“God did not make Nigeria. The British did” is a remark attributed to a principal chief of Lagos, of the Royal House of Addo. Whether the attribution is correct I cannot say, but the political and geographical entity that we now know as Nigeria was most certainly a creation of the European scramble for Africa in the nineteenth century, and it was indeed the British who coined the name Nigeria itself.

As the Secretary of State for the Colonies was the Minister charged with the duty of advice to the Crown on matters relating to Britain's overseas dependencies, the library of the Colonial Office (CO) naturally reflected these wideranging official concerns and developed into what Sir Charles Jeffries described as “a unique and comprehensive collection… an institution of which the Office is justly proud”.