The Royal Niger Company

From trading firm to chartered company

In 1879 George Goldie merged several British firms trading on the Niger into the United African Company. It became the National African Company in 1881, and in 1886 it received a royal charter as the Royal Niger Company, with powers to govern as well as trade.

Headquarters at Asaba

The company chose Asaba as its headquarters in 1886 and put up a two-storey timber house, named after the explorer Mungo Park, who had died on the Niger in 1806 without ever reaching Asaba. The house still stands and is now part of the National Museum, Asaba.

Treaties and monopoly

The company signed around 400 treaties with local rulers, which obliged their people to trade only with company agents, and it ran trading posts all along the river. It kept its own armed constabulary too: in January 1898 a company force of 202 African soldiers and eight European officers attacked Ibusa, near Asaba. In the Asaba hinterland its push for control met years of armed resistance in the Ekumeku movement.

The end of the charter

Britain revoked the company's charter in 1899, and on 1 January 1900 the company handed its territory to the British government for £865,000. Those lands became the core of the Northern and Southern Nigeria protectorates. The company carried on as the Niger Company, merged into the United Africa Company in 1929, and was later part of Unilever.

Visit it

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  Mungo Park House

  Asaba

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  Lander Brothers Anchorage

  Asaba riverside

Read next

• The story of Asaba
• Ekumeku and the Anioma peoples
• Nana Olomu