The history of Nigeria can be traced to prehistoric settlers living in the area as early as 11000 BC. Numerous ancient African civilizations settled in the region that is today Nigeria, such as the Benin Empire, the Kingdom of Nri and the Oyo Empire. Islam reached Nigeria through the Hausa States during the 11th century, while Christianity came to Nigeria in the 15th century through Augustinian and Capuchin monks from Portugal. The Songhai Empire also occupied part of the region. Lagos was captured by British forces in 1851 and formally annexed in 1861. Nigeria became a British protectorate in 1901. Colonization lasted until 1960, when an independence movement succeeded in gaining Nigeria its independence.
Nigeria first became a republic in 1963, but succumbed to military rule three years later after a bloody coup d'état. A separatist movement later formed the Republic of Biafra in 1967, leading to the three-year Nigerian Civil War. Nigeria became a republic once again after a new constitution was written in 1979. However, the republic was short-lived, when the military seized power again four years later. A new republic was planned to established in August 1993, but was dissolved once again by General Sani Abacha three months later. Abacha died in 1998 and a fourth republic was later established the following year, which ended three decades of intermittent military rule.
Early history
Archaeological research, pioneered by Thurstan Shaw and Steve Daniels, Has shown that people were already living in south-western Nigeria (specifically Iwo-Eleru) as early as 11,000 BC] and perhaps earlier at Ugwuelle-Uturu (Okigwe) in south-eastern Nigeria, where microliths were used.
The earliest known example of a fossil human skeleton found anywhere in West Africa, which is 13,000 years old, was found at Iwo-Eleru in western Nigeria and attests to the antiquity of habitation in the region.[4]
Microlithic and ceramic industries were also developed by savanna pastoralists from at least the 4th millennium BC and were continued by subsequent/. agricultural communities. In the south, hunting and gathering gave way to subsistence farming around the same time, relying more on the indigenous yam and oil palm than on the cereals important in the North.
The stone axe heads, imported in great quantities from the north and used in opening the forest for agricultural development, were venerated by the Yoruba descendants of neolithic pioneers as "thunderbolts" hurled to earth by the gods.
Iron Smelting furnaces at Taruga dating from around 600 BC provide the oldest evidence of metalworking in Sub-Saharan Africa. Kainji Dam excavations revealed iron-working by the 2nd century BC. The transition from Neolithic times to the Iron Age apparently was achieved indigenously without intermediate bronze production. Others suggest the technology moved west from the Nile Valley, although the Iron Age in the Niger River valley and the forest region appears to predate the introduction of metallurgy in the upper savanna by more than 800 years. The earliest identified iron-using Nigerian culture is that of the Nok culture that thrived between approximately 900 BC and 200 AD on the Jos Plateau in north-eastern Nigeria. Information is lacking from the first millennium AD following the Nok ascendancy, but by the 2nd millennium there was active trade from North Africa through the Sahara to the forest, with the people of the savanna acting as intermediaries in exchanges of various goods
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