The cancellations of Nigeria

Introduction

Nigeria is a big country, with over 200 million citizens living in thousands of settlements which range from tiny roadless villages to the megalopolis of Lagos. Postal services started up in the mid-nineteenth century in Lagos then spread up the Niger river, and by the early years of the twentieth century they had expanded to cover the whole of what, in 1914, became the nation of Nigeria.

That makes for a rich postal history, and for a great many post offices and agencies. In turn those have used thousands of different cancellers, and this website was set up in 2012 to describe their variety and usage dates. Updated roughly every year, the amount of information grew to the point where it justified turning into book form. In July 2021 'Collecting Nigerian Cancellations' was published by WASC, the West African Study Circle. It is available as a free-to-download .pdf file from https://www.wasc.org.uk/NewFiles/online-pubs/Collecting%20Nigerian%20Cancellations.pdf and can be ordered in print form from the WASC Book-seller, (wascbookseller@aol.com).

The book cosists of:

The book includes the most recent information from this site, together with additional material (most notably illustrations of all the cancel types), and will be updated on the WASC site from time to time. However I will maintain this site as an archive of older information. The site's main pages are:

The Lists presents a catalogue, by post office / postal agency, of all the distinguishable cancellers used from the opening of each office until its closure or until 1980 (whichever came earlier), including earliest and latest known use. The most recent lists were uploaded March 2020, and have been superseded by the book. The lists page also includes a copy of the data published by NIPOST listing all offices open in c 2007, a list of 'unseen' offices, and a list of labels for collectors.

Sources describes where the list information has come from.

Methods explains how information from the various sources was collated and harmonised, and describes assumptions made in the process. The book goes into this in more detail.

Contact emphasises that this is a work in progress, and that I would greatly welcome both comment on the site and additional information .

Finally, I would like to thank WASC, and individual members who share this interest, for much support, information and advice.

Paul Redhead