The purpose of this essay is to describe Nigeria. Officially it is a federal constitutional republic, located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in the north. Its coast in the south lies on the Gulf of Guinea on the Atlantic Ocean. Its three largest and most influential ethnic groups are the Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba.
The name Nigeria was taken from the Niger River running through the country. This name was coined by Flora Shaw, the future wife of Baron Lugard, a British colonial administrator, in the late 19th century. It was colonized by the British in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, setting up administrative structures and law while recognizing traditional chiefs. It became independent again in 1960.
It comprises 36 states and one Federal Capital Territory, which are further sub-divided into 774 Local Government Areas LGA. The plethora of states, of which there were only three at independence, reflect the country's tumultuous history and the difficulties of managing such a heterogeneous national entity at all levels of government. In some contexts, the states are aggregated into six geopolitical zones: North West, North East, North Central, South East, South- South, and South West.
It has six cities with a population of over 1 million people (from largest to smallest: Lagos, Kano, Ibadan, Kaduna, Port Harcourt, and Benin City). Lagos is the largest city in sub-Saharan Africa, with a population of over 8 million in its urban area alone. Populations of its cities over a million are listed below:
1. Lagos 7,937,932
2. Kano 3,848,885
3. Ibadan 3,078,400
4. Kaduna 1,652,844
5. Port Harcourt 1,320,214
6. Benin City 1,051,600
7. Maiduguri 1,044,497
8. Zaria 1,018,827
Population in Nigeria increased from 1990 to 2008 by 57 million a 60% growth rate. Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa and accounts for about 18% of the