Motors reflected the changing ownership of capital, petroleum and commerce in post-independence Nigeria.
Broad Street Lagos history is vividly represented by a photograph dating from around 1971. Along one of Lagos Island’s most important commercial streets stood Barclays Bank, BP House and Allen’s Motors, three businesses connected to banking, petroleum and the motor trade. Together, they captured a Nigeria that had been politically independent for more than a decade but was still undergoing a major transformation in the ownership and control of important sectors of its economy.
The photograph belongs to a particularly important period. Nigeria had emerged from the Civil War in January 1970 and entered an era of reconstruction. Petroleum production was increasingly important, Nigeria joined the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC, on 12 July 1971, and the Federal Government was preparing policies intended to increase Nigerian participation in major businesses.
Broad Street therefore represented more than a fashionable commercial district. Its banks, corporate offices and dealerships reflected the international networks through which money, petroleum, machinery and consumer goods moved through Nigeria.
Broad Street Lagos History Before the Oil Boom
By the early 1970s, Broad Street and the neighbouring Marina district remained at the centre of commercial Lagos. Banks, insurance companies, shipping businesses, trading firms and other major corporations maintained offices on Lagos Island.
The photograph associated with this period shows Barclays Bank and the prominent BP House, with Allen’s Motors operating at street level. The corporate names were familiar symbols of an economy in which British and other international companies continued to play substantial roles after Nigerian independence in 1960.
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Yet the photograph was taken at the beginning of major change.
Nigeria was already producing substantial quantities of crude oil, but the extraordinary increase in government petroleum revenues generally associated with the great oil boom came later, particularly after the international oil price increases of 1973 and 1974.
Broad Street around 1971 should therefore be understood as a city at the threshold of the oil boom rather than a product of its mature years.
Barclays Bank and a Colonial Banking Legacy
The history of the bank represented in the photograph stretched back to the colonial period.
Colonial Bank began operations in Nigeria in 1917. In 1925, following changes in its ownership and organisation, the Nigerian operation became part of Barclays Bank DCO, meaning Barclays Bank Dominion, Colonial and Overseas.
For decades, Barclays became one of the major banking institutions operating in British West Africa.
After independence, the structure began to change. The Companies Act of 1968 encouraged the local incorporation of businesses operating in Nigeria. In 1969, Barclays’ Nigerian operation was incorporated as Barclays Bank of Nigeria Limited.
The more significant transformation came during the 1970s.
Nigeria’s government increasingly argued that political independence should be accompanied by greater Nigerian participation in major sectors of the economy. The Nigerian Enterprises Promotion Decree of 1972 created a framework through which Nigerian citizens and the state would acquire interests in businesses previously dominated by foreign capital.
A more stringent indigenisation programme followed in 1977.
Banking was among the sectors affected by these policies. Through successive changes in share ownership, the Federal Government became the controlling shareholder in Barclays Bank of Nigeria.
The transition was not simply a change of signs on a building. It was part of a much broader effort to redefine the relationship between Nigeria and the foreign companies that had occupied powerful positions in its economy.
How Barclays Became Union Bank
The Barclays name disappeared from the Nigerian institution in 1979, when the bank became Union Bank of Nigeria.
The change, however, did not mean that every Barclays interest vanished at once.
By 1979, Barclays’ holding had been reduced to a minority position. The British banking group retained a 20 per cent interest in Union Bank after the name change and finally disposed of that remaining holding in 1989.
Government ownership also continued beyond 1979.
The Federal Government retained its controlling 51.67 per cent shareholding until 1993, when those shares were sold to private investors as part of the government’s privatisation and commercialisation programme.
The transformation from Colonial Bank to Barclays Bank DCO, Barclays Bank of Nigeria and eventually Union Bank therefore took place over decades.
It demonstrates an important feature of Nigeria’s economic history: political independence in 1960 did not immediately produce complete Nigerian ownership of the country’s major commercial institutions. Ownership, management and corporate identity changed more gradually.
BP House and Nigeria’s Petroleum Transformation
The BP name visible in the Broad Street streetscape represented another powerful international connection.
The history of Shell’s Nigerian petroleum operations began in 1936, when the Royal Dutch/Shell Group established Shell D’Arcy in Nigeria. Exploration followed, and Shell D’Arcy drilled a successful well at Oloibiri in January 1956.
In April that year, the company became Shell-BP Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited.
Nigeria’s first commercial shipment of crude oil followed in February 1958.
By the beginning of the 1970s, petroleum had become increasingly important to the Nigerian economy. Nigeria joined OPEC on 12 July 1971, giving the country a formal place among the world’s major petroleum exporting states.
The Federal Government also moved towards direct participation in oil-producing ventures.
In April 1973, the government acquired a 35 per cent participation interest in the oil companies. Its participation increased to 55 per cent in April 1974 and to 60 per cent in July 1979.
The ownership structure of Shell-BP was therefore dramatically different by the end of the decade from what it had been when the Broad Street photograph was taken.
The 1979 Nationalisation of BP
One of the most important events in Nigeria’s petroleum history came in 1979, when the Federal Military Government under General Olusegun Obasanjo nationalised British Petroleum’s interests in Nigeria.
Immediately before the takeover, BP held a 20 per cent interest in the Shell-BP petroleum venture.
Nigeria’s action occurred against the background of tense relations with Britain over southern Africa. Nigerian foreign policy strongly opposed apartheid in South Africa and white minority rule elsewhere in the region.
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On 30 July 1979, Festus Marinho, then managing director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, communicated Nigeria’s intention to increase its participation in BP’s Nigerian interests. The government linked its decision to British policy concerning petroleum supplies to apartheid South Africa.
The confrontation involved disputes over oil supply arrangements and Britain’s southern African policy. It also occurred within Nigeria’s wider pursuit of economic nationalism and greater state control of strategic resources.
In August 1979, BP’s shareholding was nationalised. The change left NNPC with an 80 per cent interest in the former Shell-BP operation and Shell with 20 per cent.
The episode became one of the clearest demonstrations of Nigeria’s willingness during the 1970s to use its growing petroleum power in both economic and foreign policy.
Allen’s Motors and Nigeria’s Imported Motor Economy
At street level, Allen’s Motors represented a different aspect of Nigeria’s international commercial relationships.
J. Allen and Company was an established participant in Nigeria’s motor trade and was associated with the distribution of Ford products.
The connection between J. Allen and Ford went back well before the Broad Street photograph. In 1960, Ford Motor Company of Canada and J. Allen and Company jointly presented a 1925 Ford Model T to the Government of Nigeria to mark independence.
Motor dealerships were important to far more than private car ownership. Imported vehicles supported government departments, businesses, agricultural enterprises, public transport and the growing movement of people and goods between Nigerian cities.
Allen’s Motors therefore adds an important commercial dimension to the photograph.
Barclays represented finance. BP represented petroleum. Allen’s represented imported machinery and international manufacturing.
All three depended upon networks extending beyond Nigeria.
Nigerianisation and the Struggle for Economic Control
The 1970s marked an ambitious effort to change that balance.
The Nigerian Enterprises Promotion programmes of 1972 and 1977 sought to increase Nigerian ownership in companies and sectors where foreign capital remained dominant. Businesses were divided into categories, with different requirements governing the level of Nigerian participation.
These policies were part of a wider postcolonial debate about economic sovereignty.
Independence had transferred constitutional and political authority to Nigerians, but many large companies remained linked to foreign shareholders, overseas headquarters and international financial networks.
Indigenisation sought to narrow that gap.
Its consequences were substantial. Nigerian investors acquired shares in companies previously controlled from abroad, the Federal Government became a major shareholder in strategic enterprises, and Nigerian managers increasingly occupied senior corporate positions.
However, state ownership and popular ownership were not the same thing. In several major institutions, the government itself became the dominant shareholder. Economic Nigerianisation therefore involved both private Nigerian capital and an expansion of state participation.
Broad Street at the Threshold of the Oil Boom
The timing of the photograph gives it particular historical significance.
Nigeria was already an oil exporter when the image was made, but the enormous revenue expansion of the oil boom had not yet fully arrived.
The decisive international change came after the oil crisis of 1973, when world petroleum prices rose dramatically. As a major exporter, Nigeria received rapidly increasing oil revenues during the years that followed.
Those revenues transformed government expenditure and intensified the importance of Lagos as a centre of finance, administration and corporate activity.
The Broad Street streetscape of about 1971 therefore belongs to the final years before the scale of Nigeria’s petroleum wealth changed dramatically.
Its buildings were inherited from earlier commercial structures, but the companies inside them were about to face new political and economic conditions.
Three Companies, One Changing Country
The greatest historical value of the Broad Street photograph comes from seeing Barclays Bank, BP House and Allen’s Motors together.
Each represented a different part of the economy.
Barclays reflected the enormous influence of British banking and the gradual Nigerianisation of financial institutions.
BP House represented the petroleum industry, which was becoming central to government revenue, diplomacy and national economic planning.
Allen’s Motors represented Nigeria’s dependence on imported vehicles, international manufacturers and overseas commercial networks.
Within a decade, the ownership structures associated with two of those names had changed profoundly.
Barclays Bank of Nigeria became Union Bank in 1979, although Barclays retained a minority interest until 1989. The Federal Government remained Union Bank’s controlling shareholder until 1993.
BP’s Nigerian interests were nationalised in 1979 as the government increased its control of the petroleum industry.
These changes did not happen overnight. They formed part of a longer transformation in the relationship between an independent Nigerian state and the international corporations that had become established during the colonial period.
Conclusion
Broad Street in Lagos around 1971 captured Nigeria at a remarkable economic crossroads.
The country had achieved political independence, survived a devastating civil war and entered a period of reconstruction. Oil production was growing, OPEC membership arrived in July 1971, and the government was preparing increasingly assertive policies towards foreign corporate ownership.
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Barclays Bank, BP House and Allen’s Motors made these forces visible in one Lagos streetscape.
The decades that followed brought Nigerianisation, expanded government participation in petroleum, the transformation of Barclays Bank of Nigeria into Union Bank, BP’s nationalisation and the enormous financial consequences of the oil boom.
Broad Street Lagos history is therefore more than the story of old buildings and vanished company signs. It is the history of a country attempting to turn political sovereignty into greater control over banking, petroleum and commerce.
Author’s Note
The Broad Street scene of about 1971 reminds us that independence is not a single event but a continuing process. Nigeria became politically independent in 1960, yet the ownership and management of many important economic institutions continued to evolve for decades. Barclays, BP and Allen’s Motors each reveal a different part of that transition. Their histories show how Nigeria sought greater control over capital, natural resources and commercial activity while remaining connected to international markets. The photograph endures because it captures not simply an old Lagos street, but a nation standing between its colonial commercial inheritance and a new era of economic nationalism and petroleum power.
References
Securities and Exchange Commission Nigeria. Union Bank of Nigeria Plc Rights Circular. 30 August 2017.
Decker, Stephanie. “Decolonising Barclays Bank DCO? Corporate Africanisation in Nigeria, 1945–69.” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, Vol. 33, No. 3, 2005, pp. 419–440.
Uche, Chibuike U. “British Government, British Businesses, and the Indigenization Exercise in Post-Independence Nigeria.” Business History Review, Vol. 86, No. 4, 2012, pp. 745–771.
Genova, Ann. “Nigeria’s Nationalization of British Petroleum.” The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 43, No. 1, 2010, pp. 115–136.
Shell Nigeria. The History of Shell in Nigeria.
Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. Official historical record of Nigeria’s admission to OPEC on 12 July 1971.
United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of International Commerce. Nigeria: A Survey of U.S. Business Opportunities. Washington, D.C., 1976.
