- Location: West Africa, bounded in the south by the Atlantic Ocean in the armpit of Africa that forms the Gulf of Guinea; in the north by Niger and Chad; in the east by Cameroon and in the west by Benin.
- Area: 923,768 square kilometers.
- Population: More than 180 million, with more than half youths.
- Currency: naira, with 100 kobo making 1 naira; exchange rate currently 360 naira.
- System of government is presidential democracy, with an executive president and cabinet ministers as well as two houses of lawmakers in the National Assembly made up of the Senate and the House of Representatives; current leader is President Muhammadu Buhari.
- The people: the country is essentially populated by Africans, negroids, with a wide diversity of ethnic groups estimated at between 250 and 400.
- Economy: agriculture makes the most contribution to the gross domestic product and employs more than 70 percent of the population; crude oil exports accounts for two-thirds of government revenue and more than 90 percent of export income; there’s a growing services sector including telecoms, information technology, banking and logistics.
- Religion: Muslims and Christians of more or less equal numbers make up more than 80 percent of the population, with Muslims mainly in the north and Christians predominant in the south; the rest mostly follow indigenous beliefs. Even among the two top groups there many cases of dual allegiances.
- Political history: Britain colonized different parts of Nigeria separately as Lagos Colony, Northern and Southern Protectorates starting from the 1860s; Lagos later became part of the Southern Protectorate, which was in 1914 merged with the Northern Protectorate to create the country; it gained independence from Britain in 1960 and ran a parliamentary system of government until a military coup six years later; military rule ensued as the country slid into civil war that ended in 1970. After seven succesful coups, including one that toppled an elected government in 1983, Nigeria returned to civilian rule in 1999.
- Culture: Nigeria has a very rich and diverse culture, and is in a region with some of the most populous ethnic groups in Africa, such as the Yoruba, the Igbo and the Hausa. Many of the Africans enslaved in the Americas were taken from these parts and in turn influenced the cultural expressions there as evident in music, for instance, that has manifested from the U.S., through the Caribbean and down to Brazil. Contemporary Nigeria is a major producer of world-class cultural expressions whether in the novels of Chinua Achebe, the drama of Wole Soyinka, the poetry of J.P. Clark or the music of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti and many other knowns and unknowns.
- Sports: Nigeria has produced great sportsmen over from boxing to field events and athletics. Soccer has a national following, with the national teams renowned for vibrant, entertaining play.
- Climate and weather: This varies from an arid or semi-arid north bordering the Sahara Desert through a mix of grasslands and woodlands in the middle, to rainforests and mangroves closer to the Atlantic coast. Rainfall varies accordingly, starting in May and ending in October in the north, while beginning February-March in the south and ending November, with variations in the middle.
Things Nigeria 