How Nigeria is finally telling its own history

For years, school students in Nigeria were not taught their country’s history… until the government restored it to the curriculum in 2019. This lacuna was filled with accounts written by British colonial officers and expatriate historians. For decades, young Nigerians grew up on a diet of the coloniser’s narrative.

Reading much of the written history of Nigeria is like observing the country through the telescopic sights of a British rifle.

Now there is a growing demand to hear Nigeria’s story told from the perspective of its indigenes. Although partly this is due to the greater racial awareness generated by the Black Lives Matter (BLM) campaigns and racial and social justice unrest of 2020, other trends have coalesced to bring Nigerian history to the centre stage.

Firstly, Nigeria’s habit of recycling its political elites; secondly its overwhelmingly young population growing up in the