The Niger Coast Protectorate was a British protectorate in the Oil Rivers area of present-day Nigeria, originally established as the Oil Rivers Protectorate in 1884 and confirmed at the Berlin Conference the following year. It was renamed on 12 May 1893, and merged with the chartered territories of the Royal Niger Company on 1 January 1900 to form the Southern Nigeria Protectorate.
Queen Victoria on a stamp of the Niger Coast Protectorate, 1894
This covered the eastern coast of what it today Nigeria, and in theory extended inland as far as Lokoja. It was established to better regulate and control the large trade in palm oil that was coming through both Calabar and the Niger Delta, and which had given the various rivers in the area the name of oil rivers.
24. Claimed in 1908; territory formed 1962; overlaps portions of Argentine and Chilean claims, borders not enforced but claim not renounced under the Antarctic Treaty.
