This is not just the story of colonial conquest. It is the story of the first OIL WAR, a war not fought over petroleum, but over palm oil, in the territories that would later become Nigeria.
Before the first drop of crude was ever drilled in Oloibiri, there was already a fierce battle for control over a different kind of oil: the red gold of the tropics.
In the 19th century, as the Industrial Revolution thundered across Britain and Europe, the demand for lubricants to keep machines running was insatiable. And at the heart of that demand was palm oil, a sticky red substance extracted from the fruit of a native African tree. This oil was used to grease machines, produce candles, soaps, etc.
The Niger Delta, then part of the region Europeans called the “Oil Rivers,” was the world’s richest source of this commodity. For centuries, the same Delta had served as a major slave-exporting hub, but by the 1870s, as abolition gained ground, slaves were replaced by palm oil as the primary export. The coast once known for bondage was now valued for commerce. African traders, many of them former slaves or descendants of returnees, became immensely wealthy. One of the most famous among them was King Jaja of Opobo, a self-made merchant-king who built a thriving trade empire on the strength of palm oil and personal diplomacy. These African merchants understood global trade and negotiated directly with European companies.
But African prosperity was never allowed to grow unchecked for long. By the late 1800s, European commercial rivalry was boiling over into political intrigue. British, French, and German merchants vied for dominance in the West African market. In 1879, a Cornishman named George Taubman Goldie began consolidating several British trading firms into a single entity. He formed the United African Company (UAC). With this company, Goldie initially envisioned dominating the palm oil trade on the Niger River. After that, he envisioned something more than trade, he wanted sovereignty.
Through aggressive expansion, Goldie’s company secured treaties with local chiefs along the Niger and Benue Rivers, gaining de facto control of vast inland territories. By 1884, Goldie’s company operated about 30 trading posts and used its economic leverage to argue at the Berlin Conference (the infamous 1884–85 summit where European powers divided Africa among themselves) that Britain should be awarded exclusive rights to the Niger Basin.
The British won the argument. The next year, in 1886, Goldie’s company received a Royal Charter from the British Crown, becoming the Royal Niger Company (RNC), a private corporation with governmental powers, similar to the old British East India Company. It could make treaties, raise its own military force, collect taxes, administer justice, and govern the vast areas along the Niger and Benue Rivers.
In effect, Nigeria was not yet a British colony, it was a private corporate colony ruled by a for-profit company headquartered in London.
To the local chiefs, the new company agents spoke of free trade and mutual prosperity. But behind these assurances were binding English contracts designed to establish monopolies, giving the company exclusive trading rights and ceding sovereignty to the British Crown. This meant the chiefs could only sell palm oil to the Royal Niger Company. Any attempt to export independently was treated as economic rebellion. Many chiefs, including King Jaja of Opobo, resisted.
King Jaja of Opobo was one such rebel. Despite his previous cooperation with the British, he refused to be dictated to. When he began exporting palm oil directly to Liverpool merchants, he was arrested in 1887, exiled to the West Indies, and never saw his kingdom again. He died in 1891 on his way home, allegedly poisoned with a cup of tea.
By the 1890s, resistance was rising. In the kingdom of Nembe, in today’s Bayelsa State, a new monarch, King Koko Mingi VIII, ascended the throne in 1889. Koko was an educated Christian convert and former schoolteacher. But he soon found himself at odds with the Royal Niger Company’s chokehold on trade. Like Jaja before him, he tried to bypass the company’s monopoly by seeking commercial ties with the Germans in Kamerun. But the company retaliated by blockading his kingdom from its traditional markets.
Tired of negotiations and betrayal, King Koko struck back. On 29 January 1895, before dawn, he led over 1,000 warriors in a surprise attack on the Royal Niger Company’s heavily guarded headquarters at Akassa. In what became known as the Brass Raid, Koko’s forces captured the station, seized arms and ammunition, including a Maxim machine gun, and took 60 European hostages. Koko demanded that the British lift their monopoly and allow Nembe to trade freely.
The British government refused to negotiate. In response, King Koko executed about forty of the hostages, an act the British termed cannibalism, a fabrication meant to justify vengeance.
On 20 February 1895, the Royal Navy retaliated under Admiral Frederick Bedford, launching a brutal punitive expedition. They bombarded Nembe town (Brass) and burned it to the ground. Hundreds were killed. Survivors suffered famine and diseases such as smallpox.
King Koko went into hiding. The town of Brass was fined £500, a fortune at the time, and forced to surrender weapons and surviving hostages.
In 1898, King Koko, declared an outlaw and unable to rally sufficient support for further resistance, died by suicide in exile. Around the same time, Oba Ovonramwen of Benin was also deposed following the Benin Punitive Expedition in 1897, signalling the final collapse of powerful indigenous resistance in southern Nigeria.
Back in London, the public outcry over the Brass Massacre and the RNC’s excesses led to parliamentary pressure. The British Parliament opened an inquiry, but rather than punish the Royal Niger Company, the Crown did something far more significant, it decided that a private corporation could no longer be trusted with the government of a people.
In 1899, the British revoked the Royal Charter of the Royal Niger Company. But it did not come for free.
The British bought out the company’s rights, territories, and infrastructure for the sum of £865,000, the equivalent of £108 million today. That was the price Britain paid to acquire the territory that would become Nigeria.
It was not a conquest in the conventional sense, it was a transaction. Nigeria was, quite literally, sold.
And who sold it?
The man at the centre of the deal was Sir George Taubman Goldie, the imperialist who had envisioned and built the corporate company that took over Nigeria’s territories. In many ways, he was Nigeria’s unofficial founder, though he never ruled the colony formally. He sold Nigeria to the British Crown in 1899 for £865,000, and for his services to empire, he was later knighted.
On 1 January 1900, the Southern and Northern Protectorates were formally declared under British rule.
The company was gone. But its legacy of economic exploitation, monopolistic control, and indirect rule would persist.
The company itself didn’t die. It rebranded and evolved. The Royal Niger Company merged into what we know today as Unilever, a multinational that still trades in Africa.
This is not just a footnote in colonial history. It is the story of how an entire country people, kingdoms, resources, rivers, was commodified, negotiated, and sold. It reminds us that empire was not only built with gunboats, but also with contracts, shares, and profits.
Nigeria, long before independence, had already been bought and sold.
The lead pastor at Goodness Nation, Apostle Harrison Ayintete, has criticised Pastor of Zoe Household Global, Dolapo Lawal over his teaching against the “once saved, always saved” doctrine, urging the cleric to “learn the Bible before teaching.”
Ayintete, in a post on X, faulted Lawal’s interpretation of salvation, arguing that believers who have received eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ cannot lose their salvation.
The exchange followed Lawal’s recent sermon in which he rejected the “once saved, always saved” doctrine, arguing that salvation requires continued faith, repentance and holy living.
Lawal maintained that while believers can have assurance of salvation through faith in Christ, Scripture repeatedly warns Christians against falling away, abandoning the faith and living contrary to the gospel.
He cited the New Testament epistles and Jesus’ warnings to the seven churches in Revelation as evidence that believers must continue in obedience rather than assume salvation is irreversible regardless of their conduct.
He also argued that teaching unconditional eternal security encourages moral laxity within the church and downplays biblical calls to holiness, insisting that believers must read the whole of Scripture rather than rely solely on verses such as John 3:16.
Lead pastor at Goodness Nation, Apostle Harrison Ayintete…Photo Credit: X / Harrison Ayintete
Responding to Lawal’s sermon, Ayintete wrote, “Pastor Adedolapo Lawal, sir, I thought you knew better than this, though.
“According to your own John 3:16, the one who has believed has eternal life and will perish right?
“Eternal life is quality of life, it is God’s life, you said, so does God’s life see condemnation? Does God’s righteousness perish?”
He argued that New Testament epistles were written to guide believers towards spiritual growth and maturity rather than to determine whether they remained saved.
“The epistles are for revelation, development in ministry, maturity in that which we have received, warning against lifestyles that do not reflect our righteousness.
“Spiritual development and growth is never the same as spiritual birth,” he said.
Ayintete also rejected Lawal’s claim that the teaching of “hyper-grace” had contributed to increasing sin within the church.
“You even said Hypergrace is the reason sins are everywhere. Bro, how many churches preach Hypergrace? So all the sins in RCCG is sponsored by Hypergrace? All the lies in Deeper Life? They don’t tell lies in your own churches?
“You people talk like you produce some better saints than we do,” he wrote.
He further challenged Lawal to a public debate on the subject, insisting that the issue should be discussed openly.
“If he sure for you say Hypergrace nor dey Bible, set up a proper debate on the subject, I will meet you there because at this point, we need that conversation,” he added.
In a follow-up video, Ayintete accused some ministers of deliberately portraying hyper-grace preachers negatively.
He maintained that Jesus’ promise of eternal life in John 3:16 and John 10 guaranteed permanent salvation for believers.
“The Lord Jesus said in John 3:16 that whosoever has believed in Him has eternal life and will not perish.
“Jesus said over and over, ‘I give them eternal life and they shall never perish.’ Ephesians 1 says we are sealed with the Spirit unto the day of our redemption,” he said.
The widow of late Nollywood actor John Okafor, Stella Maris Okafor, has dismissed allegations that she secretly sold her late husband’s properties and kept the proceeds to herself.
Recall that the family of the late actor, popularly known as Mr Ibu, recently opened up about their struggles and financial situation.
In a recent video now making the rounds online, while speaking to content creator King Mitchy, Stella Maris explained that the sale of the properties was carried out in line with a court order and with the consent of Mr Ibu’s two sons, Valentine Okafor and Daniel Okafor.
She further backed her claim, stating that she has the relevant documents.
“I have to show you this document. This is a court order. We—I didn’t, not me alone. My husband’s two sons, Valentine Okafor and Daniel Okafor, and I did it according to the court order. Every evidence is here. We sold the house. I am not the one that sold the house,” she stated.
She also disclosed that she currently runs an online jewellery business, explaining that her late husband had initially discouraged her from venturing into it while she was still acting.
“I have a page online where I sell jewellery, and I am still selling my jewellery. When I wanted to start this business, my late husband stopped me because I was acting. My late husband was my colleague in the industry,” she said.
She further revealed that she is planning to move out of her current residence, describing it as too expensive and saying she only relocated there due to security concerns and public pressure following her husband’s death.
“I did not intend to come to this place. It’s because of pressure and security, but I am packing out.”
Addressing claims by a young man who alleged online that he is one of Mr Ibu’s children and was denied financial support, Stella Maris said disagreements over money began shortly after the actor’s burial.
She alleged that some family members demanded that she share the money given to her during the burial for the upkeep of her children.
“Before they sold the land, we were still in the village, and they were dragging with me over the money that was given to me during the burial. They insisted that I should share the money with them. I told them that this was money given to me for my children. Why should I come and share it with you people?”
Nigerian activist and entertainer, Charles Oputa, popularly known as Charly Boy, has admitted that he was involved in crime during his younger years in the United States.
Charly Boy made this confession on Friday when he appeared as a guest in an interview on Arise Television’s ‘Prime Time’.
The vocal social commentator said he made several poor decisions in his younger years and engaged in activities he now looks back on with regret.
“I’ve made mistakes in my life. I’ve been a thief. I’ve done very risky things. I’ve done very stupid things, very foolish things. In fact, I have no business being here with you tonight, but I guess there’s a purpose for my life,” he said.
According to the activist, his years in America were filled with reckless choices, including involvement in financial crimes.
“I was doing white-collar crime when I was in America. I was about 25 years old. I was doing a lot of stupid stuff. That’s why I say I’ve been there,” he added.
The social commentator pointed out that rather than hide those parts of his story, he chose to document them fully in his memoir to show his complete journey from rebellion and mistakes to transformation and self-discovery.
