I came across a painful piece of information recently. It left me heavy-hearted. It confirmed something that many of us in Nigeria have long suspected but never fully understood that a huge part of our history was not just forgotten… it was deliberately erased. Erased by the very people who claimed they came to civilize us. Erased so we would never be able to tell our story in full. This act of silence and secrecy was committed in the years leading up to Nigeria’s independence in 1960.
You see, many sensitive colonial documents, records that held evidence of killings, exploitation, and manipulation were not handed over to Nigerians at independence. Instead, some of these files were burned. Some were locked away forever in British vaults. And, as shocking as it may sound, some were dumped into the Lagos Lagoon… to sink and vanish forever into its murky waters.
This is not fiction. This is our lost truth.
The Forgotten Massacre: November 12, 1895
It has always haunted me what happened on November 12, 1895, during the Pepe War in Old Oyo Empire. That day, under the command of Captain Bower, British colonial forces attacked the sacred seat of the Yoruba monarchy. The palace was destroyed. The institution of monarchy, a system older and nobler than the British Empire itself was dismantled. Children, women, and elders were killed in cold blood.
For over a century, our people have asked: where are the documents? Where are the records of the deaths? The reports filed by soldiers? The names of those lost? Why does the archive of our pain go silent just at the moment when we need it the most?
Now we know why.
The Truth at Hanslope Park
In my search, I found this heartbreaking revelation: the British government had secretly removed and stored thousands of sensitive colonial-era documents at a top-secret facility called Hanslope Park far away from public view. It was described as “the fortress-like warehouse for top-secret government files”.
These documents are part of what they call the “migrated archives.” These are not ordinary papers. They contain the truth about colonial crimes, massacres, forced labour, land thefts, torture, betrayal, and everything in between.
The UK didn’t hand them over at independence. They hid them. They locked them away. They did not want us to know.
Why Were the Documents Destroyed or Hidden?
The reasons are chilling:
To Cover Up Atrocities
Colonial governments committed unspeakable acts. From murdering peaceful protesters to razing entire villages, the evidence of these crimes was carefully documented. But rather than return these records to Nigeria, they either destroyed them or dumped them in places like the Lagos Lagoon. Why? Because they feared what would happen if we knew the full truth.
To Protect Their Own
Many British officers, colonial administrators, and even some local collaborators were involved in these acts. Leaving behind records would expose them to shame, prosecution, or worse. By destroying the files, they protected the guilty, not the innocent.
To Prevent Reparations
If Nigeria had evidence, written, signed documents of how Britain exploited our land and people, we would have grounds to demand justice. Legal justice. Financial reparations. They knew that. And so, they silenced the paper trail.
To Control the Story
Britain, like many former colonial powers, wanted to control how history would remember them. They wanted to be seen as benevolent, as heroes who brought civilization and railways. Not as the authors of massacres. Not as looters. So they rewrote history, not with lies but with silence.
Even When Forced, They Held Back
The case of Kenya’s Mau Mau victims gives us an idea of how far Britain would go. When Kenyan survivors took the UK to court in 2011, the High Court ordered the release of secret colonial records. The British government admitted it had over 8,800 sensitive files, many of which had been kept hidden for decades. But even then, the release was slow, selective, and tightly controlled.
If this happened in Kenya, how much more was kept hidden from Nigeria?
Why the Lagos Lagoon?
People sometimes ask: “Why dump records into the Lagoon?” To understand that, we must remember that the Lagoon was close to the colonial administrative offices. It was a convenient grave for inconvenient truths. Once thrown in, the documents were gone forever waterlogged, eaten by time, and erased from history. What better way to destroy a nation’s memory?
What It Means for Us Today
This is not just about dusty old papers. This is about who we are. It’s about justice for our ancestors, truth for our historians, and dignity for future generations. Without records, we cannot trace land theft. We cannot prosecute war crimes. We cannot tell our children the real story of how we were conquered, resisted, and betrayed.
This silence has cost us. It has robbed us of memory, justice, and healing.
A Cry for the Future
We must not let this continue. We must push as citizens, as scholars, as Africans for the return of our history. Whether through legal demands or international pressure, the time has come for Britain to open all its archives. Not just the ones it chooses. All of them.
We must dig beneath the waters of the Lagos Lagoon, not just physically but symbolically, to recover the truths that were drowned there. We must honour those who died in silence on November 12, 1895, and beyond.
And most of all, we must teach our children that colonialism was not just a chapter of progress. It was a season of pain, and its wounds are still healing.
Let us not allow history to be rewritten in the ink of the coloniser, but in the voice of the people who lived it and lost to it.
The past was not buried. It was drowned. But the truth always floats back to the surface.
By Wole Durodolu
