NIGERIA

Area: 356,669 square miles

Population: 135,031,164 (2007 estimate)

Capital: Abuja

Ethnicity: More than 250 ethnic groups, including Hausa and Fulani (29%), Yoruba ((21%), Igbo (18%), Ijaw (10%), Kanuri (4%), Ibibio (3.5%), Tiv (2.5%)

Religion: Islam (50%), Christian (40%), traditional (10%)

Languages: Hausa, Yoruba, lgbo, and more than 200 other languages; English (official)

Literacy: 57 % (men); 47% (women)

Life Expectancy: 46 years

Industry: Petroleum and petroleum products, steel, textiles, food processing

Export Crops: Cocoa, rubber, timber

Food Crops: Sorghum, corn, yams, cassava, rice

Nigeria, home of one‑fourth of all black Africans, has the largest population (also one of the most diverse with over 250 ethnic and linguistic groups) on the continent. It is a nation of a large number of highly educated workers and a creative genius illustrated by the famous traditional sculptures of the Nok, Benin, Ife, and Yoruba people and the literary works of Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka and the world’s most beloved African writer Chinua Achebe, among many others. The rich cultures and capabilities of its diverse people are matched by Nigeria's great natural resources and geographical features. It has the largest reserve of crude oil south of the Sahara, minerals, natural gas, timber, livestock, fish, and 31 per cent arable land in regions that vary from coastal mangrove swamps, tropical rain forests, savannas and open woodland to semi-deserts. Lagos, the former capital with a population of eight million, is an important commercial and industrial center. lbadan is another major city of over 2.5 million inhabitants. The new city of Abuja (designed and built beginning in the mid-1970s and located almost exactly in the middle of the country) became the new capital in late 1991. Although foreign debt is huge, oil exports totaled $75 to $80 billion in 2007, and Nigeria maintains one of the largest gross national products in Africa. However, sustained economic growth has been hindered by the succession of dictatorial military rulers, the rapid growth of the population, and continuing conflicts among ethnic and religious groups.

Nigeria's history can be traced back to 500 B.C.E. and its Nok inhabitants followed by various empires and states that flourished throughout the area, among them Igbo-Ukwu, Kanem-Bornu, the kingdoms of Ife, Oyo, Benin, the Hausa States, and the Kingdom of Dahomey. The Hausa in the North converted to Islam in the 13th century. The European slave trade began at the end of the 15th century with the arrival of the Portuguese in the region. In 1553 British merchants arrived, initially interested in the region’s gold, ivory, and pepper. They soon shifted their attention to the slave trade and became the dominant foreign commercial interest in Nigeria. After Great Britain outlawed the transatlantic slave trade in 1804 - a decision based more on economic logic than humanitarian considerations – they began to acquire territory to meet Britain’s post-industrial revolution need for African markets and raw materials. Up to 1861, the area had escaped European colonization, but British domination gradually increased until the area around Lagos was declared a crown colony in that year. In 1914 Britain named the entire area the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria which it remained until 1960.

On October 1, 1960, Nigeria gained independence from British rule. As a result of Britain’s promotion of regional and ethnic politics (“divide and rule” practices), Nigeria inherited long-standing geographical, religious, and ethnic divisions, primarily between the predominantly Muslim North and the largely Christian South, as well as between feudal Yoruba in the West and republican Igbo in the East. Because the North was underdeveloped by the British and the northern oligarchies that worked with them, the Hausa-Fulani people were largely non-literate and lacking in skilled manpower. In contrast, the Yoruba people in the West, who had embraced education and modernity in the 19th century, now comprised a highly-educated elite and a well-trained middle class. Furthermore, the Igbos in the East, renowned for their industry, sophistication, and self-sufficiency, were highly successful business people and administrators. Yorubas and Igbos found themselves locked in fierce competition for jobs.

In 1963, Nigeria became a republic. Nnamdi “Zik” Azikiwe, an Igbo who spent most of his adult life in Lagos leading the fight against the British, was appointed President as part of a power-sharing agreement, a largely ceremonial position. Real power belonged to the majority leader and prime minister, the northerner Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, and to Alhaji Ahmadu Bello, the northern premier. Corruption and cronyism became rife, and political repression and violence became the norm. On January 15, 1966, a group of Igbo military officers staged a coup, placing Major General Aguiyi-Ironsi in charge of the new military regime. In July 1966, Ironsi was ousted and killed in another coup led by Hausa officers who installed Lieutenant Colonel Yakubu Gowon at the head. The massacre of Igbos living in the Hausa-dominated North led to continuing instability. Thousands of terrified Igbos returned to their homeland in the eastern region, which declared its independence as the Republic of Biafra on May 30, 1967. Civil war broke out. In January 1970, Biafra surrendered to the federal government. By the end of the war more than two million lives had been lost – half of them due to the federal government’s policy of strategic starvation - and the lgbos were forced back into the Nigerian republic.

By 1975, Gowon had still not restored civilian rule. His regime was toppled in a bloodless coup led by General Murtala Muhammed, who pledged to return Nigeria to civilian rule as soon as possible. Muhammed was assassinated in an unsuccessful coup attempt a year later and was replaced by General Olusegun Obasanjo, who served as military President of Nigeria for three years before turning over power to a new civilian government headed by President Alhaji Shehu Shagari in 1979. Shagari was reelected in 1983, but was overthrown in a violent military coup only a few months later. General Mohammed Buhari, the new military head of state, banned political parties. In the summer of 1985, Major General Ibrahim Babangida led yet another coup to become the nation’s new military President.

General Babangida established an electoral commission in 1986 to organize the transition to civilian rule by 1992. National elections set for 1992 were held in June 1993. However, once it was apparent that Chief Moshood Abiola, a wealthy Yoruba businessman, would win, Babangida refused to accept the results. He annulled the election and announced the military would hold a new vote with new candidates. Rioting broke out in many cities. After a power struggle, Babangida resigned and was replaced by General Sani Abacha in November 1993. General Abacha dissolved democratic institutions and declared himself ruler of Nigeria. Human-rights abuses, corruption, and oppression became Abacha’s hallmarks He imprisoned Chief Abiola in June 1994 when Abiola declared himself the rightful president. He imprisoned Olusegun Obasanjo, a former military President, and 39 others for treason. He also accused the Nobel writer Wole Soyinka and 14 others with treason in 1995 and hounded Soyinka into exile. On November 10, 1995, despite worldwide condemnation, he hanged nine Ogoni activists, among them Ken Saro-Wiwa, the writer and human rights activist. They had been jailed on trumped-up murder charges, but it was internationally recognized that the group’s demands for Ogoni statehood and protests against the environmental damage to the Niger Delta caused by Shell Oil through its 37 years of drilling in the region, were the real reasons they were silenced.

When Abacha died unexpectedly in June 1998, the nation rejoiced. His military successor General Abdulsalam Abubakar began releasing political prisoners and firing Abacha loyalists. A month later he agreed to release Chief Abiola, but the unexpected death of Abiola from a heart attack on the eve of his release sent shock waves around the world and led to new chaos and ethnic-based violence in Nigeria. General Abubakar kept to his promise and held free presidential elections in February 1999. Olusegun Obasanjo, the retired general and former president who earned international esteem by becoming Nigeria’s first military leader to give up power voluntarily in 1979, won an overwhelming victory. Mr. Obasanjo, a Yoruba from southern Nigeria with close links to northern military leaders, was viewed during the election campaign as a bridge between the two regions. He was inaugurated on May 29, 1999.

President Obasanjo’s second presidency was marred by the sharp rise in violence within Nigerian society. Lingering ethnic tensions were exacerbated by religious fanaticism. Over 10,000 Nigerians were killed in religious clashes. Most of these conflicts stemmed from the rise of Islam as a politcal force and the spread of hard-line Islamic law, or shariah, from one small Nigerian state (Zamfara) in late 1999 to a third of the country’s 36 states today. Growing tensions also existed because of the growing gulf between the wealthy elite and the poor. In 2003, Mr. Obasanjo was elected to a second term, but was prevented by Parliament from seeking a third term in 2007. His handpicked successor, Umaru Yar’Adua, won the presidencey in April 2007. Despite the claim of widespread vote-rigging, the election was considered notable as the country’s first transition from one democratically elected president to another.

Nigeria is one of the world’s largest oil producers and supplies the United States with one-fifth of its oil. In the 50 years of oil drilling by international oil companies in the Niger delta, Nigeria’s oil-producing region, the desperately impoverished local residents have received little benefit from Nigeria’s vast oil riches. Since 2004, rebel groups have been fightling for a more equal distribution of the oil wealth as well as greater regional autonomy. They have disrupted oil production and reduced output by 20%.

SOURCES:

Appiah, Kwame Anthony, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., ed. Microsoft Encarta Africana: Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Black History and Culture. Microsoft Corporation, 1993-1999.

Booker, M. Keith. The African Novel in English: An Introduction. Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Heinemann, 1998.

Bronner, Ethan. “Vague on Reforms, Nigeria’s President-Elect Woos New York,” New York Times, March 30. 1999.

“Federal Republic of Nigeria – Country Facts,” Lykos Network: www.infoplease.lycos, February 2008.

“Nigeria,” BBC News/Africa/Country profiles/country profile: Nigeria: news.bbc.co.uk, February 2008.

"Nigeria," Culturgram, David M. Kennedy Center for International Studies, Brigham Young University, 1998.

Olu Oguibe. “Lessons from the Killing Fields: Remembering Biafra,” Transition, Issue 77, Vol. 8, No. 1, 1999, pp. 86-99.

Onishi, Norimitsu. “Nigerian Ex-Ruler Captures Lead in Race for President,” New York Times, February 16, 1999.

Onishi, N., “Rising Muslim Power in Africa Causes Unrest in Nigeria and Elsewhere,” New York Times, Nov. 1, 2001.

Compiled by Belva Seaberry and Mary Holmström and updated in February 2008.

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