Nigeria

• Africa The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office advise against all travel to areas of northeast Nigeria, and against all but essential travel to some other areas. Nigeria is a pulsating powerhouse: as the most populous nation on the continent – nearly every fifth African is Nigerian – it dominates the region. Lagos, the main city, is overflowing with tech industries, posh restaurants and clubs, and an exploding arts scene, this megacity is the face of modern Africa.

Nigeria’s dollar debt surged after the surprise weekend ouster of the central bank chief, and as fresh comments on merging multiple exchange rates added to signs that President Bola Tinubu is resetting policies blamed for crippling Africa’s biggest economy. Governor Godwin Emefiele was suspended by Tinubu after the markets closed on Friday, and then detained by Nigeria’s state security service a day later for unexplained “investigative reasons.” Folashodun Shonubi, a deputy governor in charge of operations at the bank, took over in an acting capacity.

Nigeria, officially Federal Republic of Nigeria, Country, western Africa. Area: 356,669 sq mi (923,768 sq km). Population: (2023 est.) 222,486,000. Capital: Abuja. There are more than 250 ethnic groups, including Hausa, Fulani, Yoruba, and Igbo. Languages: Nigeria consists of plateaus and the lowlands between them, which are major river basins fed especially by the Inhabited for thousands of years, the region was the centre of the Nok culture from 500 bce to 200 ce and of several precolonial empires, including Kanem-Bornu, Benin, and Oyo. The Hausa and Fulani also had states. Visited in the 15th century by Europeans, it became a centre for the trade in enslaved people. The area began to come under British control in 1861 and was made a British colony in 1914. Nigeria gained independence in 1960 and became a republic in 1963. Ethnic strife soon led to military coups, and military groups ruled the country from 1966 to 1979 and from 1983 to 1999. Civil war between the federal government and the former Eastern region, Biafra (1967–70), ended in Biafra’s surrender after the death by starvation of perhaps a million Biafrans. In 1991 the capital was moved from Related Article Summaries