Country Profile: Nigeria

Flag of the Federal Republic of Nigeria Image. BBC Country profiles: Nigeria

The Federal Republic of Nigeria is located on the equatorial eastern Atlantic, in West Africa, bordering Benin, Cameroon, Chad and Niger. Its southern Atlantic coast spans 853km (CIA). The River Niger flows south from the North West of the country creating a vast swamp delta where it meets the coast. The equatorial climate is characterised by six months of torrential “rainy season” followed by six months of intermittent drought. Moving North from the oil producing, Niger Delta swamp region the landscape changes to rainforest and savannah woodland, to savannah and increasingly arid desert in the Sahel region in the North. The land is therefore low lying, with some hills and plateaus in the centre, mountains in the southeast and plains in the North. The whole country covers 923,768 square kilometres, 33% of which is arable land, 3% permanent crops and the rest “other” (CIA).

Nigeria is one of the most influential countries on the African continent. It is Africa’s most populous state and is internationally important as the world’s eighth greatest oil exporter. Nigeria is home to some 131.9 million (UN 2005) residents who belong to over 250 ethnic groups though the majority belong to four of these. Nigeria changed from a food exporter in the 1960’s to a net importer as people moved off the land to the southern oil boom city and former capital, Lagos. A GDP (purchasing power parity) of US$174 billion is composed of 27% agriculture, 48.7% industry and 24.4% services. GDP per capita is US$1,400(CIA), 143rd of 152 in the UN Common Database/ World Bank ranking. Nigeria’s primary industries are petroleum products (accounting for 95% of foreign exchange earnings), coal, tin, cocoa, palm oil and rubber. A proven reserve of 36 billion barrels of oil and 4.5 Trillion cubic meters of natural gas put the industry in the top ten most important petroleum producers in the near future(CIA). The vast reserves located in the southern Delta region are due to deposition of ancient marine life, trapped and converted to crude oil and gas by the layers of sediment from the Niger. Lagos, and the international Port Harcourt have become major population and commercial centres, by their closeness to the reserves, drilling rigs and processing refineries. Lagos is the commercial centre of Nigeria, and the most populous city in sub-Saharan Africa, with 10-15 million inhabitants (Wikipedia).

60% of the labour force works in agriculture. The national population density is 124.98 people per square kilometre, though 48.3% of the 131 million inhabitants live in urban centres. Since the 1970’s the countries fertile agricultural land remains under utilised, as do the reserves of coal and tin due to marginal development of a mining industry (Wikipedia). Nigerians have to import a variety of manufactured goods such as machinery,