The Royal Niger Company, Chartered and Limited (RNC) operated under the Royal Charter granted on 10 July 1886 and ran continuous government over the Lower and Middle Niger from Lokoja, Asaba and Akassa until the Crown revoked the charter on 31 December 1899 (effective 1 January 1900).
The Company filed annual accounts at Companies House and to the Colonial Office (CO 446 series, UK National Archives). Headline figures:
• Revenue (1888–1898 average): £150,000–£250,000 per year. Sources: (i) import and export duties on the Niger, payable in sterling at a fixed conversion that the cowrie/manilla holders could not match — the single most consequential monetary policy of the conquest era; (ii) trade monopoly margins on palm-oil, palm-kernel, gum and ivory; (iii) caravan tolls at Lokoja and Asaba; (iv) royalty payments from sub-traders.
• Expenditure: the Royal Niger Constabulary (~750 African soldiers under British officers — ancestor of the Nigerian Army), the Niger flotilla of gunboats, the administrative posts at Asaba, Lokoja, Idah, Akassa and Onitsha, and dividends to City shareholders.
• Military cost surge 1897–98: the Bida–Ilorin Expedition (January–February 1897 — see the Era 0 charter-company entry) cost the Company roughly £100,000 and exhausted reserves. The Akassa Raid by King Koko of Nembe (29 January 1895) and the subsequent Kirk Inquiry (1896) further compromised the Company's commercial position.
• Charter revocation: On 1 January 1900 the Crown paid the Company £865,000 in compensation plus a guaranteed share of mineral royalties for 99 years (see the Money record). The territories became the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria under Lugard.
The RNC accounts are the first sterling-denominated public finances for the territory now called Nigeria — and their tariff regime, payable only in coin, was the lever that broke the cowrie economy.