Without the National Archives (NA), the production of historical scholarship in Nigeria would have taken a different course altogether. Scholars in Nigeria would have had to depend solely on the resources in the Public Office in London, and perhaps on the use of oral sources. The beginning of the NA is tied to the career of the country's first academic historian, K. O. Dike. In his attempt to decolonize history and address the problems of the paucity of written sources on Nigeria, Dike embarked on a survey of documents of the Nigerian colonial government in 1951 with the purpose of preserving them. The idea was to have large bodies of written documentation that could be used in combination with other sources. A recommendation contained in his Nigerian Records Survey, 1951–53, gave birth to the Nigerian Records Office in 1954. The Nigerian Records Office became the Nigerian National Archives in 1958, with three major branches at Ibadan, Kaduna, and Enugu, a reflection of the regional politics of the era.

The early years of the establishment of the archives witnessed a period of active research and publication on various subjects that made major use of the archival materials in the custody of the NA. However, in the last two decades or so, historical research in the archives has undergone a decline. Both the archives and the scholars who use them have suffered a similar fate of lack of funding and a crisis of relevance.