The Niger River and the Dearth of History

In the West African region, the Niger River is one of the most prominent rivers and has served as a navigation route for trade, exploration, and various other purposes for centuries. The Niger River, Africa’s third-longest river at approximately 4,200 km (2,600 miles), rises in Guinea’s Fouta Djallon and flows through Mali into the Sahara, forming lakes, streams, and marshes along its paths, then passing through Niger and the Benin border before entering Nigeria and eventually emptying through the coastal regions of Nigeria into the Gulf of Guinea or the Atlantic Ocean. The Niger River, known for a variety of names, including Kworra, Quorra, Joliba, Jaliba, Guin, and Jin, has been accurately charted for just over a century; before this, it was shrouded in mystery for many centuries, leading to diverse and often speculative representations on maps of Africa.

The Niger River has been a vital route for ‘explorers’ for several centuries, serving as a gateway to the heart of West Africa. Among the notable explorers who navigated this river were the Scottish explorer, Hugh Clapperton, who journeyed along the Niger River in 1823, and the French explorer, René Caillié, who reached the Niger in May 1827. Additionally, the British Lander brothers, Richard and John, undertook a significant expedition in 1830. Similarly, the German geographer, Heinrich Barth, along with his companions, James Richardson and Adolf Overweg (both of whom died tragically during the trip), explored the Niger River and its surrounding areas in 1850.

These individuals pursued multiple objectives, such as charting the course of the Niger River and collecting valuable information about the surrounding regions; their efforts were often driven by the geopolitical and commercial interests of those who funded their trips. In essence, those ‘explorers’ and their accounts could have paved the way for the subsequent colonialism of the West African regions. While historically categorized as explorers, these individuals’ endeavours, in today’s context, might be likened to espionage, given that their journeys were often funded by governments and organisations with specific agendas. Among these ‘explorers’, Mungo Park stands out as one of the first Europeans to travel along the Niger River.

Mungo Park’s journey is notable for several reasons: he was the first documented European to traverse the Niger River, and he is still commemorated in school curricula within Nigeria as the man who ‘discovered’ the Niger River. However, who was Mungo Park, and can his journey truly be considered a ‘discovery’ of the river?

Mungo Park was born on September 11, 1771, in Selkirk, Scotland, to parents who were tenants on farmland. At the age of 17, Park went to the University of Edinburgh, where he studied botany, medicine, and natural history, graduating in 1792; upon graduating, he joined an East India Company ship as a surgeon and travelled to Sumatra, Asia.

Eager for adventure after his return, Park joined the African Association in 1794 and soon set sail on the ‘Endeavour’ to the Gambia in 1795. This voyage, spanning two years, saw him captured and imprisoned by a local chief, who viewed him as a stranger, for four months; he eventually escaped, returning to Scotland in December 1797, surprising everyone because he was presumed dead. The African Association, also known as the Association for Promoting the Discovery of the Interior Parts of Africa, was founded in June 1788 by a group of London’s aristocracy to recruit explorers and fund expeditions into Western Africa.

During this journey, he encountered numerous challenges, including disease, hostility from local chiefs, thefts, extreme heat, and various unforeseen difficulties. Despite these obstacles, he persevered and successfully reached and travelled on the Niger River before returning to England as ‘the first European to see the upper Niger’. Driven by a quest for fame, financial incentives, and a profound passion for exploration, Park ventured into territories rarely tread by European explorers at the time.

Upon his return, Mungo Park published the ‘Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa’ in 1799, a straightforward and detailed account of his experiences and observations of the landscape, wildlife, and diverse peoples he encountered. This work was well received, becoming a bestseller in its time, but it also remains in demand today, with original editions currently selling more than £1,000.

After his initial exploration, Park returned to his medical profession and married the daughter of his mentor, Dr. Anderson of Selkirk. In 1805, under the patronage of the UK government, he embarked on a second expedition to navigate the Niger River. Accompanied by his brother-in-law, 30 soldiers from the Fort at Goree (Gorée Island, Senegal) and Isaaco, a Mandingo, faced formidable challenges to the extent that by the time they reached the Niger near Bamako in August 1805, only ten Europeans, including Park, had survived the ravages of fever and dysentery.

On 17 November, Park began his journey on the HM Schooner, composed in Sansanding (Mali); his last letter, sent from this point and later delivered to Gambia by Isaaco, expressed his unwavering commitment to his mission. In the letter, he wrote, among other things:

This statement highlights the depth of his resolve and willingness to face extreme hardships for his mission. In another letter to his wife, Park depicts his overwhelming commitment to his expedition and the goal of determining where the Niger River empties.

Mungo Park was never seen alive again. It was later revealed that he and his companions drowned while trying to escape an attack by warriors near ‘Boussa’ in ‘Houssa’ or Hausa land, present-day Bussa in Niger State, Nigeria; a tragedy attributed to either a failure in delivering a tribute to the local monarch or a possible misidentification as Fulani. The plausible misidentification of Mungo Park and his group as Fulani during their arrival in Bussa around the time of the 1804 Jihad could have led to their attack by the local ‘Houssa’ people in ‘Boussa’, mistaking them for Fulani.

About two decades after his disappearance, Mungo Park’s son, Thomas Park, embarked on a similar journey to reach ‘Boussa’ but tragically died before his goal was achieved in 1828. It was not until the Lander brothers’ expedition that the course of the Niger River was finally traced to its termination at the Bight of Benin. It was a personal tragedy for Mungo Park to lose his brother-in-law, his son, many others and ultimately his own life, all in the mission to trace the course of the Niger River; however, it serves as a collective tragedy when narratives suggest that Park ‘discovered’ the Niger River. However, did Mungo Park discover the Niger River?

For decades, students in primary and secondary schools in Nigeria were taught that a man named Mungo Park discovered the Niger River many years ago. I was one of those students, and initially, we believed—what choice did we have? However, it was not long before we also realised that Mungo Park never discovered the River Niger; in fact, no one did.

The widespread belief that Mungo Park ‘discovered’ the Niger River is synonymous with the narrative surrounding Christopher Columbus’ 1492 ‘discovery’ of the Americas. In a letter that was sold for $3.9 million in October 2023 at a Christie auction, Columbus stated,

Columbus undertook this voyage under the commission of the Spanish monarch’s King Ferdinand II and Isabella I to find a new sea route to Asia, aiming to challenge Portugal’s monopoly on the spice trade, and ended up in the Americas while proclaiming that he had reached islands near Japan. This letter has been labelled ‘a 15th-century example of fake news’, and he is known as ‘the first of the exploiters rather than the first of the explorers’.

Before Columbus ‘discovered’ the Americas, Abu Bakr II, ruler of the largest and wealthiest empire of his time and predecessor to King Mansa Musa, the wealthiest man in history, is said to have sent voyages to the Americas centuries before Columbus. Professor Molefi Asante and his fellow researcher, Professor Mark Mattson, have extensively researched Abu Bakr II’s era and suggested that his expeditions reached the Americas decades before Columbus. However, their findings and those of others have been dismissed as ‘purely speculative’.

It is not uncommon for findings that challenge Eurocentric views to be dismissed merely as Afrocentric and speculative. Some critics, such as De Montellano and others, have scrutinized the works of Professors Molefi Asante and Mark Mattson; nonetheless, concede that:

The notion of ‘discovering’ lands already inhabited is a racist and hegemonic narrative that needs to be challenged. In April, the Zambian Observer published an article in 2023 about ‘Mazi Uba Acho, a native of the Igbo Nation in West Africa’, who ‘discovered’ a lake in Leicester, UK, naming it ‘Iyi Ojemba’. Indeed, it is amusing because it turns on its head who can be a ‘discoverer’. However, Acho’s proclamation functions to critique the racist and colonial mindsets attached to the ‘discovering’ lands and people. It further highlights the concerning reality that such dehumanizing narratives are still taught in African schools today. The so-called explorers often used the idea of ‘discovering’ places to lay claim to their ‘findings’; however, this practice is not only racist and ethnocentric but also strips the indigenous inhabitants of those places of their humanity.

Neglecting world history and our collective history in Nigeria poses a significant problem, not only for those living within Nigeria’s borders but also for Africans in general. In our schools, history education has been largely overlooked. Specifically, the federal government of Nigeria removed history from its education curriculum in 2007, ‘even when it was scarcely taught as a core subject, but predominantly buried amongst social studies lessons’. History education, such as being offered as an elective across all departments, is not sufficiently encouraged at the university level. This situation has led to many graduates being unaware of significant historical events.