Although urbanization and urban cities existed in Nigeria before the colonial period, it was at a small scale such as centres of barter trade (Kalu et al. 2014). It is important to note that Nigeria was predominately rural even before the arrival of the Europeans. Before the advent of colonialism, which gained full-fledged prominence in the late nineteenth century, the country had some flourishing cities, kingdoms, empires and towns that can be likened to the modern-day urban centres which included the Sokoto Caliphate, (see Fig. 15.1) the Old Oyo Empire, the Benin Kingdom (See Fig. 15.2) and the Nupe Kingdom, to mention but a few. Conversely, however, these towns and cities are somewhat different from the modern-day megacities in that they did not bring about huge social inequality (Akanle and Adejare 2017). The pre- colonial towns were self-sustaining in all respects; sufficient in food supplies with large track farming areas within the cities, large markets, effective local processing, transporting, storage, wholesale and retail purchasing (Abbass 2012) which gave rise to the town development. The northern savanna cities grew within city walls, at the centre of which were main markets, government buildings and the central mosque (U.S. Library of Congress 1991). This system was oriented around trans-Saharan trade. The Hausa States, was part of a trade network stretching across the Sudan region northwards to the ports of North Africa and Europe (Bloch et al. 2015). The concentration of wealth, prestige, political power and religious learning in these cities attracted large numbers of migrants, both from the neighbouring countryside and distant regions (U.S. Library of Congress 1991). Islam was for quite some time the religion of the court and commerce, and was spread peacefully by Muslim clerics and traders, and which led to the growth of old northern cities like the Sokoto Caliphate, Katsina and Kano (Huud 2015).