Nigeria Imperialism Activity
Africa as a continent has been subjected to severe colonial rule and very few countries of Africa were never conquered like Ethiopia. Most of the countries in Africa gained their independence from mostly the British rule only after the 1950s. By then, half the world was free from British rule. |
Britain occupied a large portion of Nigeria starting from the mouth of the Niger River and for a good reason. Nigeria has the largest oil reserve of Africa. However, imperialism may have had negative effects to a great extent on Nigeria for several reasons. The main reason why Nigeria is not the country it could have been today is due to imperialism. Nigeria, if not for the imperialism, could have been one of the most powerful countries because of the abundance of natural resources found here and one of them being oil or petroleum.
Though the British rule did not exploit much of the resources, it altered the way of progress for Nigeria leading it down the road to wars and communal disharmony. Tribes that were coexisting peacefully were made to fight wars and after the British left it led to severe strife in the form of ethnic cleansing.
Nigeria was under the Colonial rule for nearly 3 decades until 1960 and during this period the rest of the world was moving ahead. By then most of the countries like India, China and others had overthrown the British and only the African countries were still under the colonial rule. This led to severe restriction in becoming economic powers and if the British had left the country earlier, Nigeria could have had a better chance of economic empowerment.
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