Kingdoms & institutions
Kingdoms, empires and traditional institutions
Before colonial borders, this land held kingdoms, empires and caliphates with their own systems of government, some centuries old. Many survive today as traditional institutions with cultural and ceremonial authority. These pages cover where each came from, how it worked, and what it is today.
15 institutions
Confederacy
Aro Confederacy
Founded around the middle of the 17th century
The Aro Confederacy was an Igbo trading and judicial network based at Arochukwu, in what is now Abia State on the border with Cross River State. Its authority rested on the oracle known as Ibini Ukpabi, on settlements planted along trade routes, and on its position between the Igbo interior and the Cross River ports.
Igbo people
Kingdom
Benin Kingdom
Oral tradition places its origins before the 12th century; the present dynasty is traditionally dated to around the late 12th or early 13th century
The Benin Kingdom was an Edo state centred on Benin City in what is now Edo State. Ruled by an Oba supported by a graded system of palace and town chiefs, it developed a court art tradition in brass, ivory and wood that is now held in museums around the world, and traded with European merchants from the late fifteenth century until its conquest by a British force in 1897.
Edo people
Confederacy
Calabar City-States
Efik settlement at Calabar is traditionally dated to around the 17th century
Old Calabar, in what is now Cross River State, was a group of Efik trading towns on the Calabar River — principally Duke Town, Creek Town and Obutong — which governed themselves through lineage heads and the Ekpe society rather than through a single king. They were among the busiest trading ports on the West African coast in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Efik people
Kingdom
Ife Kingdom
Occupation of the site is dated by archaeology to around the 11th century or earlier
Ile-Ife, in present-day Osun State, is the town that Yoruba tradition treats as the origin of Yoruba kingship and of several ruling houses beyond Yorubaland. Its rulers hold the title Ooni. Between roughly the eleventh and fifteenth centuries Ife produced a body of naturalistic sculpture in terracotta, brass and stone that is among the best documented early art traditions in West Africa.
Yoruba people
Kingdom
Igala Kingdom
Traditionally dated to around the 16th century
The Igala Kingdom is centred on Idah, on the east bank of the Niger in present-day Kogi State. Ruled by the Attah Igala, it sat at the meeting point of the Niger and Benue rivers and traded and fought with Benin, the Jukun and its Igbo and Ebira neighbours.
Igala people
Emirate
Ilorin Emirate
Established as an emirate in the 1820s to 1830s
Ilorin, in present-day Kwara State, is a mainly Yoruba-speaking city governed since the early nineteenth century by an emirate whose ruling house is of Fulani origin. It stands at the meeting point of the Yoruba south-west and the emirate north, and its history connects the collapse of the Oyo Empire with the southern expansion of the Sokoto Caliphate.
Yoruba people
Empire
Kanem-Bornu Empire
Kanem is traditionally dated to around the 9th century; its ruling dynasty governed for roughly a thousand years
Kanem-Bornu was a state centred first north-east of Lake Chad and later, from about the fourteenth century, west of it in what is now Borno State. Its ruling Sayfawa dynasty is among the longest recorded in African history, and the Kanuri language, Islamic scholarship and court titles that developed there remain features of the north-east.
Kanuri people
Emirate
Kano Emirate
Kano's kingship is traditionally dated to around the 10th to 11th century; the emirate was established after 1807
Kano, in present-day Kano State, is among the oldest continuously occupied Hausa cities and was the largest commercial centre of the region for centuries. Its kingship, recorded in the Kano Chronicle, long predates the emirate established in the early nineteenth century, and the Emir of Kano remains one of the most prominent traditional offices in Nigeria.
Hausa people
Emirate
Katsina Emirate
Katsina's kingship is traditionally dated to well before 1500; the emirate was established in the early 19th century
Katsina, in present-day Katsina State, was one of the principal Hausa states and for a period the leading commercial and scholarly city of Hausaland. Its kingship long predates the emirate created in the early nineteenth century under the Sokoto Caliphate, and the Emir of Katsina remains a senior traditional office in the north-west.
Hausa people
Kingdom
Nri Kingdom
Oral tradition places its origin around the 9th to 10th century
Nri, in present-day Anambra State, was an Igbo polity whose authority was ritual rather than military. Its ruler, the Eze Nri, and the titled men who travelled on his behalf held religious authority over a wide area of Igbo country without governing it, in a society otherwise organised around village assemblies rather than kings.
Igbo people
Kingdom
Nupe Kingdom
Traditionally dated to around the 15th century
The Nupe Kingdom occupied the country along the Niger in what is now Niger State and parts of Kwara and Kogi states. Ruled by the Etsu Nupe, it was known for river trade, brass and glass working and cavalry, and in the nineteenth century it was reorganised as an emirate of the Sokoto Caliphate with its capital at Bida.
Nupe people
Kingdom
Opobo Kingdom
Founded in 1870
Opobo is a delta trading state in what is now Rivers State, founded in 1870 by Jaja, a former slave who rose through the trading houses of Bonny to lead his own kingdom. For seventeen years it controlled a large share of the palm oil trade of the eastern delta before Jaja was deported by British authorities in 1887.
Ijaw people
Empire
Oyo Empire
Traditionally dated to around the 14th century
The Oyo Empire was a Yoruba state centred on the city of Oyo Ile, in what is now the northern part of Oyo State. For much of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it exercised authority over a wide area of the western part of present-day Nigeria and beyond it to the west, held together by cavalry, tribute and a system of government in which the ruler's power was checked by a council of chiefs.
Yoruba people
Caliphate
Sokoto Caliphate
Founded following the movement that began in 1804
The Sokoto Caliphate was an Islamic state established in the early nineteenth century across much of what is now northern Nigeria and neighbouring territory. Founded after a religious and political movement led by the scholar Usman dan Fodio, it governed through a network of emirates owing allegiance to a Sultan at Sokoto, and its administrative and legal structures were largely retained by the British after 1903.
Fulani people
Kingdom
Warri Kingdom
Traditionally dated to around the end of the 15th century
The Warri Kingdom is the Itsekiri kingdom of the western Niger Delta, in what is now Delta State. Ruled by the Olu, it was among the first states in the region to deal directly with Portuguese traders and missionaries, and members of its royal house were baptised and educated in Europe from the sixteenth century.
Itsekiri people