Niger Company became part of the United Africa Company, later absorbed into Unilever.

A corporate conquest that never truly ended.

Today... Africa still pays the price:
Debt that enslaves nations.
Economies built to serve foreign pockets.
Borders that divide, not unite.

So this October 1st, ask yourself:
Are we celebrating independence?
Or commemorating a story written by Britain to make us believe we are free… when we are not?

Colonisation was brutal. Evil. Bloody.

And the “commonwealth”?
Celebrated.
Yet it’s literally a club of colonised nations.

Nigeria’s independence is unfinished.
Independence Day is not a celebration.

It is a challenge: to finish what was started, reclaim what was stolen, and write the true story of Nigeria’s freedom.

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