 |
Travel to Nigeria — Unbiased reviews and
great deals from TripAdvisorNigeria
|
Federal Republic of Nigeria
President: Umaru Yar’Adua
(2007)
Current government officials
Land area: 351,649 sq mi (910,771 sq km);
total area: 356,667 sq mi (923,768 sq km)
Population (2008 est.): 138,283,240
(growth rate: 2.3%); birth rate: 39.9/1000; infant mortality rate:
93.9/1000; life expectancy: 47.8; density per sq km: 151
Capital (2003 est.):
Abuja, 590,400 (metro. area), 165,700 (city
proper)
Largest cities: Lagos (2003 est.),
11,135,000 (metro. area), 5,686,000 (city proper); Kano, 3,329,900;
Ibadan, 3,139,500; Kaduna, 1,510,300
Monetary unit: Naira
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%
National Holiday:
Independence Day (National Day), October 1
Literacy rate: 68% (2003 est.)
Economic summary: GDP/PPP (2007
est.): $292.7 billion; per capita $2,000. Real growth rate:
6.4%. Inflation: 5.5%. Unemployment: 4.9%. 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.
Major sources and definitions
|
|
Geography
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.
The rebel group in Nigeria's oil-producing
region, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, declared a
cease-fire in September. Since the insurgency broke out in 2004, Nigeria's
oil production has been reduced by more than one-half, from about 2.5
million barrels a day to 1.5 million.
See also Encyclopedia: Nigeria.
U.S. State Dept. Country Notes:
Nigeria
Information Please® Database, © 2008 Pearson
Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
More on Nigeria from Infoplease:
- Nigeria: meaning and definitions - Nigeria: Definition and Pronunciation
- Nigeria - Nigeria Nigeria , officially Federal Republic of Nigeria, republic (2006 provisional pop. ...
- Nigeria - Nigeria Profile: People, History, Economy, Defense, U.S.-Nigerian Relations
- Nigeria - Map of Nigeria & articles on flags, geography, history, statistics, disasters current events, and international relations.
- Nigeria: Bibliography - Bibliography See S. J. Hogben and A. H. M. Kirk-Greene, The Emirates of Northern Nigeria (1966); R. ...
|
|
