Consulates and Deputy High Commissions

Calabar

Concurrently with Lagos, a consulate was established in Old Calabar, a port near the mouth of the Cross River in the axilla of Africa, in 1853 when responsibility for the Bight of Biafra was hived off from the consular district of Fernando Po. The site was owned by Efana Efana, otherwise referred to as Chief Duke Henshaw or Chief Henshaw III. Additional, immediately surrounding land was leased in 1887. The buildings that were erected were handed over in 1891 to the Oil Rivers Protectorate, which had been established by Britain over the Niger delta area in 1885 and became the Niger Coast Protectorate in 1893, with Calabar as its seat of government.

Enugu

Capital of the Eastern Region. Deputy high commission offices were built by the Ministry of Works in 1960 on Garden Avenue, on which a 99-year lease was bought in 1960. Two staff houses were leased [? or built] in the Ekulu Layout at 42 Emole Avenue and 2 Bent Lane, and there were four flats at 41 Emole. Land adjoining Old Government House was taken on a 99-year lease in 1964 as the site for a new residence, but never built upon and subsequently given up. The Post was temporarily closed in 1968 during the Biafran war but never re-opened.

Ibadan

Capital of the Western Region. Offices were leased in the Finance Corporation Building in Lebanon Street. The British government in 1958 accepted the Western Region government’s offer to grant a 99-year lease from 1960 on a four acre site on Rotimi Williams Avenue, in the Bodija housing estate, and erect a house on it for the British representative in Ibadan. The house was completed in 1963. The Post closed in 1980.

Kaduna

Capital of the Northern Region. Offices were leased in the United Bank for Africa Building, Hospital Road. A 40-year lease from 1961 of the deputy high commissioner’s residence, standing in 2.2 hectares of lush grounds, was gifted to the British government in 1959 at 3 King George’s Way (later Independence Way). A leased site for new deputy high commission offices at the junction of Hospital and Bida Roads was ? never built on. Four staff houses and four flats were taken on long leases in 1959 and 1960. The Post closed in 1993, [? but the Independence Way site was retained until ???? to assist with the logistics of moving the high commission to Abuja.]