What was Southern Nigeria like Right before Colonization?
Part VI: This chapter focuses on the polities in Southern Nigeria from 1720 to 1830
In this chapter of Nigeria, we are discussing southern Nigeria at the crest of the Atlantic slave trade—the last calm before colonial rule.
Two intertwined theaters anchor this story:
Bight of Benin / Yorubaland: Yoruba (Oyo, Ijebu, Egba, Ilesa, Owu), Edo (Benin), Itsekiri (Warri), Fon (Dahomey), plus Nupe and Borgu.
Bight of Biafra / Igboland: Igbo, Aro, Efik, Ibibio, Ijaw.
(If you’re jumping in mid-series: Part I covers deep origins & an overview of modern Nigeria; Parts II–III the northern Islamic polities and trans-Saharan trade; Parts IV–V the southern states as the Atlantic trade takes off.)
Bight of Benin
Benin
The Edo people had a monarchy called Benin. In Benin, trade flowed through the mangrove creeks of the Benin River to Ughoton, the port for Benin City. European merchants had to brave the Niger-Delta waterways to reach the Oba (King)’s officials at the waterside before goods moved inland. See map below to understand Benin’s geography:
From Ban to Bargain
As mentioned in the last article, for nearly two centuries, Benin stood apart from its neighbors like the Itsekiri by prohibiting the export of male slaves, but post civil war (1689-1721), Benin reversed course under Oba Akenzua I (1713-1735) to maintain his fragile throne.
Akenzua I and his successor Eresoyen (1735-1750) revitalized their kingdom through trade by exporting redwood, ivory, cloth, and increasingly slaves to Dutch, Portuguese, French, English, and even Northern African Muslim merchants. In return, Benin imported iron bars, knives, rum, tobacco, and—crucially—flintlock guns.
Souring European Relationships
By the 1730s, Benin's relationships with European traders deteriorated. The Dutch abandoned Benin due to insufficient slave volumes, river creek violence from Itsekiri & Ijo pirates, price competition from other Europeans, and mounting Benin unpaid debts. Benin took goods on credit without delivering equivalent slaves, ivory, or gum in return.
The French fared no better. Benin’s riverine swamps turned trading posts into yellow-fever graveyards; underfunded companies (the Guinea Company and the Company of Warri and Benin) collapsed under the combined weight of English naval attacks, chronic underfunding, and relentless disease.
As Europeans were abandoning Benin, throughout the late 1700s and early 1800s, Benin’s former vassal the Itsekiri Kingdom in Warri, started clashing with Benin over control of the river trade. The Benin-Warri skirmishes scared off European merchants who gravitated toward higher-slave volume ports like Bonny, Lagos, and Calabar—places that offered not only more slaves but also fewer mosquitoes.
Slave trading itself was gradually dying once Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807. Britain’s royal navy enforced their slave ban by crushing Portuguese and Spanish ships that attempted to trade slaves.
Luckily, Benin never depended on primarily selling slaves for its economy and shifted to selling palm oil as British demand increased. Palm oil is a needed input for soap, lamp oil, and machinery lubricants. Liverpool firms followed in the 1840s, planting the seeds of deeper British involvement—colonial stories for another chapter. For now, let’s turn our attention inland to the Oyo Empire.
Oyo
As mentioned in Part V, the Yoruba Oyo Kingdom ran on cavalry raids and a tight middleman network. Slave captives moved three directions:
North: Sold to Sahelian African polities like Kano and Nupe in exchange for horses
South: Traded to coastal kingdoms like Allada and Whydah (Ouidah) for European goods, particularly cowrie shells (the region’s currency)
Inward: Used domestically for plantations, weaving, military service, tribute, bureaucracy, pawnage, debt slavery, and concubinage
This created a self-perpetuating cycle: more horses enabled more raids, which generated more slaves and stuff for Oyo elites. When it came to trading south, rather than marching slaves directly to the coast, Oyo used its vassals as middlemen like the Ijebu, Awori and Egba to transport slaves to coastal ports.
Below is the greatest territorial extent of the Oyo Empire:
The cowrie shell was the main item that Africans sold slaves for in the bight of Benin. Those shells functioned as the region’s cash and unit of account. See table below:
Cowrie shells became so central to the economy that wearing cowrie-decorated accessories became the ultimate status symbol—equivalent to flaunting diamond jewelry today:
Besides cowries, items like alcohol and tobacco were also popular.
At its height, Oyo’s confidence/swagger hardened into a proverb “ajíṣe bí Ọ̀yọ́ làárí, Ọ̀yọ́ kìí ṣe bí baba ẹnìkọ́ọ̀kan: “Others emulate the Ọ̀yọ́, the Ọ̀yọ́ do not emulate anyone.” The Oyo began to set fashion, art, music and beauty trends across the West African region.
Yet sadly, if a village/town failed to pay sufficient tribute, sometimes, the Oyo empire raided Yoruba villages and sold them off to slavery. The end result was a massive Yoruba descent diaspora — in United States, Cuba, Haiti, and especially Brazil.
Between 1681–1710, about 164,000 captives were shipped to Bahia, Brazil—many exchanged directly for tobacco. Look below to see the rapid expansion of tobacco-laden ships going to coastal Africans in the Bight of Benin.
The addictive pull of Bahian tobacco was crazy. Two French traders in Whydah reported in 1750 that “the negroes prefer Brazilian tobacco to gold,” Yoruba artists even made art about tobacco smoking.
The Oyo-Dahomey Wars
By the 1720s, a new power threatened Oyo's dominance: the Kingdom of Dahomey, famous for its female warriors, the Agojie or Mino. Initially a vassal of Allada, Dahomey expanded aggressively, conquering Allada in 1724 and Whydah in 1727—the two most important slave ports on the Bight of Benin.
This conquest gave Dahomey a near-monopoly on European trade access, which they immediately exploited. Dahomean King Agaja devalued the price of a slave, by saying 1 slave would be worth less cowrie shells, guns, or Indian cloth when buying from Oyo. However, when Dahomey would sell Oyo-caught slaves to Europeans, they would raise the price of a slave to get more cowrie shells, guns, or Indian cloth. Dahomey was basically squeezing out the “benefit” of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade from Oyo.
For Oyo, the economic strangling was intolerable. Alafin Ojigi launched the first Oyo-Dahomey War (1726-1730) and beat Dahomean King Agaja. Dahomey had to pay a large tribute of male and female slaves, plus luxury goods and coral beads to Oyo per year.
European merchants, frustrated by Dahomey’s high prices and the Oyo-Dahomean War, sought alternative ports. Dutch traders established new outlets at Badagry with Egun chiefs. Brazilian-Portuguese made ties with ex-Allada chiefs at Porto Novo (Ajase), and later Lagos. Much of this commerce ran on credit, which nudged coastal brokers toward more raiding to repay debts.
These new ports—Badagry, Porto Novo, and later Lagos —all allied with Oyo, breaking Dahomey's monopoly, allowing Oyo to sell slaves for “better prices”. Unable to pay the increasing tribute demanded by Oyo, Dahomey rebelled again in 1738 starting the second Oyo-Dahomey War (1738-1748).
Dahomey lost again, ending with Dahomey's complete submission as an Oyo tributary state, paying crushing annual tribute of 41 men, women, boys, girls, plus cloth and luxury goods.
At its height, Oyo controlled a vast network of resident agents and garrisons, overseeing the tributary states. These agents monitored local politics, ensured tribute collection, and relayed intelligence to the capital. When tributary states sought independence—as Badagry & Weme did in the late 1700s—Oyo would unleash Dahomey to crush them.
Big Man Politics - The Gaha (or Gaa) Period
Even while winning abroad, Oyo unraveled at home. In the 1750s, Bàṣọ̀rùn Gāà (Military Leader/Warlord Gaha) bent the Oyo Mesi (seven-lord council) to his will. He used patronage, intimidation, and procedural vetoes to consolidate power. He then engineered the deposition of four Alaafins—Labisi, Awonbijoku, Agboluaje, and Majeogbe—each compelled to commit ritual suicide. Gaha’s two-decade dominance ended only in 1774, when Alaafin Abiodun rallied provincial allies against Gaha and his private militia in a bloody civil war. But even after the chaos of the war, there was dysfunction.
By 1780, cracks showed. Borgu and Nupe asserted their independence, and Nupe raids on Oyo lands resumed. Meanwhile, North Sahelian Hausaland caravans began bypassing Oyo for Ashanti routes (my people). The Gaa–Abiodun civil war and arbitrary toll hikes made Oyo’s corridor risky and costly; Ashanti offered steadier control, European firearms, and coveted kola nuts, so Hausa merchants shifted west.
The Oyo Collapse (1790-1835)
The period between 1790 and 1830, was a gradual whittling away of the Oyo empire, both at the center in Oyo-Ile and in the many provinces that Oyo dominated. The destruction of Oyo was cataclysmic. We are talking about tens of thousands killed and displaced.
Issue #1: The Paranoid King and the Age of Confusion (1789-1796)
The rot began with Abiodun’s successor, Alafin Awole (Aólẹ̀) Arogangan (1789-1796), whose paranoid rule accelerated Oyo's decline. He ordered pre-emptive strikes on his vassals — Egba, Ibarapa, Ijebu, Ife, and Iwere—to deter rebellion and to stock the capital with slave soldiers. The strategy backfired: after the Iwere campaign the army rebelled, chiefs and provinces followed, and Awole committed suicide (1796).
After Awole’s suicide there was fallout: six kingless years, banditry, insecurity, and frequent kidnappings in vassals like Ife and Owu, and the Egba expelled Oyo officials, stopped tribute, and declared independence (1796). Only in 1802 did the Oyo Mesi installed Majotu as Aláàfin.
Issue #2: A Greedy Prince & A Slave Rebellion
Majotu’s brother, Afonja, was skipped over for King for the third time, between 1789 to 1802. Instead of being King, Afonja was the supreme commander general and ruler of a provincial town southeast of Oyo-Ile called Ilorin. For Afonja, this third rejection was unforgivable. If he couldn't be king, he would destroy the empire that denied him.
Afonja's strategy was as cynical as it was effective. In Ilorin, he declared independence from Oyo and promised freedom to any slave who would fight for him. Thousands joined him, especially because they were starving due to recurring droughts and food shortages plaguing Oyo-Ile. Slaves formed the backbone of Oyo's economy; their mass desertion left the capital vulnerable.
Afonja used Ilorin as a base to mount an all-out-offensive against Oyo-Ile. From 1802 to 1817, neither side could achieve decisive victory: Oyo couldn't reconquer Ilorin, but Ilorin couldn't defeat Oyo. The stalemate produced only chaos. Many former slaves that joined Afonja became known as "Afonja's bandits," terrorizing villages and ironically enslaving other Yoruba people to sell for cowries and cloth.
Issue #3: Inviting Outsiders and then Outsiders Takeover!
By 1817, frustrated by the stalemate, Afonja made a fateful decision. He courted the Sokoto Caliphate (I mentioned them in Part III in pre-colonial Northern Nigeria), inviting Fulani advisors to Ilorin and encouraging the town's Hausa slaves and converted Yoruba Muslims to wage jihad against Oyo. Though Afonja never converted to Islam himself, he weaponized religious fervor for political gain.
The strategy worked initially. With Fulani cavalry and religious motivation, Afonja began seizing Oyo territory. But success bred paranoia. Fearing that his Muslim allies would betray him, Afonja expelled the Fulani from Ilorin in a moment of fatal miscalculation.
Under Abd al-Salam, the expelled Fulani struck back immediately. In 1823, they killed Afonja and incorporated Ilorin into the Sokoto Caliphate as an emirate. The prince who had dreamed of being Alafin became a cautionary tale about the dangers of inviting foreign powers to settle domestic scores.
Issue #4: Firearm wars in the Empire
In 1817, the same year Ilorin teamed up with the Sokoto Caliphate, Oyo had its first large-scale firearm war. An Ijebu Yoruba merchant was killed in Apòmù market, allegedly by an Owu Yoruba trader. The Ijebu response was swift and devastating: armed merchants descended on the market, shooting indiscriminately before besieging Òwu-Ìpolé, the Owu capital.
The five-year siege (1817-1822) was the first time European firearms determined the outcome of a major Yoruba conflict. When Owu fell in 1822, the Ijebu merchants kidnapped thousands of survivors, selling them through Lagos to Portuguese slavers before British naval patrols could intercept the ships.
Issue #4: Losing Coastal Vassal - Dahomey
Sensing Oyo’s weakness, Adandozan of Dahomey cut Oyo off from Porto-Novo in 1807, pushing exports east to Lagos. Then in 1823, Ghezo (Gezo) led a successful revolt; by 1830 Dahomey had shaken off Oyo suzerainty.
Oyo’s attempt at reconquest—under Balogun Ajanaku—ended in disaster: Ghezo executed the militia leaders, underscoring Oyo’s decline. In the 1830s–40s, Dahomey campaigned through Egbado (Yewa) country, severing Oyo’s last corridor to the sea and to European goods.
Oyo becomes the Tributary
With Ilorin Islamic and Dahomey hostile, Oyo was squeezed from north and south. The Sokoto Caliphate’s jihad swallowed up Nupe and neighboring zones, reorganizing them under Fulani emirates (later clustered at Bida, Agaie, Lapai, Lafiagi, Tsonga). Cut off from its horse-trade sources, Oyo’s cavalry engine stalled—and with it, the empire.
Natural Disaster and Final Collapse
Environmental catastrophe compounded political crisis. Multi-year droughts from 1828 to 1831 left farmland barren and water sources dry. Famine and infectious disease followed, weakening the population's ability to resist further attacks.
Even as Oyo paid tribute to the Sokoto Caliphate, the Emirate of Ilorin pressed its advantage. They wanted more than submission—they wanted total conquest, to replace Yoruba shrines with Islamic rule.
In 1833, Ilorin forces sacked Oyo-Ile itself, looting the royal treasuries and occupying the once-mighty capital. By 1835, Alafin Oluewu made one final, desperate stand. The Fulani killed him and his son, extinguishing the royal bloodline that had once commanded respect across West Africa.
Thousands of refugees fled south while the remnants of Oyo-lle made a last attempt at restoration, allying with former enemies the Borgu in the Eleduwe War of 1836. Their decisive defeat marked the definitive end of the old order.
Bight of Biafra
For much of the early transatlantic slave trade, European ships bypassed the Bight of Biafra. Until the mid-1700s, Europeans focused on the Bight of Benin & the Gold Coast, where centralized states like Dahomey, Oyo, and Ashanti controlled supply. But Dahomey’s aggressive conquests and its practice of artificially inflating slave prices frustrated European buyers. By the 1740s, demand shifted eastward, and the previously marginal Bight of Biafra suddenly became the epicenter of the trade.
The numbers tell the story: between 1650 and 1850, roughly 1.5 million enslaved people were shipped from this region; over 1.2 million left in the 18th century alone, with the Bight accounting for nearly 90% of British slave purchases at mid-century.
Three ports came to dominate the coastline:
Calabar – controlled by the Efik, who became middlemen between Europeans and the Igbo and Ibibio hinterlands.
New Calabar (Elem Kalabari) – controlled by the Kalabari Ijaw, who developed powerful canoe-trading houses.
Bonny – dominated by the Ibani Ijaw, which emerged as the single most important slaving port by the late 1700s.
Unlike the centralized states of the Bight of Benin, the Bight of Biafra was a patchwork of village republics and clan networks. Raiding & kidnapping the more inland Igbo villages and local “judicial enslavement” produced captives, who were then funneled to the coastal markets. The trade reshaped society:
The House System developed among the Ijaw-speaking peoples, especially in Bonny and Kalabari. These were basically trading corporations, each led by a “house head,” maintaining fleets of war canoes to capture or buy captives inland. Slaves could be both commodities and absorbed members of the house.
The Ekpe secret society (centered in Efik Calabar) enforced contracts, debts, and trade discipline. Ekpe combined spiritual symbolism with real political power; its rituals could punish debtors or outsiders, ensuring order in an otherwise fragmented region. They also had their own “writing” system/pictography called Nsibidi.
Nsibidi functioned as a layered graphic code across the secret Ekpe world: everyday motifs anyone could recognize, and esoteric signs legible only to initiates of higher grades. People drew it openly—on walls, doors, cloth, and utensils—yet outsiders (including Europeans) could seldom read more than the surface.
The Aro Confederacy and the Oracle of Arochukwu
The Aro Confederacy, a religious & mercantile network controlled by an Igbo subgroup, dominated inland supply. At its center was the oracle of Arochukwu (Ibini Ukpabi), a cave-shrine that pronounced judgments used to justify enslavement. People accused of crimes, debt, or sacrilege were “condemned” by the oracle and sold to coastal traders. See the cave-shrine below:
Who were Enslaved?
The majority were Igbo, torn from the densely populated villages of the hinterland, along with significant numbers of Ibibio, Ekoi, and smaller groups. The decentralized political order made communities vulnerable to kidnapping and betrayal, feeding a cycle of insecurity that devastated local society.
In short:
Capture/Supply - The Aro and other Igbo/Ibibio village elders used religious decrees, debt bondage, judicial enslavement, and raids to round up Igbos & Ibibios for slavery.
Aggregation/Transport - The Aro network settlements would bring the slaves to Canoe houses
Selection/Distribution - The Ijaw Canoe houses would decide which slaves would be used domestically and which would be sold to the Coastal brokers. They would bring the slaves in bulk through the waterways.
Coastal Brokerage - The Ijaw Canoe houses sent the slaves to the slave ports in Calabar, Bonny, or Kalabari, where the Ijaw or Efik merchants would exchange slaves for goods. The vast majority of slaves in the Bight of Biafra were exchanged for brass manillas.
Conclusion
The key takeaway is to not romanticize the past. With the Sahelian empire gone by the 1600s, Oyo was the strongest polity south of the Sahel for much of the 17th-18th century — until its own politics, markets, and climate shocks did them in. The record is sobering. Oyo still struggled with the same governance failures we see today in Nigeria and other parts of Africa & the world:
Disproportionate Ethnic Violence: One Owu merchant kills one Ijebu—so the Ijebu obliterate the entire Owu capital in 1822.
“Big Man” Elite Capture: Basorun Gaha controlled the noble council and made Kings kill themselves. His desire for power led to a civil war between himself and the King who wanted to fight back.
“If I can’t have it, No One Can!” thinking: Since Afonja was rejected as King three times, he led a slave revolt and tried to take down the kingdom of his siblings and ancestors.
Short-sided paranoia: King Awole attacks his own vassals to prevent rebellion—guaranteeing the very rebellions he feared.
Allowing Outside Interference: Afonja teamed up with Fulani Muslims to help him kill his family, only for Afonja to be killed by the Fulani Muslims.
Environmental Collapse: Multiple droughts led to famine in Oyo
While there’s plenty of things Yoruba can be proud about Oyo, I think romanticization of the past is an intellectually bankrupt endeavor. A clear-eyed view beats nostalgia. Next time: how Britain assembled colonial Nigeria.
Very well presented. So much tragedy to so many enslaved people! Imagine a slave girl sold or traded for the purpose of "concubinage." I'm reminded of the power of rich men in present-day America who seem to get away with something similar. Someone involved in the commerce today is given lighter prison accommodation in exchange for possibly revealing damaging testimony. But this went on for over a century in Africa.
I want to read the upcoming parts but for now it makes total sense to me why despite being poorer the northerners control nigeria politically: longer state tradition, longer class division, religious tradition for state management (even if the caliphate was at the tail of the pre-colonial period it was still a great legacy), ideological conformity under the sharia and the jihad. Simply put, the average member of the northern elites has a larger tradition of ruling and trade that is embedded in his habitus than his southern counterpart. Sure history is not linear and who knows if Nigeria reaches 2100 as a single state, however as sheer accumulation of state formation, the hausa and the fulani are at the top.