How Nigeria’s borders were drawn and why they still trigger conflict today

• Nigeria’s borders were created by European powers during the 1884 Berlin Conference without African input.

• Colonial lines split ethnic groups and communities across multiple countries, creating lasting identity and governance challenges.

• These borders still fuel modern issues, including insecurity, migration conflicts, and regional instability.

In 1884, a group of European men sat around a table in Berlin and divided a continent they had never fully explored. Over 140 years later, Nigerians are still living with the consequences.

Several families who had lived in the same community for generations, spoke the same language as the people across the river, attended the same festivals and intermarried, woke up one day to find a foreign power had drawn a line between them, and suddenly, they became citizens of different countries. 

It started with a conference in Berlin in November 1884. Fourteen European nations, including Britain, France, Germany, Portugal, and others, gathered at the invitation of German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, and not a single African leader was in the room.

Their goal was simple. It was to divide Africa among themselves to avoid fighting each other over it. They called it the "General Act of Berlin." Historians call it the starting gun of the Scramble for Africa. What it really was, was the greatest land grab in human history.

Britain walked away with what we now know as Nigeria. But even the British didn't build it in one go. They first created separate Northern and Southern Protectorates, then in 1914, Governor-General Frederick Lugard merged them into a single colony. 

They weren't merged because the people shared a common identity, but because the South was turning a profit and the North was running a deficit. Nigeria was born as an accounting decision.

The Yoruba people were divided between southwestern Nigeria and the Republic of Benin. The Ketu Kingdom, one of the oldest Yoruba kingdoms, today sits inside the Benin Republic. Yoruba in Benin are called "Nago," but they still tune into Nigerian TV stations and share the same proverbs as their cousins in Lagos and Abeokuta.

The Kanuri people, who built the mighty Kanem-Bornu Empire spanning modern-day Nigeria, Niger, Chad, and Cameroon, found themselves split four ways across four countries, going from one empire to four different passports.

The Hausa, the Tiv, the Efik, the Igbo, the Fulani, the list goes on. Communities that had been one were now legally foreign to each other, yet sharing the same markets, the same shrines, the same blood.

Then there is the strange case of the Cameroons. In 1961, a UN referendum asked the people of British Cameroons a simple question: join Nigeria or join Cameroon?

Northern Cameroons voted to join Nigeria and became the Sardauna Province. Southern Cameroons voted to join Francophone Cameroon. One territory and one people became two different countries, all decided by a ballot.

The borders drawn by men who never set foot in most of these communities are actively causing problems right now, even today.

Here are five ways we are still feeling it:

1. Boko Haram has no passport: The Lake Chad Basin shared by Nigeria, Niger, Chad, and Cameroon is one of the most porous border zones in the world. 

Boko Haram and ISWAP exploit this freely, crossing between countries to attack, recruit, and regroup. Nigerian troops cannot simply pursue them into Chad or Niger. 

Diplomacy is slow, and terrorists are not. The border that was drawn to serve European interests in 1885 continues to serve as an escape route for insurgents.

2. The herder-farmer crisis has deep roots: The violent clashes between Fulani herders and farming communities in Benue, Plateau, and other Middle Belt states are often framed as ethnic or religious conflict. 

But at its core, this is also a border problem. The Fulani are historically transnational pastoralists, their migration routes crossed what are now multiple countries long before those countries existed. 

When those routes are blocked by national boundaries, fences, and farmland, tension becomes inevitable.

3. Bakassi (when Nigeria lost its own people): In 2008, Nigeria handed the Bakassi Peninsula to Cameroon following an International Court of Justice ruling, a ruling based on colonial-era treaties that the communities living there had no say in. 

Overnight, thousands of Nigerians who had fished those waters for generations became Cameroonian. Many refused to leave, and many were displaced. Their identity was decided by borders drawn before their grandparents were born.

4. ECOWAS (free movement on paper, not in practice): The Economic Community of West African States promises free movement across the region. In theory, a Nigerian should be able to cross into the Benin Republic or Ghana without too much hassle. 

In practice, unofficial levies, harassment at border posts, and bureaucratic chaos make it a nightmare. The promise of unity that ECOWAS was built on is constantly undermined by the colonial borders it was designed to transcend.

5. The Niger coup and its ripple effects: When the military took power in Niger on July 26, 2023, it not only destabilised a neighbouring country; it also affected Nigerian border communities. 

The Hausa and Kanuri populations of Sokoto, Kebbi, Katsina, and Borno states have more in common with people across the border in Niger than they do with people in Lagos. 

When the border closes, families are separated, and trade dies. Nigeria is left managing a crisis that traces its roots back to a conference in Berlin.

Nigeria is a country that works, though imperfectly, chaotically, and stubbornly, but it works. The problem has never been that we are many; the problem is that the structure imposed on us was never designed for us.

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