Languages: English (official), Hausa, Yoruba, Ibo,
Fulani, and more than 200 others
Ethnicity/race: More than 250 ethnic groups, including Hausa
and Fulani 29%, Yoruba 21%, Ibo 18%, Ijaw 10%, Kanuri 4%, Ibibio
3.5%, Tiv 2.5%
Religions: Islam 50%, Christian 40%, indigenous beliefs
10%
Literacy rate: 68% (2003 est.)
Economic summary:GDP/PPP (2007
est.): $294.8 billion; per capita $2,200. Real growth rate:
6.3%. Inflation: 6.5%. Unemployment: 5.8%. Arable
land: 33%. Agriculture: cocoa, peanuts, palm oil, corn,
rice, sorghum, millet, cassava (tapioca), yams, rubber; cattle,
sheep, goats, pigs; timber; fish. Labor force: 50.13 million;
agriculture 70%, industry 10%, services 20% (1999 est.).
Industries: crude oil, coal, tin, columbite; palm oil,
peanuts, cotton, rubber, wood; hides and skins, textiles, cement and
other construction materials, food products, footwear, chemicals,
fertilizer, printing, ceramics, steel, small commercial ship
construction and repair. Natural resources: natural gas,
petroleum, tin, columbite, iron ore, coal, limestone, lead, zinc,
arable land. Exports: $61.81 billion f.o.b. (2007 est.):
petroleum and petroleum products 95%, cocoa, rubber. Imports:
$30.35 billion f.o.b. (2007 est.): machinery, chemicals,
transport equipment, manufactured goods, food and live animals.
Major trading partners: U.S., Brazil, Spain, China, UK,
Netherlands, France, Germany (2006).
Member of Commonwealth of Nations
Communications: Telephones: main lines
in use: 1.688 million (2006); mobile cellular: 32.322 million
(2006). Radio broadcast stations: AM 83, FM 36, shortwave 11
(2001). Radios: 23.5 million (1997). Television broadcast
stations: 3 (the government controls 2 broadcasting stations and
15 repeater stations) (2002). Televisions: 6.9 million
(1997). Internet Service Providers (ISPs): 1,968 (2007).
Internet users: 8 million (2006).
Transportation: Railways: total: 3,505
km (2006). Highways: total: 194,394 km; paved: 60,068 km
(including 1,194 km of expressways); unpaved: 134,326 km (1999
est.). Waterways: 8,600 km (Niger and Benue rivers and
smaller rivers and creeks) (2007). Ports and harbors:
Calabar, Lagos, Onne, Port Harcourt, Sapele, Warri. Airports:
70 (2007).
International disputes: ICJ ruled in
2002 on the Cameroon-Nigeria land and maritime boundary by awarding
the potentially petroleum-rich Bakassi Peninsula and offshore region
to Cameroon; Nigeria rejected the cession of the peninsula but the
parties formed a Joint Border Commission to peaceably resolve the
dispute and commence with demarcation in other less-contested
sections of the boundary; several villages along the Okpara River
are in dispute with Benin; Lake Chad Commission continues to urge
signatories Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria to ratify
delimitation treaty over lake region, which remains the site of
armed clashes among local populations and militias; Nigeria agreed
to ratify the treaty and relinquish sovereignty of disputed lands to
Cameroon by December 2003.
Nigeria, one-third larger than Texas and the most populous country in
Africa, is situated on the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa. Its neighbors
are Benin, Niger, Cameroon, and Chad. The lower course of the Niger River
flows south through the western part of the country into the Gulf of
Guinea. Swamps and mangrove forests border the southern coast; inland are
hardwood forests.
Government
Multiparty government transitioning from military to civilian rule.
History
The first inhabitants of what is now Nigeria were thought to have been
the Nok people (500 B.C.–c. A.D. 200). The Kanuri, Hausa, and Fulani peoples
subsequently migrated there. Islam was introduced in the 13th century, and
the empire of Kanem controlled the area from the end of the 11th century
to the 14th.
The Fulani empire ruled the region from the beginning of the 19th
century until the British annexed Lagos in 1851 and seized control of the
rest of the region by 1886. It formally became the Colony and Protectorate
of Nigeria in 1914. During World War I, native troops of the West African
frontier force joined with French forces to defeat the German garrison in
the Cameroons.
On Oct. 1, 1960, Nigeria gained independence, becoming a member of the
Commonwealth of Nations and joining the United Nations. Organized as a
loose federation of self-governing states, the independent nation faced
the overwhelming task of unifying a country with 250 ethnic and linguistic
groups.
Rioting broke out in 1966, and military leaders, primarily of Ibo
ethnicity, seized control. In July, a second military coup put Col. Yakubu
Gowon in power, a choice unacceptable to the Ibos. Also in that year, the
Muslim Hausas in the north massacred the predominantly Christian Ibos in
the east, many of whom had been driven from the north. Thousands of Ibos
took refuge in the eastern region, which declared its independence as the
Republic of Biafra on May 30, 1967. Civil war broke out. In Jan. 1970,
after 31 months of civil war, Biafra surrendered to the federal
government.
Gowon's nine-year rule was ended in 1975 by a bloodless coup that made
Army Brig. Muritala Rufai Mohammed the new chief of state. The return of
civilian leadership was established with the election of Alhaji Shehu
Shagari as president in 1979. An oil boom in the 1970s buoyed the economy
and by the 1980s Nigeria was considered an exemplar of African democracy
and economic well-being.
The military again seized power in 1984, only to be followed by another
military coup the following year. Maj. Gen. Ibrahim Babangida announced
that the country would be returned to civilian rule, but after the
presidential election of June 12, 1993, he voided the results.
Nevertheless, Babangida resigned as president in August. In November the
military, headed by defense minister Sani Abacha, seized power again.
Corruption and notorious governmental inefficiency as well as a harshly
repressive military regime characterized Abacha's reign over this oil-rich
country, turning it into an international pariah. A UN fact-finding
mission in 1996 reported that Nigeria's “problems of human rights are
terrible and the political problems are terrifying.” During the 1970s,
Nigeria had the 33rd highest per-capita income in the world, but by 1997
it had dropped to the 13th poorest. The hanging of writer Ken Saro-Wiwa in
1995 because he protested against the government was condemned around the
world.
As leader of the multination peacekeeping force ECOMOG, Nigeria
established itself as West Africa's superpower, intervening militarily in
the civil wars of Liberia and Sierra Leone. But Nigeria's costly war
efforts were unpopular with its own people, who felt Nigeria's limited
economic resources were being unnecessarily drained.
Abacha died of a heart attack in 1998 and was succeeded by another
military ruler, Gen. Abdulsalam Abubakar, who pledged to step aside for an
elected leader by May 1999. The suspicious death of opposition leader
Mashood Abiola, who had been imprisoned by the military ever since he
legally won the 1993 presidential election, was a crushing blow to
democratic proponents. In Feb. 1999, free presidential elections led to an
overwhelming victory for Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, a former member of the
military elite who was imprisoned for three years for criticizing the
military rule. Obasanjo's commitment to democracy, his anticorruption
drives, and his desire to recover billions allegedly stolen by the family
and cronies of Abacha initially gained him high praise from the populace
as well as the international community. But within two years, the hope of
reform seemed doomed as economic mismanagement and rampant corruption
persisted. Obasanjo's priorities in 2001 were symbolized by his plans to
build a $330–million national soccer stadium, an extravagance that
exceeded the combined budget for both health and education. In April 2003,
he was reelected.
Nigeria's stability has been repeatedly threatened by fighting between
fundamentalist Muslims and Christians over the spread of Islamic law
(sharia) across the heavily Muslim north. One-third of Nigeria's 36 states
is ruled by sharia law. More than 10,000 people have died in religious
clashes since military rule ended in 1999.
In 2003, after religious and political leaders in the Kano region
banned polio immunization—contending that it sterilized girls and spread
HIV—an outbreak of polio spread through Nigeria, entering neighboring
countries the following year. The Kano region lifted its ten-month ban
against vaccination in July 2004. On Aug. 24, there were 602 polio cases
worldwide, 79% of which were in Nigeria.
Since 2004, an insurgency has broken out in the Niger delta, Nigeria's
oil-producing region. The desperately impoverished local residents of the
delta have seen little benefit from Nigeria's vast oil riches, and rebel
groups are fighting for a more equal distribution of the wealth as well as
greater regional autonomy. Violence by rebel groups has disrupted oil
production and reduced output by about 20%. Nigeria is one of the world's
largest oil producers and supplies the U.S. with one-fifth of its oil.
In Aug. 2006 Nigeria handed over the oil-rich Bakassi peninsula to
Cameroon, in compliance with a 2002 World Court ruling.
April 2007 national elections—the country’s first transition from one
democratically elected president to another—were marred by widespread
allegations of fraud, ballot stuffing, violence, and chaos. Just days
before the election, the Supreme Court ruled that the election
commission’s decision to remove Vice President Atiku Abubakar, a leading
candidate and a bitter rival of President Olusegun Obsanjo, from the
ballot was illegal. Ballots were reprinted, but they only showed party
symbols rather than the names of candidates. Umaru Yar’Adua, the candidate
of the governing party, won the election in a landslide, taking more than
24.6 million votes. Second-place candidate Muhammadu Buhari tallied only
about 6 million votes. International observers called the vote flawed an
illegitimate. The chief observer for the European Union said the results
“cannot be considered to have been credible.” An election tribunal ruled
in February 2008 that although the election was indeed flawed, the
evidence of rigging was not substantial enough to overturn the election
results.
