Introduction
The story of eugenics is not only a European or American one; it is a global narrative of how science, race, and power became tools for domination and control. In colonial Nigeria, eugenic ideas were subtly woven into policies, public health, education, and governance — embedding a hierarchy of human worth that continues to shape society long after independence.
Although Nigeria never enacted formal sterilization laws or “racial purity” decrees, the British colonial administration embraced the underlying assumption of eugenics — that certain races, classes, and tribes were inherently more intelligent, disciplined, or civilized than others. This ideological framework was used to justify indirect rule, educational restrictions, and the deliberate stifling of critical reasoning among the colonized population.
Today, as genetics and biotechnology usher in an era of unprecedented control over human heredity, echoes of those colonial logics reappear in new forms — from the use of science to justify inequality, to the weaponization of knowledge and poverty as instruments of control. The ethical question before us remains: who defines human progress — and who is sacrificed in its name?
Eugenic Thought and the Colonial Imagination.
The foundations of British colonial governance in West Africa rested on scientific racism, a pseudo-scientific belief that human races were biologically unequal. British administrators, missionaries, and anthropologists routinely portrayed Africans as “primitive,” “childlike,” and “biologically backward.”
Lord Lugard’s Dual Mandate (1922) encapsulated this ideology by describing the British as trustees for a “less advanced race” — a notion rooted in eugenic thinking. The colonial project became a laboratory for human experimentation: societies were classified, segregated, and “improved” through a racial hierarchy disguised as civilization.
This was, in essence, a eugenic logic of empire — one that sought to cultivate a few “better natives” while keeping the majority intellectually dependent and politically subdued.
Public Health, Reproduction, and the “Improvement” of the Native.
Colonial medical policy in Nigeria was guided by the belief that Africans were biologically prone to disease and moral weakness. Health interventions were therefore structured not for empowerment but for population control and labor efficiency.
• Maternal and Child Welfare Campaigns portrayed high birth and death rates as evidence of racial inferiority. Colonial officers promoted “modern” birthing techniques, not merely for health reasons but to engineer a “fitter native population.”
• Urban Segregation Policies in cities like Lagos, Kano, and Enugu reflected the eugenic fear of “racial contagion.” European quarters were separated by sanitation laws that implied Africans carried inherent biological threats.
• Marriage and Sexual Regulation reinforced the ideology of racial purity: interracial unions were discouraged, and mixed-race children were socially ostracized as “degenerate hybrids.”
The goal was clear — to reproduce a controlled laboring class, healthy enough to work but politically powerless and scientifically uninformed.
Education and the Manufacture of Mental Dependence
Colonial education in Nigeria was another subtle instrument of eugenics. Rather than cultivating critical thinkers, it produced clerical functionaries trained to serve the empire. The aim was not enlightenment but mental containment.
Anthropologists like C. K. Meek classified ethnic groups by supposed intelligence and temperament, describing some as “naturally fit for leadership” (such as the Fulani and Yoruba) and others as “docile or backward.” Education policy followed this logic: a few “intelligent natives” were taught to govern, while the majority remained uneducated and compliant.
This deliberate suppression of critical thinking — replacing inquiry with obedience — left a lasting legacy. Postcolonial Nigeria inherited not a culture of innovation, but a structure of imitation. The intellectual sterilization of colonial education was, in many ways, a psychological form of eugenics — ensuring that entire generations would depend on external authority for validation and progress.
Colonial Research, Resource Mapping, and Eugenic Ideology.
Between the 1920s and 1940s, British scientists and medical officers conducted anthropometric surveys and biological classifications across Nigeria. These “studies” measured skull shapes, blood groups, and mental aptitude, purporting to identify “races best suited” for labor, agriculture, or clerical work.
At the same time, British geologists and cartographers were mapping Nigeria’s mineral wealth — from gold and uranium in the Northwest to oil and gas around the Niger Delta and Lake Chad Basin. Colonial science thus served a dual function: classifying people by biology, and classifying land by resource potential.
In both cases, the aim was control over nature, bodies, and minds. The population was “managed” like a genetic experiment, while the environment was “optimized” for extraction.
Eugenics, Resource Politics, and the New Frontiers of Violence
The legacy of eugenic manipulation did not end with independence. Many scholars now interpret certain forms of contemporary conflict — such as the rise of Boko Haram in the Lake Chad region and banditry in Northwestern Nigeria — through the lens of neo-eugenic and resource politics.
The Lake Chad Basin, long known for its untapped mineral and hydrocarbon resources, has become a theatre of engineered instability. The persistence of Boko Haram — despite repeated military offensives — raises questions beyond ideology or religion. Some analysts suggest that the systematic destabilization of this resource-rich zone serves geopolitical and corporate interests seeking to exploit its wealth under the cover of chaos.
Similarly, the rise of banditry in Zamfara, Katsina, Niger, and Kaduna — regions rich in gold, uranium, and other strategic minerals — may not be a coincidence. The chaos enables illicit mining, foreign interference, and the weakening of state institutions.
From this perspective, violence becomes a modern expression of eugenics — not through biological extermination, but through the selective destruction of populations and the suppression of education, security, and development. It is a form of socio-economic sterilization: keeping regions too unstable to rise, too poor to resist, and too uneducated to question.
The Colonial Legacy of Anti-Critical Education
One of the most enduring tools of control inherited from colonialism is the systematic discouragement of critical reasoning. The colonial classroom rewarded obedience, not curiosity; repetition, not reflection. This intellectual architecture persists today in many educational systems, where memorization replaces inquiry and conformity replaces creativity.
This was no accident. By dulling the capacity for independent thought, colonial eugenics ensured that postcolonial societies would remain intellectually dependent. In this sense, mental colonization became the most effective form of eugenic control — the slow elimination of critical intelligence under the guise of civilization.
The result is visible today in the ease with which misinformation spreads, how violence is justified as divine destiny, and how exploitation is mistaken for development. The colonial project of producing “useful natives” has, in subtle ways, succeeded — producing populations rich in faith but poor in skepticism, loyal to power but blind to manipulation.
From Old Eugenics to New Genetic Ethics
Modern genetics — from CRISPR gene editing to embryo selection — has revived old eugenic questions under a scientific veneer. While these technologies hold enormous promise for eliminating hereditary disease, they also risk deepening inequality. Who decides which traits are desirable? Who ensures that science serves humanity, not hierarchy?
In developing nations like Nigeria, the danger is double. Without strong ethical governance, genetic research could become another form of biotechnological colonialism — where foreign corporations test, extract, or patent African DNA, just as colonial powers once claimed African lands and bodies.
Conclusion: From Genetic Control to Human Liberation
Eugenics in colonial Nigeria was not a historical footnote; it was a system of thought that still echoes in the country’s social hierarchies, educational systems, and conflicts. From the suppression of critical thought to the manipulation of violence in resource-rich regions, the shadow of eugenic control remains long and dark.
But history also offers a warning — and a path forward. If science and governance continue to treat human beings as instruments rather than ends, the mistakes of the past will reappear in modern disguise.
To overcome this, Nigeria must reclaim critical education, ethical science, and inclusive development as the foundations of its future. The new genetics must not repeat the crimes of eugenics — it must be a science of liberation, not domination; of justice, not hierarchy.
Only then can humanity turn the knowledge of life into the preservation of dignity.
References:
1. Galton, F. Essays in Eugenics. London: Macmillan, 1909.
2. Bashford, A. & Levine, P. (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of the History of Eugenics. Oxford University Press, 2010.
3. Tilley, H. Africa as a Living Laboratory: Empire, Development, and the Problem of Scientific Knowledge, 1870–1950. University of Chicago Press, 2011.
4. Heaton, M. M. Black Skin, White Coats: Nigerian Psychiatrists, Decolonization, and the Globalization of Psychiatry. Ohio University Press, 2013.
5. Oyebade, A. (2000). “Scientific Racism and the Invention of the African.” Race & Class, Vol. 41, No. 3.
6. UNESCO. Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights, 1997.
7. Zubairu, A. (2022). Resource Wars and the Political Economy of Insecurity in the Lake Chad Basin. Nigerian Defence Review Journal.
8. Falola, T. (2019). Colonial Education and the Making of Modern Nigeria. Ibadan University Press.
