nigerian

• Location and landscape of Nigeria

  • Nigeria is in the tropics on the coast of West Africa
  • Was once a British colony and considered an unhealthy place by many Europeans, known as the "White Man's Grave" because many European colonists who went to West Africa took it and died
  • People blamed the hot and humid climate, infections from swamps, and the never-ending rainforest
  • Later they found out that they had malaria or another tropical disease
  • Once the colonists learned how to protect themselves, they went deeper into the interior where they discovered different landscapes, which were different from those in the coastal region
• Tropical rainforest in Nigeria

  • Grows only in the south of Nigeria, where it is warm all year and there is a lot of rain
  • There are many swamps there and mangrove forests grow on a strip of land along the coast
  • Mangroves grow in salt water along the chemical coasts
• Climate in the interior of Nigeria

  • Less extreme than the coast, with a dry season for a few months of the year
  • The farther north you go, the longer the dry season lasts
  • The interior of Nigeria consists of savannah which changes to steppe in the north on the edge of the Sahara desert
  • It rains very little in the steppe, where the dry season lasts for more than five months
• Population distribution in Nigeria

  • Nigeria is the biggest country in Africa in terms of population: more than 180 million
  • Population density is highest in the south, where there are many big cities and job opportunities, as well as plantations growing tropical products like cocoa and palm oil for export
  • Central and northern Nigeria are drier and less densely populated, with a few big cities like Kano, the trading centre of northern Nigeria
  • Population density is low in the savannah outside the cities, where people are mostly farmers growing yams, cassava, peanuts and grain
  • In the steppes the only viable form of agriculture is livestock farming, which is the most sparsely populated part of the region
  • GNP per head of population is higher in the south than in the north, and incomes are lowest in rural regions where most farms are small and produce very little
• Ethnic differences in Nigeria

  • Nigeria has a very diverse population consisting of around 250 different population groups, which have evolved from tribes that have lived there for centuries
  • Each ethnic group has its own culture, so Nigeria is a multicultural society
  • Around five hundred languages are spoken in Nigeria, but most Nigerians also speak English
  • Most of the people in the north are Muslims whereas most of the people in the south are Christians, but large parts of Nigeria are a religious hotch-potch