The reasons behind the colonization of Africa differs for many scholars.

Generally, these several

reasons are considered as the main driving factors for it: Need for natural resources, curiosity of
Europeans, and spreading Christianity. The great need of resources in Europe that they did not
have made Africa more valuable at that time, and it was worth to go and conquest there.
Secondly, for Europeans, Africa was the “Dark Continent”. Till that time, Europeans had only
managed to visit coast lines of the continent, but inner areas were still full of mysteries for them.
In the Berlin conference in 1884 the division became official. One of the big colonies was
Nigeria which belonged to Britain. In 1880s, British started to sign protectorate treaties with
local Nigerian leaders. It’s worth to mention that these treaties transferred not only the external
sovereign rights of Nigerians, but also internal. Even in some cases, like the Kingdom of Lagos,
rulers sold their whole authorities to the British for money, and it became one of the biggest
trading posts of Britain. The British set up a huge trading system in the Nigerian coastline. They
used middlemen for contacting the locals, they praised and backed up these middlemen
whenever it’s needed. One of the major materials that was traded was palm oil. In the later
periods, the British took the control of the industry itself. But this rapid expansion had downsides
as well. Britain got the control of many areas. They did not want to involve in this process
directly and officially because of risks and financial costs. They were using local middlemen for
ruling which gave power to them, and there was a risk of external interference from the other
Europeans. In British government, one side advocated “formal empire” concept while the others
were against it. After the Berlin agreement, the British control over the area was strengthened.
The British influence was not limited with the economical and political fields, they sent
missionaries to Nigeria, and they built churches and schools to control the religion as well.
https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/51057/1/external_content.pdf pages
96-99 and 106-108
https://www.pearsonhighered.com/assets/samplechapter/0/2/0/5/0205208606.pdf pages 100-103