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OVERVIEW

The Crown’s Curse: Britain’s Destructive Reign in Nigeria is a brilliantly incisive and uncompromising exposé of British colonialism, dissecting the empire’s political, economic, cultural, and intellectual project in Nigeria with forensic precision. Far from presenting colonial rule as a civilizing force, the book unveils it as a calculated system of conquest, exploitation, and subjugation— one that enriched Britain while leaving Nigeria fractured, impoverished, and intellectually disoriented.

The narrative begins by tracing the violent origins of British imperial expansion in West Africa. It recounts key milestones such as the 1851 bombardment of Lagos, the coerced Treaty of Cession in 1861, and the rise of corporate imperialism through the Royal Niger Company. These events are not portrayed as isolated episodes but as deliberate moves in Britain’s strategic quest for economic monopoly and territorial control. Campaigns like the Benin Punitive Expedition and the Aro Campaign are revealed as acts of plunder justified under the guise of “civilization,” highlighting the sheer brutality behind Britain’s imperial rhetoric.

A central focus is the controversial 1914 amalgamation of Northern and Southern Nigeria—an economic maneuver designed to fund the administration of the North with revenue from the more prosperous South. The book compellingly argues that this artificial

union, executed without consultation of the peoples involved, entrenched structural inequalities and set the stage for enduring ethnic, political, and regional tensions. Through its incisive analysis, the text demonstrates how British rule institutionalized division: indirect rule entrenched emirate power in the North while warrant chiefs were imposed on stateless southern societies, manufacturing power structures that had never previously existed.

Equally powerful is the book’s dissection of Britain’s exploitative economic model. Nigeria was systematically transformed into a source of raw materials for British industries, with cash crops like palm oil and cocoa prioritized over local food security. Coercive taxation, forced labor, land expropriation, and infrastructural projects built solely for extraction ensured that economic growth served imperial, not indigenous, interests. By independence, Nigeria inherited an economy deliberately designed for dependency—a legacy that still shapes the country’s struggles with underdevelopment and resource exploitation.

The book also interrogates the cultural and intellectual dimensions of colonization. Missionary education, the imposition of English, and colonial school curricula became tools of psychological control, erasing indigenous histories and languages while producing an elite class whose loyalty was to empire. This “education of subordination,” as the book calls it, created a profound cultural dislocation that continues to hinder Nigeria’s intellectual and political sovereignty.

In summary, The Crown’s Curse offers a powerful argument: Nigeria’s  post-independence  crises—ethnic  divisions,  political

instability, economic dependency, and cultural alienation—are not accidental. They are the deliberate outcomes of British colonial strategy. The book calls for a new phase of decolonization that transcends political independence to reclaim economic autonomy, cultural pride, and epistemic freedom.

With exceptional depth and clarity, it positions decolonization not as nostalgia for a precolonial past, but as an urgent, forward- looking project—one that reclaims history, dismantles the legacies of empire, and builds a sovereign future defined on Nigerian terms.