Africa is full of fake countries. Lines drawn on a map of the continent in 1884 which traversed rivers, mountains, jungles and peoples. Nigeria one of those fucked up messes of 150 million people or so which will probably fuck up humanity's future visions of happiness and prosperity in the new century....sorta like Pakistan. Nigeria's differing religions, ethnic diversity, oil and retarded leaders will ensure that West Africa will see no long-term stability much like the Horn of Africa except Nigeria has no true enemies like Ethiopia. Only economic rivals like Ghana. Imagine that, tiny Ghana competes with Nigeria for influence. Nigerians were pissed off when Obama went there instead of Nigeria. Then again, who'd want to go to Lagos? I wouldn't.
The project of "Nigeria" was taken up by the British imperialists the same way the project of "India" was. A commercial company, the Royal Niger Company gained a charter to run the north of the Niger Delta. A certain Mr George Goldie wanted to emulate the British East India company's style and take over Nigeria via a fake company and transfer it over to the British government after he had conquered all he wanted. After small wars against Yoruba and Igbo kingdoms he was ready to take on the Sokoto Caliphate in the North of Nigeria run by people who's entire culture was alien to those in the Southern part of the Niger river (except Yorubas who'd recently suffered through a jihad). By 1899, the company's charter was revoked and bought by the British government for £850,000. Local chiefs were bought by the new colonialists to keep the peace and help run their populous bit of Empire in West Africa. Indirect rule was the way to go among the numerous polities that had existed before "Nigeria" was created. No such organism had even existed in the land of the Niger river before. Still, it took a while to pacify everybody in "Nigeria", campaigns against the Igbo and the Hausa-Fulani in Northern Nigeria lasted until 1907.
It's not like "Nigerians" are the complete victims in this whole era. I'm sure if the Yoruba had developed the way the English did they'd be applying the same harsh cruelties on other peoples. In fact, they tried to compete with Britain but were crushed accordingly in their city states of Benin, Oyo, Illorin, Ibadan etc. like the Ashanti were. These were innocent little pagans however, they contributed the mass enslavement of Africans which were sent to the Americas who numbered in the tens of millions. Tens of millions of people who could've helped solidify strong African states in West Africa to their detriment.
After the slave trade was banned in Britain, the UK took to the seas to enforce this legislation. As a result, West African kingdoms like Dahomey and Ashanti etc were forced to switch to palm oil to make beauty products and grease machinery for the Industrial Revolution. So instead of marching these slaves to the coast to be sold, they had to carry large jars of palm oil and maintain the palm plantations. African chiefs lost a lot of money this way, they had to feed and maintain these slaves. There were no horses that could survive in the tropical coast. Soon, wars were being fought for land instead of slaves using slaves armies! After all, this business wasn't cheap... Kings were forced to sign free-trade agreements and if they didn't the British would intervene and make them as they did in 1830 when they created the Gold Coast. It was the same way regarding Nigeria.
So in this way, Nigeria was conquered. Worst to come in 1914 when Northern and Southern Nigeria were amalgamated into one "Nigeria" to save money on the Imperial budget. They slammed together hundreds of years of Islamic Jihad and hundreds of years of Southern tribal practises. Little did the British know, this would cause future misery.. if they did they most likely didn't care. Most of the new military recruits for this new "country" were Muslims while Southerners made up most of the new bureaucrats since they were the first to be educated and become Christians. So the Muslims stayed up North and poor in the hinterlands while the Yoruba and Igbo became Christian and became bitches for the Brits.
After World War II, Britain was a bankrupt ramshackle mess and it decided to dump the 30 million people which was then "Nigeria". Too bad the British liked the most uneducated, the most backwards people of the whole colony. Affinity for riding horses and serving your ruler doesn't mean they're also the best people to run Nigeria and this applied entirely, this misguided belief was fully entrenched by the time Queen Elizabeth had come to Black Africa to see a Durbar, the kind her grandparents enjoyed in India. The only time the people of Nigeria enjoyed some sense of pride was when independance came on October 1st, 1960 and even that was fleeting.
In 1966, a coup sponsored by the Igbo occurred and it killed the mainly Muslim officers in the Nigerian army. As a response a counter coup was hatched and carried out and 30,000 Igbo in Northern Nigeria were slaughtered making millions flee back to the already overcrowded south east of Nigera where the Igbos lived. To add this chaotic atmosphere, the discovery of oil in that region of Nigeria meant that if that region were to secede they could be able to support a new Republic seperate from Nigeria and this is what happened. In 1967, a the Igbo dominated Republic of Biafra was formed and the Nigerian Civil War was on.
Like in the American Civil War, the Biafrans won tactically and even pushed onto the City of Benin and but they were grinded down attritionally and starved by a Nigerian blockade which made millions of Igbos starve. The first time the West saw starving African children was during the Biafran War. Artillery and Soviet MiGs bombed the hell out of Biafra. After an offensive that took away the coastline completely, 120,000 Nigerian troops invaded the center of Biafra and in 1970...Nigeria surrendered. 2 million people died in this war including 1 million Biafran civilians. As a result, the Biafrans were frozen out of the oil profits which would from that moment onward flow mostly to the North of the country which contributed little economically besides peanuts and cotton.
Nigeria had a massive oil boom after the war and believe it or not billions were stolen by corrupt generals, bureaucrats, bankers etc. Since independance, Nigeria has lost $500 Billion dollars due to corruption. Such an amount if unthinkable as the rest of the countries infrastructure decayed under the tropical heat. Harsh dictatorships came and went with little change in the standard of living of the Nigerian people, in fact it decreased in the 1980s.
Armed rebellion is now the byword in Nigeria as is kidnapping as militans in the Niger Delta try and claim what is their resource - oil. The government recently brokered a deal with the militants but I doubt that's going to last. Corruption is just too endemic in Nigeria and nothing is going to change that. Now, radical Muslim groups in the North by the name of Boko Haram plan a jihad on the Nigerian government. They were brutally crushed earlier this year but I doubt the fundamentalist beliefs which created them are going to die and the Igbo still yearn for a Biafra in certain segments of their society. Nigeria is a mess and a major US supplier of oil. It's in American's interest to maintain it's "stability" meaning it has to back every dictator that waltzes into power and every corrupt President that's elected "fairly". Nigeria is such a mess. Why even bother with it at all?
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