Before the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria existed on a single map (1 January 1914), the territory was administered as six successive or parallel British units, each with its own capital, legal regime, currency arrangement and head of administration. The names changed quickly, the boundaries quicker, and the men who signed the dispatches are rarely remembered as a single succession. This is the register.
1 · Colony of Lagos (1862–1906). Annexed by Treaty of Cession on 6 August 1861, formally constituted as a Crown Colony on 5 March 1862. Capital: Lagos. Administered from Freetown 1866–74 as part of the British West African Settlements; restored as a separate colony in 1886. Heads (Governor / Administrator): Henry Stanhope Freeman (1862–65), John Hawley Glover (Administrator, 1866–72), George Berkeley (1873–74), Cornelius Alfred Moloney (1886–90), Gilbert Thomas Carter (1891–97), Henry McCallum (1897–98), William MacGregor (1899–1904), Walter Egerton (1904–06, then doubled as High Commissioner of Southern Nigeria from 1906). Merged into the Colony and Protectorate of Southern Nigeria on 28 February 1906.
2 · Oil Rivers Protectorate (1885–1893). Proclaimed 5 June 1885 over the Niger Delta city-states (Bonny, Brass/Nembe, Opobo, Calabar, Itsekiri) following the Berlin Conference. Capital: Calabar (Old Calabar). Run from the Foreign Office, not the Colonial Office, by a Consul rather than a Governor. Heads (Consul / Commissioner): Edward Hyde Hewett (Consul, 1885–91), Sir Claude Maxwell MacDonald (Commissioner & Consul-General, 1891–95). Renamed the Niger Coast Protectorate on 13 May 1893.
3 · Niger Coast Protectorate (1893–1900). Same territory as the Oil Rivers, expanded inland to absorb Benin (after the Sack of Benin, 1897) and the Cross River hinterland. Capital: Calabar. Heads (Commissioner & Consul-General): Sir Claude MacDonald (1893–96), Sir Ralph Moor (1896–1900). Dissolved on 1 January 1900 and folded into the new Protectorate of Southern Nigeria.
4 · Royal Niger Company Territories (1886–1899). Not a Crown protectorate but a chartered private state. The Royal Niger Company, under Sir George Goldie's Council, exercised treaty-making, taxation, judicial and constabulary powers over the Lower and Middle Niger and the emirates of the Sokoto Caliphate's southern marches from its headquarters at Asaba. Heads (Governor of the Company / Agent-General): Lord Aberdare (Governor, 1886–95) and George Goldie (Governor, 1895–1900) in London; in-territory Agents-General included Joseph Flint and William Wallace. The Charter was revoked on 31 December 1899; the Company was paid £865,000 plus a 99-year share of mineral royalties (see The 99-Year Mineral Royalty).
5 · Protectorate of Northern Nigeria (1900–1914). Proclaimed at Lokoja on 1 January 1900, taking over the former RNC northern territories and the unconquered emirates. Capital: Lokoja (1900–02), Zungeru (1902–16). Heads (High Commissioner / Governor): Sir Frederick Lugard (1900–06), Sir Percy Girouard (1907–09), Sir Henry Hesketh Bell (1909–12), Sir Frederick Lugard (returned 1912–14 as Governor of both Protectorates). See Protectorate of Northern Nigeria proclaimed.
6 · Protectorate of Southern Nigeria (1900–1914). Proclaimed 1 January 1900 from the Niger Coast Protectorate plus the former RNC southern territories. Capital: Old Calabar; from 1906 amalgamated with the Colony of Lagos and re-seated at Lagos. Heads (High Commissioner / Governor): Sir Ralph Moor (1900–03), Sir Walter Egerton (1904–12, also Governor of Lagos from 1906), Sir Frederick Lugard (1912–14).
The 1906 merger. On 28 February 1906 the Colony of Lagos was absorbed into Southern Nigeria, producing the Colony and Protectorate of Southern Nigeria under Walter Egerton — the first reduction from three coastal units to one. The Northern Protectorate remained separate, fiscally dependent on Southern customs receipts paid via the imperial treasury, until the Amalgamation of 1914 folded everything — Colony, South and North — into a single Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria under Lugard as Governor-General.
Why the register matters. Each of these units had its own Consul or Commissioner or High Commissioner, its own court system (Foreign Jurisdiction Act vs Crown Colony vs Chartered Company), its own treaty corpus (over 450 signed by the RNC alone), its own currency (Maria Theresa thalers, manillas, cowries, British silver — not unified into the West African pound until 1912), and its own constabulary. Nigeria's federal character did not begin with the 1954 Constitution or the regions of 1939; it began with the parallel administration of six different units between 1862 and 1914, each of which signed treaties the next inherited and could not unsign.