Nigeria
POPULATION 129,934,911
MUSLIM 50 percent
CHRISTIAN 40 percent
TRADITIONAL 10 percent
Country Overview
Introduction
The Federal Republic of Nigeria, located in western Africa, is the most populous country on the continent. It is bordered to the south by the Gulf of Guinea, to the east by Cameroon, to the northeast and north by Chad and Niger, and to the west by Benin.
Nigeria is a country of striking geographic, ethnic, and religious diversity that, over the decades, has been a source of its strength as well as its weakness. According to ethnographers, its ethnic groups number between 250 and 400. The three largest are the Hausa-Fulani in the north, the Yoruba in the southwest, and the Ibo (Igbo) in the east. Other groups include the Kanuri, Edo, Tiv, Nupe, Ibibio, and Ijaw. The religious composition of the country—as well as the tumultuous relations today among the three major faiths (traditionalism, Islam, and Christianity)—is the result of several influences, including migrations over the centuries, beginning perhaps around 300 B.C.E.; the impact of the slave trade (fifteenth to nineteenth centuries); and the imposition of British colonial rule, spearheaded by the Royal Niger Company, between 1861 (when Lagos was annexed as a colony) to 1914 (the date marking the unification of the Northern and Southern Nigerian protectorates).
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