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Journey of an African Colony: The Making of Nigeria on Netflix – Stream it or Skip It
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Christina Ngene
I am a movie enthusiast with a passion for writing and a desire to see the African movie industries grow. I try to use my skills as an artist to cheer for Nollywood by writing for NollyMania. • Syndicate Correspondent
Visual representation of subject: " perspective"Fly News Wire (2026)
The history of a great nation, Nigeria all told in the docuseries ‘Journey of an African Colony’, now on Netflix.
Having a day like September 30, 1960, without war or conflicts was a prize of peace in some opinions. But aggression and anger and bitterness has lingered despite taking reins and sovereignty from Great Britain as the docuseries tells.
Since colonization, many have mostly heard Nigeria’s history in bits and pieces. It would take only a veteran or a written document in the past era to know the full story.
The closest the country’s citizen has come to a full history are those from veterans. In conformity, one of such veterans is Olasupo Shasore, former attorney general and commissioner for justice in Lagos State.
Shasore who is also a historian and writer skimmed three of his books ‘A Platter of Gold: Making Nigeria’ and ‘Possessed: A History Of Law & Justice In The Crown Colony Of Lagos 1861-1906’, ‘The King and the Colony’ for ‘Journey of an African Colony’.
What he created is an applaudable history of a great nation and people, Nigeria. From the slave era to pre colonialism and independent, Shasore takes a thorough peek at Nigeria as an architect of fortune and fails.
‘Journey of an African Colony’ on Netflix is arranged in timelines. Each episode a new one along with footage of him visiting locations which the series inculcated.
Journey of an African Colony on Netflix – The Making of Nigeria
Interviewees in the Netflix series who were witnesses of Nigeria’s first Independence Day celebration in 1960 narrate their pride as part of a free-born, reclaiming heritage and cultural identity.
In the slave trade segment of the series, Shashore comments that at the time the British and other slave preceptors witnessed Nigerians reacting to the trade in different ways. For more precision he says, the part of Nigerians in the greatest human dispersal in history, the transatlantic slave trade takes little recognition.
Shasore further says that Nigeria had made headway in civilization before colonialism even if it is rusty and almost forgotten.
‘Journey of an African Colony’ further covers the idea behind the naming of a nation, one of Nigeria’s controversial topic. In order to see it from a new perceptive and award reverence to the name and the manner it was born and is borne, it is important to revisit the motives of it, Shasore says.
More so, he reveals that sewing together different culture, etched at the Berlin Conference of 1884 by European nations and the distribution of a human population amongst themselves was a deed supported by human trafficking. Todays Nigeria which went to Great Britain is a combination of many other nations.
The series also avails itself to suit the curiosity surrounding the growth of religions and the influencing factors. The anger and bitterness which still lingers today despite a peaceful independence day are parts of that revelation.
Shasore reveals details of Nigeria’s most complicated conflicts and the purest of its history. He plans to dig up overlooked and avoided areas of the past and to climax what is hidden.
