On 1 January 1900 the British government proclaimed the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria, taking over the territories administered by the Royal Niger Company since its 1886 charter. Frederick Lugard was appointed the first High Commissioner.
Lugard's military campaigns of 1900–1903 reduced the Sokoto Caliphate and its emirates to the doctrine of 'Indirect Rule'. The Battle of Kano fell on 3 February 1903; Sokoto on 15 March; the Caliph Attahiru was defeated at the Battle of Burmi on 27 July 1903. The surviving emirs swore allegiance to the Crown and kept their thrones — the constitutional template for what would become Northern Nigeria.
Indirect Rule worked in the North because the Sokoto Caliphate and Old Borno had been weakened by a century of internal warfare. It would prove far less stable in the South.