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WASC resources: the Nigerias

 

An introduction to the postal history of the area

The postal history of Nigeria commenced in the mid-19th century with early mail linked to Fernando Po, an island off the African coast and to Lagos and other places on the coast. Lagos colony first issued stamps in 1874. Trading companies were based around the coast and the Niger delta area; postal services were developed in the Niger Company Territories, which extended up the Niger River, and in the Oil Rivers Protectorate covering other coastal areas. The protectorates of Northern Nigeria and Southern Nigeria were set up from 1 January 1900 and reorganisation in 1906 led to Lagos ceasing to be a separate postal administration. The country of Nigeria was formed from these parts in 1914, becoming independent in 1960. Civil war from 1967-1970 gave rise to the briefly separate postal administration of Biafra.

Tony Plumbe, WASC study editor for post-1914 Nigeria and Biafra, has described why Nigerian philately offers such interest.

Documents relevant to the area

Scans of Nigeria Post & Telegraphs Annual Reports 1915-1941, 1944-1963, and information about Nigerian postal charges in 1921, 1923 and 1932. These are all available at this linked page.and are reproduced here courtesy of Michael Wright, who had copies of some the reports, and also with acknowledgement to the British Library for allowing us to reproduce their microfilm images from 1944 to 1952. Thanks also to Rob May, who scanned paper copies and both acquired and organised the British Library microfilm images. Currently some of the files are downloadable PDFs while others are in screen-readable format.

Lagos and Southern Nigeria Annual Reports on the Postal Department
From the archives of Jack Ince, also scanned by Rob May, the reports for several years are here as PDFs.

Northern Nigeria Gazettes
Ray Harris gathered scans of all the gazettes issues by the Northern Nigeria government covering 1901 to 1913, and comprising several hundred documents. These have been merged into year-groups and are available here.

Annual Colonial Reports and Nigeria Handbooks, including Cameroons under mandate
Annual reports were compiled each year by the administrations of pre and post 1914 Nigerias. Reports for Lagos, Southern and Northern Nigeria and a few reports after 1914 are on a separate page here, together with two copies of 'The Nigerian Handbook', which was a much lengthier description of Nigeria, issued from time to time 'not an official publication but ... issued with the approval of the Nigerian Government.' Plus Cameroons under mandate reports for 1922, 24, 25, 26, 29, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38

Nigeria Postal Regulations and Postage Rates
We've gathered together a range of documents from pre-unification to 2018 onto a separate page here.

1907 Nigeria Civil Service Guide sections relating to postal services
The Guide Sections provide a summary of postal services in Southern Nigeria in 1907: routes, offices, rates etc.

Collecting Nigerian cancellations
At this link you can download the PDF of Paul Redhead's 2021 book (28Mb). Updated as follows:

In each update .pdf the changes from the previous version are highlit in blue

Nigerian Railway development
We've gathered together a range of documents from Ray Harris' archive onto a separate page here.

Porter documents relating to Lagos, Northern and Southern Nigeria
HG Porter's collections and reasearch underpinned much of what we know about pre-1950s Nigerian philately. The documents on this linked page, found in John Sacher's archive at the RPSL, contain information about postal services, stamps and cancellations, some of it unpublished

Nigerian Maps
More documents from Ray Harris' archive, on a separate page here.

Government gazette scans from the British Online Archive
Ray Harris' archive contained roughly 700 scans of pages from Government Gazettes and additional documents. It seems that he selected pages which mentioned the post in some way. We have combined those scans into 5 large .pdf files, as follows: Gazette files (93.5MB), Additional files Lagos (39MB), Additional files Southern Nigeria (19.5MB), Additional files Northern Nigeria (15.7MB), Additional files Nigeria (5,2MB)

Niger River Government Transport report
Report published in 1912 surveying the facilites and finances of the Northern Nigeria Niger River Transport Service and making recommendations for change

Ray Harris: miscellaneous Nigerian files
This page holds links 120 or so files, collected together by Ray Harris, which have no obvious home in one of the other file groupings shown on this page. They range from single images to scans of complete books, mainly dealing with Northern Nigeria.

Nigerian forgeries
.pdf of display on Nigerian forgeries given by Paul Redhead at Redditch conference 2021.

Nigeria Stamps - 1914 to 1936
Neville Jones produced this 31 page monograph in 1983. It is packed with information about printings, papers, trials, and quantities despatched

Nigeria Travelling Post Offices
Although other authors (eg Jack Ince, Rob May) have written about Nigerian Travelling Post Offices more recently, Colin McCaig published a monograph on the subject in 1963, and updated it in 1976. Click the dates for the two versions.

Northern Nigeria Type 2 cancels
Ray Harris' 2014 monograph gives detailed information about the Ince and Sacher type 2 Northern Nigeria cancellations, known from 1903 to well after 1914. Type 2 cancellers were used at almost all of the Post Offices in Northern Nigeria. Larger offices had several distinct types, and Ray's work gives dimensions and images for them.

Nigeria Post Officer's memories
This 4 page article from Post Office Magazine 1958 describes an ex-patriate Post Office official's memories of post office modernisation just before independence. Thanks to John Powell and Rob May for the scan.

Old article on Niger Coast provisional issues
Scan from Rob May of 1956 article by RC Agabeg based on a talk given to the RPSL.

West Africa Airmail covers
63 pages of covers and other related material, mostly to or from Nigeria, scanned by John Wilson from his collection and offered in the March 2024 WASC Auction. Includes a few Gold Coast, and a couple of (pre-airmail!) covers from before 1914.

Nigeria Postal Agencies
Nigeria Postal Agencies is a .pdf file of 62 pages describes a display given by Rob May. In it he addresses the questions: 'how many postal agencies were there in Nigeria?'; 'how were new postal agencies justified?'; 'what did it take for them later to be upgraded to departmental POs?'

Postcards of Transport in Nigeria to 1950
Postcards of Transport in Nigeria to 1950 is a 38 page .pdf file of a talk given by Ray Harris to WASC members in September 2017.

Fort Stuart and the Post Office Service of the Niger Coast Protectorate
TA Wall wrote this fascinating account in 1900.

Lagos postal history
A Postal history of Lagos by John Sacher (1978) and Lagos stamps and postal stationery by Jack Ince (1979) predate their authoritative 'Postal Services of the British Nigeria Region prior to 1914', published by the RPSL in 1992.

Oil Rivers / Niger Coast cancellations and stamps
Cancellations of Oil Rivers & Niger Coast Protectorate was compiled as a WASC Members' Bulletin by Osborne and Ince in 1975. Its 33 pages illustrate caceller types and tabulate use dates and offices. They followed up with a 5 page addendum. In 1976 they published a 40 page bulletin describing the Oil Rivers / Niger Coast stamps.

Listing of the Nigeria cancels shown in Proud's Postal History of Nigeria
Proud's illustrated book (available from the RPSL who hold the copyright) is an excellent resource for the collector of Nigerian postmarks up to 1960. This spreadsheet lists all the 1914-1960 Nigeria cancels by office - some 5150 of them. But to see images of them all you'll need to buy the book...

Lagos issues stamped in Brazil
Lagos issues stamped in Brazil by Ince (1973) is a four-page article, casting a sidelight on an important influence on Lagos commerce

Northern Nigeria
An early WASC bulletin (undated) by Colin McCaig surveying postal history, stamps and cancellations of Northern Nigeria. 15 pages.

Southern Nigeria KEVII
The Edwardian stamps of Southern Nigeria by Frankland (1969). 16 pages on the stamps' design, printing provcess and issuance.

Description of display to the RPSL in 1966
On 1 December 1966 the (then) British West African study Circle gave a major display at the RPSL, featuring much scarce material. The display summary, 12 pages long, gives a brief description of each of the 192 sheets in the Nigeria section of the display - interesting for provenance!

A first philatelic study of Biafra
A first philatelic study of Biafra by Dudley Prestedge, which he later expanded into a WASC book on Biafra. 20 pages.

Biafra display
Notes on a display titled 'The stamps and postal history of Biafra' by Robert Seaman, given to WASC in 1995 at the RPSL in 1995 8 pages.

Nigerian Military Markings 1967-1970
Nigerian Military Markings 1967-1970 by Don van Reken. Illustrated, 12 pages

Summary of Crown Agents' records in the British Library relating to Nigerian Postal Stationery
Three Excel files from Ray Harris' archives summarising information from the Crown agentrs' records relating to Nigerian Postal stationery. File 1, File 2, File 3.

Various relating to Nigerian stamp issues
A note on stamp issuance from Nigerian Philatelic Service in1969. This link leads to a searchable list in Excel format of the pictorial designs on stamps of Nigeria from 1960 to 2012. Chris Bond's blog describes new Nigerian stamp issues from 2018 onwards, often in detail.