Nigeria

• 1. Introduction

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  Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa, with more than 242 million people, making it the sixth-most populous country in the world. It sits in West Africa, between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf of Guinea to the south. Its 923,769 square kilometres hold a startling variety. There are 36 states plus the Federal Capital Territory, where the capital Abuja was placed. There is Lagos, the largest city in Africa and one of the largest metropolitan areas anywhere. And there is the name itself, coined on the 8th of January 1897 by a British journalist named Flora Shaw. She borrowed it from the Niger River. How did a land of kingdoms and city-states older than the second millennium BC come to wear a name invented in a London newsroom? Why do more than 250 ethnic groups, speaking 500 distinct languages, share one passport and one official language chosen precisely because it belonged to none of them? And how did a country with the fourth-largest economy in Africa spend its first four decades lurching through a civil war and a succession of military rulers? The answers begin long before any Briton drew a border.

• 2. Kingdoms Before The Border

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  The Nok civilisation thrived between 1500 BC and 200 AD, producing life-sized terracotta figures that rank among the earliest known sculptures in Africa. The Nok independently invented iron smelting by about 550 BC, possibly earlier. The transition here ran straight from Neolithic times to the Iron Age, skipping bronze production entirely. Evidence of iron smelting also turned up in the Nsukka region of southeast Nigeria, dating to 2000 BC at Lejja and 750 BC at Opi.

  The Kano Chronicle records the Hausa city-state of Kano reaching back to around 999 AD. Other major Hausa cities, the Hausa Bakwai, include Daura, Biram, Katsina, Zazzau, Rano, and Gobir, all with histories reaching to the 10th century. In that same century the Kingdom of Nri of the Igbo people consolidated, ruled by the Eze Nri, and it held its sovereignty until losing it to the British in 1911. Nri and Aguleri sit in the territory of the Umeuri clan, who trace their lineages back to a king-figure named Eri.

  The Yoruba built one of the earliest city-states in Africa by the 8th century, called Ile Ife, which became the heart of the later Ife Empire. The oldest bronzes in West Africa made using the lost wax process came from Igbo-Ukwu, a city under Nri influence. By the early 19th century, Usman dan Fodio led a jihad against the Hausa Kingdoms, accusing them of not being true Muslims, and founded the Sokoto Caliphate. That caliphate became one of the largest slave societies in 19th-century Africa, holding by the 1890s the largest slave population on the continent, about two million people.

• 3. The Atlantic Trade

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  In the 16th century, Portuguese explorers became the first Europeans to begin direct trade with the peoples of southern Nigeria, at a port they named Lagos, formerly Eko, and at Calabar. That coastal trade marked the beginnings of the Atlantic slave trade. Calabar, on the historical Bight of Biafra, grew into one of the largest slave-trading posts in West Africa. Other major slaving ports stood at Badagry, Lagos on the Bight of Benin, and Bonny Island.

  Most of those taken to these ports were captured in raids and wars. Slave routes threaded throughout the land, linking the hinterland to the coast. The Benin Empire in the south, the Oyo Empire in the southwest, and the Aro Confederacy in the southeast all took part in the Atlantic trade. The Hausa states and the Kanuri-led Kanem-Bornu Empire were instead tied to the Trans-Saharan slave trade. Benin's power lasted between the 15th and 19th centuries, while Oyo at its zenith stretched its influence to modern-day Togo.

  The outlawing of the Atlantic slave trade in 1807 changed the calculation for European powers. They began to back the cultivation of products like the palm for European industry. Smuggling continued anyway, with illegal traders buying slaves along the coast. Britain's West Africa Squadron tried to intercept them at sea, and rescued captives were taken to Freetown, a colony set up for the resettlement of people Britain had freed.

• 4. How Britain Drew The Map

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  Britain bombarded Lagos in 1851, deposing the slave-trade-friendly Oba Kosoko and installing the more agreeable Oba Akitoye. A treaty followed on the 1st of January 1852, and Lagos became a crown colony in August 1861. In 1864, Samuel Ajayi Crowther became the first African bishop of the Anglican Church. In 1885, the Berlin Conference gave British claims to a West African sphere of influence recognition from other European nations, and the Royal Niger Company was chartered the following year under Sir George Taubman Goldie.

  The British conquered Benin in 1897 and defeated other opponents in the Anglo-Aro War of 1901 to 1902. General Lord Frederick Lugard was tasked with moving north into the Sokoto Caliphate. As his forces approached Sokoto, Sultan Muhammadu Attahiru I organised a quick defence and lost. On the 13th of March 1903, at the grand market square of Sokoto, the last vizier officially conceded to British rule. Lugard abolished the caliphate but kept the title sultan as a symbolic position, appointing Muhammadu Attahiru II as caliph.

  On the 1st of January 1914, Britain formally united the Southern Nigeria Protectorate and the Northern Nigeria Protectorate into the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria. The two halves stayed unequal. Southern inhabitants had far more economic and cultural contact with Europeans, and Christian missions built Western schools there. Under indirect rule, the Crown discouraged Christian missions in the Islamic north. Northern Nigeria did not outlaw slavery until 1936, long after other parts of the country had done so.

• 5. Independence And A War

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  Nigeria gained a degree of self-rule in 1954 and full independence from the United Kingdom on the 1st of October 1960, with Abubakar Tafawa Balewa as Prime Minister. Elizabeth II remained nominal head of state and Queen of Nigeria, and Nnamdi Azikiwe replaced the colonial governor-general in November 1960 as ceremonial president. The founding government was a coalition led by Sir Ahmadu Bello of the Northern People's Congress and Azikiwe's National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons, with Obafemi Awolowo's Action Group in opposition.

  The colonial authorities had handed disproportionate power to Northern elites, and resentment among southern politicians spilled into chaos. Awolowo was convicted of attempting to overthrow the government on flimsy evidence. The Western Region grew so turbulent it earned the nickname the Wild-Wild West. Two military coups followed in 1966. The first, in January, was led by Majors Emmanuel Ifeajuna, Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, and Adewale Ademoyega. They assassinated Ahmadu Bello, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, and Samuel Akintola, but could not form a government. Major General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi took control, and a counter-coup later raised Yakubu Gowon to head of state.

  In May 1967, Lt. Colonel Emeka Ojukwu declared the Eastern Region independent as the Republic of Biafra, citing the 1966 pogroms against Igbos. The federal side attacked Biafra on the 6th of July 1967, at Garkem. The 30-month war ended in January 1970, after a long blockade isolated Biafra from trade and relief. Estimates of the dead range from one to three million. Britain and the Soviet Union backed the federal government, France and Israel aided Biafra, and Egyptian pilots flew air support.

• 6. Decades Of Generals

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  An oil boom in the 1970s brought huge revenues after Nigeria joined OPEC, yet the military government did little to raise living standards or invest in infrastructure. A coup in July 1975 led by Generals Shehu Musa Yar'Adua and Joseph Garba ousted Gowon, who fled to Britain. General Murtala Muhammed became head of state, and his triumvirate launched Operation Deadwood, firing 11,000 officials from the civil service. In a February 1976 coup attempt, Colonel Buka Suka Dimka had Murtala Muhammed assassinated, but the coup failed, and General Olusegun Obasanjo took over.

  In 1979, Alhaji Shehu Shagari of the National Party of Nigeria was elected president, and Obasanjo became the first Nigerian head of state to step down willingly. Shagari was returned in a landslide in August 1983, but the elections were marred by violence and vote-rigging allegations. A military coup that year installed Major General Muhammadu Buhari, who was himself overthrown by Ibrahim Babangida in 1985.

  The presidential election held on the 12th of June 1993 showed Moshood Abiola and Baba Gana Kingibe defeating Bashir Tofa and Sylvester Ugoh by over 2.3 million votes. Babangida annulled it, triggering protests that shut the country down for weeks. General Sani Abacha seized power later that year. In 1995, Abacha's regime hanged the environmentalist Ken Saro-Wiwa, which caused Nigeria's suspension from the Commonwealth. Abacha died in 1998, and several hundred million dollars traced to him were discovered in 1999. His successor, General Abdulsalami Abubakar, adopted a new constitution on the 5th of May 1999 providing for multiparty elections.

• 7. The Fourth Republic

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  On the 29th of May 1999, Abubakar handed power to Olusegun Obasanjo, who had been imprisoned under Abacha. His inauguration began the Fourth Nigerian Republic, ending a 39-year stretch of short-lived democracies, civil war, and military rule. Umaru Yar'Adua of the People's Democratic Party won in 2007, died on the 5th of May 2010, and was succeeded by Goodluck Jonathan. Jonathan's tenure made Nigeria the leading economic power in Africa, but it also saw as much as 20 billion US dollars lost through the national oil company, and the rise of the Boko Haram insurgency, including the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping in 2014.

  Ahead of the 2015 election, a merger of opposition parties formed the All Progressives Congress. Their candidate, the former military ruler Muhammadu Buhari, won by over two million votes, the first time an incumbent president lost re-election in Nigeria. Insecurity rose under Buhari, with banditry, insurgency, and two recessions worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic. By convention, presidential candidates pick a running mate of the opposite ethnicity and religion. In 2023, the All Progressives Congress broke that custom, pairing the Muslim Bola Ahmed Tinubu with the Muslim Kashim Shettima.

  Tinubu won the disputed 2023 election with 36.61% of the vote and was inaugurated on the 29th of May 2023, as both runners-up claimed victory. On the 29th of May 2024, he signed a law reinstating Nigeria, We Hail Thee, the anthem from 1960 to 1978. On the 25th of December 2025, the United States carried out a strike against Islamic State militants in northwest Nigeria at his government's request. It was the first foreign military intervention in post-independence Nigeria.

• 8. Land, Oil, And Strain

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  Chappal Waddi, at 2,419 metres, is the highest point in Nigeria, while the Niger and the Benue rivers converge into one of the world's largest river deltas. The far south holds tropical rainforest with 60 to 80 inches of rain a year, and the area near Cameroon shelters the drill primate, found wild only there. The areas around Calabar are believed to hold the world's largest diversity of butterflies. Moving north, the land passes through savannah and finally into the encroaching Sahara, where Lake Chad has shrunk considerably in recent decades.

  Nigeria's economy is the fourth-largest in Africa, and its citizens call it the Giant of Africa. Petroleum accounts for about 80% of government earnings, and the country ranks as the 15th-largest producer of petroleum in the world and the 6th-largest exporter. Yet each year it loses an estimated 2.5 billion US dollars to gas flaring and over 120,000 barrels of oil a day to crude theft in the Niger Delta. The Delta is one of the most polluted regions in the world, a contamination often cited as an example of ecocide.

  The strain shows in figures beyond oil. In 2005, Nigeria had the highest rate of deforestation in the world. In 2010, lead-containing soil from informal gold mining in Zamfara state killed upwards of 400 children, perhaps the largest lead poisoning fatality outbreak ever encountered. Since mid-2010, over 41,600 lives have been lost to the Boko Haram and bandit conflicts, with about 1.8 million people internally displaced. Even so, a 2011 projection by Citigroup placed Nigeria as the country with the highest average GDP growth in the world between 2010 and 2050.