The Origins of Kingdoms and Empires in Precolonial Nigeria

Abstract This chapter offers a summary of the main academic debates surrounding state formation in precolonial Nigeria. It provides a multidisciplinary discussion on the evolution of the scholarship on statehood’s origins in different polities now part of modern-day Nigeria (Benin, Borgu, Borno, Hausa cities, Oyo). Not surprisingly, the quest for origins always tends to be teleological, as one needs to understand the golden age of one polity by examining the seeds of what would become one day a kingdom or an empire. This chapter aims to show that it is impossible to understand the myths surrounding the creation of Nigerian kingdoms and empires without analyzing the political regimes and scholarly paradigms since the nineteenth century. In other terms, the myths of creation have their own history and are constantly changing in Nigeria.