Niger Coast and Royal Niger Company assets purchased

On 1 January 1900 the Royal Charter granted to the Royal Niger Company in 1886 was revoked. The British Treasury paid the Company £865,000 in compensation; in addition, a separate deed entitled the Company (and its corporate successors — Niger Company Ltd → Lever Brothers → United Africa Company → Unilever, held through a dedicated subsidiary, Nigerian Properties, Limited) to half of all mineral royalties collected by the colonial government from a defined Northern zone (between the Niger River and a Yola–Zinder line) for 99 years from charter revocation. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Michael Hicks Beach, spelt out the terms to the House of Commons on 3 July 1899 (HC Deb vol. 73, cols. 1296–97). The royalty stream — overwhelmingly from Jos Plateau tin — was paid throughout the colonial period (£228,000 in 1942 alone — roughly £14.5 million / ₦29 billion in 2026 values at Bank of England CPI), confirmed by Harold Macmillan in Parliament, and survived independence without renegotiation; it expired on 31 December 1998. The territories were folded into the Northern and Southern Protectorates, with Frederick Lugard as High Commissioner of the North. The clause is the original assertion of Crown/state ownership of Nigerian sub-soil — the principle later restated in the Petroleum Act 1969, the Land Use Act 1978, and the Petroleum Industry Act 2021.