Nigerian Stamps and Postal History

On May December 11, 1936 King Edward VIII abdicated the throne and was succeeded by his brother, King George VI. The coronation was held on May 12, 1937. To mark the occasion all member countries and territories in the commonwealth issued stamps, most of which were in a common design type. The common design featured the King and Queen beside the Orb and Royal Sceptres. The issue was the work of two printers: De La Rue and Bradbury Wilkinson. Each common design issue consisted of three denominations, which were generally used to pay local surface mail, surface empire rate and the foreign surface rates. Each territory or country used its own colour combination, and these combinations repeat several times in the set. Nigeria's stamps were printed by Bradbury Wilkinson. 1d Carmine 1.5d deep brown 3d Bright ultramarine The King George VI Definitive issue appeared on May 1, 1938. My wife learned that she was married to an imperialist anglo when I told her th...

I have been struggling to keep my promise to myself to post once a week at least. Life has been so hectic lately, but I must stay connected to my hobby, I find. Otherwise I start to wonder if I even want to continue collecting at all! I thought this time, we'd take a step back to the commemorative and postage due issues that appeared just after the Second World War and that bridge the gap between two very attractive definitive sets. I have yet to show you either of these two sets, but I expect that I will do so over the next few showings of material. With the notable exception of the postage due stamps, all of the commemoratives that I show you are part of Omnibus commemorative issues that were produced by the entire Commonwealth, with each member country utilizing the same common design, and changing only the colour, the denomination and the unit of currency. The first one of these is the Victory, or Peace issue, which was issued on October 21, 1946. It consisted of 2 stamps...

Continuing on with our tour around the stamps of Nigeria, today I bring you a small selection of some of the commemorative issues that were released in the later part of 1962 and early 1963, all within 2-3 years of independence. All of these issues were printed by Harrison and Sons in  London. Harrison had perfected the art of modern photogravure printing, and it was they who produced almost all of Nigeria's stamps between 1961 and 1968, when the Nigerian Security Printing and Minting Company assumed responsibility for producing most of Nigeria's stamps. The first set that I present was issued on November 5, 1962 to commemorate the 8th Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference. 2.5d showing the symbolic arrival of the delegates to Lagos, Nigeria. Designed by S. Akosile.  4d Mace and the National Hall  - This theatre hall was the country's national theatre until it was replaced by the now famous National Theatre, in the shape of a military cap, that was built...