The most-studied aspect of Nigerian history is its political past, for the obvious reason that politics occupies a primary position in human experience. Politics determines not only the future of a state but also the nature and level of human organization and development of society. With reference to Africa specifically, however, it is important to note that African historiography, as we have seen in chapter 1, developed as an instrument of the anticolonial nationalist struggle. Pioneering Africanists took keen interest in exploring the political past of states and communities for the purpose of showing the colonialists that Africans not only developed complex political institutions prior to colonial rule, but were able later effectively to manage the affairs of their territories.

Nationalist historians explore state formation as a product of human migration, the evolution of political culture, wars and revolutions, and the like. As explained in this chapter, political historians of precolonial Nigeria have proven that colonial rule represented just one stage of the numerous phases of Africans' political evolution, hardly the totality of their political and cultural experience. J. F. A. Ajayi's famous claim that colonial rule is an episode in African history is informed by the premise that although colonial rule unleashed massive changes, African political and cultural institutions continued to exist side by side with the exotic ones unleashed by colonialism.

History of State and Empire Building

The history of state formation emerged as a defensive history aimed at showing that, prior to Europeans' colonial incursions, African leaders had built states and empires equivalent to those found anywhere else in the world. The life and times of chiefs and rulers are presented in a manner that gives voice to the profundity of the African political past, as a living legacy as well as a source of pride and honor. For the most part, the history of wars and revolutions occupies the central theme of scholars of this aspect of history. Indeed, oral traditions are replete with the rise and fall of communities.