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Nigeria

Country in west Africa on the Gulf of Guinea, bounded north by Niger, east by Chad and Cameroon, and west by Benin.

Government

The constitution was promulgated in 1989 to take effect in 1993. It provides for an elected executive president and a popularly elected two-chamber assembly, consisting of a 91-member Senate and a 593-member House of Representatives, each serving a four-year term. In 1993 the constitution was partly suspended and military rule imposed.

Nigeria is a federal republic of 30 states, each with its own governor. There is also a coordinating federal body called the National Council of States, which includes the president and all the state governors.

History

Nigeria is named after the River Niger, its chief physical feature; the word means ‘great river’. Nigeria has been inhabited since at least 700 BC. Many of the early inhabitants migrated across the Sahara Desert, since the delta barring the entrance to the Niger and the mangrove swamps and coastal forest belt made penetration from the sea difficult.

Early African states

Trade, culture, and the Muslim religion also found their way over the caravan routes from Egypt and the Arab countries into northern Nigeria, especially around Bornu. The Hausa people in the northwest adopted Islam in the 13th century, and formed a number of city states at around the same time. In the 15th century the Yoruba people of the southwest established powerful city states. The Hausa and Yoruba states possessed complex administrative structures, headed by kings regarded as divine, superimposed on small agricultural communities. The influence of Islam helped preserve this hierarchical structure.

The remarkable medieval kingdom of Benin (covering an area of southwest Nigeria) was an offshoot of the Yoruba states. It was visited by the Portuguese in 1486 and by the English in 1553, who found there a prosperous, well-organized society with well-developed art and culture.

European contact

Portuguese and British slave traders started to raid the coastal regions of Nigeria in the 15th and 16th centuries (see slavery). The 17th and 18th centuries were a period of decline brought about by wars, political dissensions, famines, and the slave trade.

British interest in the area increased in the later 18th century, and exploration began as a preliminary to the development of commerce. Mungo Park reached the Niger in 1796, Hugh Clapperton penetrated to Sokoto in 1823, and Richard and John Lander traced the course of the Niger in 1830. The British abolition of slavery in 1807 was a stimulus to legitimate trade and also to the missionaries who followed the explorers, and by the middle of the century they had reached Abeokuta, Ibadan, and Calabar.

From the late 18th century the Hausa states suffered an invasion by the Fulani, an Islamic people originating from the upper Nile valley, who overran more than 259,000 sq km/10,000 sq mi of territory and further weakened the country.

The establishment of British rule

Infiltration by the British also began with the purchase by British traders of Lagos in 1861 from a native chief. In 1866 Lagos was placed under the government of Sierra Leone and later administered as part of the Gold Coast (modern Ghana) until 1886, when a separate colony and protectorate of Lagos was founded.

In 1885 a British claim to a protectorate over Nigeria was recognized by the Berlin Conference, and the southern part of the country, apart from the Lagos territories, was named the Oil Rivers Protectorate, later renamed the Niger Coast Protectorate. The northern part of the country, formerly chartered to the United African Company, was brought under government control in 1900, the northern part of its territories becoming the Northern Nigeria Protectorate and the southern part, together with the Niger Coast Protectorate, becoming the Southern Nigeria Protectorate, to which Lagos was added in 1906. In 1914 the north and south were united to form the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria.

Towards independence

After World War II pressure for independence increased. Between 1946 and 1951 different constitutions were introduced, which gave Nigeria first representative government and then responsible government. The federal structure was first introduced in 1946, when the northern, eastern, and western regions were established.

The northern part of the former trusteeship territory of the Cameroons was administered by the northern region until 1961, when by a referendum it opted to become a part of the Region itself, while in the same referendum the southern part of the Cameroons territory, which had hitherto functioned as a Region of the federation, now elected to join the Cameroon Republic. The present midwestern region split off from western region after a referendum in 1963.

Regional self-government was achieved by the eastern and western regions in 1957 and by the northern region in 1959. In 1960 full independence was granted to the federation, which became a member of the Commonwealth. In 1963 Nigeria became a republic, retaining its federal structure so as to accommodate the many different ethnic groups, which include the Ibo, the Yoruba, the Aro, the Angas, and the Hausa.

Democracy overthrown

Nigeria's first president was Dr Nnami Azikiwe, an Ibo; he was a banker and proprietor of a newspaper group, and had played a leading part in the movement for independence. His chief rival was Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, who was prime minister from 1957.

In January 1966, Nigeria, which was generally considered to be the most politically stable of the new African nations, suffered a military coup by young army officers, mainly Ibos from the eastern region, which had become richer after the discovery of oil there 1958. In the course of the coup the prime minister, the premier of the north region, and several other political leaders and army officers were assassinated. A military government was set up, led by Maj Gen Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi. The revolt was sparked off by widespread suspicion that the recent general elections had been rigged, and by revelations of political corruption. A military government was set up comprising a Supreme Military Council and a Federal Executive Council.

Gowon seizes power

In July 1966 there was a another military coup by a mostly Christian group from the north; several units of the army mutinied and a new head of the military government was installed. The Ironsi regime had been dominated by Ibo civil servants, and there had been a great deal of anxiety especially about where power lay. After the coup the new head of government was the army chief of staff, Lieut Col (later Gen) Yakubu Gowon. The military government released a number of political prisoners, including chiefs Enaharo and Awolowo. The leaders of the coup stressed that the military government was an interim measure to be followed by free elections.

Biafra secedes

While discussions on a future federal government structure were taking place in Lagos, open fighting and rioting broke out in northern Nigeria, the principal victims of murder and looting being Ibo civilians. The military governor of the eastern region, Lt Col Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, recalled all the Ibo people to their homeland, and the Ibos decided to secede from Nigeria and establish the independent state of Biafra (1967). At the last moment Gowon had announced a new federal structure for Nigeria, one composed of 12 states (each with a military governor), in an attempt to break the solidarity of the Ibo movement by quelling fears about a large and potentially aggressive northern region.

But Gowon's efforts failed to find a last-minute compromise; it has been suggested that there were also positive reasons for the Ibo secession - the potential oil revenues that were stronger incentives to break from the federal structure than simply fear of the north. In these terms, Gowon's appeasement had no hope of success; and in any case, Ibos could point to evidence of northern brutality as the best possible reason for rejecting the new federal compromise - by this time tens of thousands of Ibos in the north had been killed.

The Biafran War

Gowon's federal government at first treated the Biafran secession as a matter for the civil police, but the seriousness of the situation became apparent to Gowon's government when the Ibo secessionists collaborated with Ibo officers in the Nigerian army and invaded the midwest region. The Nigerian army was placed immediately on a war footing, but could not prevent the Biafran advance into the midwest. A full scale civil war was now in progress, and the ability of the federal troops to recapture the midwest was checked temporarily when the Biafrans destroyed the main access point, the bridge at Onitsha.

The numerical and technical superiority of the federal forces eventually began to tell, especially after the opening up of new fronts in Bonny and Calabar. The federal troops were able to make territorial gains in fringe areas of Biafra that were less densely Ibo, but only gradually did the advance succeed, until resistance was concentrated in the core of Iboland. Yet the war could not be pushed easily to a conclusion, a state of affairs that owed much to the stubborness of Ibo resistance, but which intensified the sufferings of the people of Biafra. The war was concluded finally in January 1970, with the Biafran surrender after Ojukwu had fled to the Côte d'Ivoire.

The war left the economy gravely weakened, and warfare and famine had cost an estimated 1 million lives.

Oil revenue and development

The federal military government was anxious that there should be no recriminations after the civil war, and also that Nigeria should emerge as a stronger, united nation. Gowon was in the forefront of these initiatives, but ethnic loyalties have commanded people's first loyalties, and inhibited consistently the efforts made since 1960 to implement national development plans.

The finance for these development plans has been made available from the oil revenues, and the Nigerian government has increasingly claimed a larger stake in the oil industry, largely through the Nigerian National Oil Corporation (NNOC); Nigeria also became a member of the Arab-dominated Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Oil revenue, channelled through the federal government to the regional governments, has given the central government increased power and influence, although the regions have behaved selfishly and competitively in the way they have devised and implemented development, welfare, and educational projects.

The overthrow of Gowon

In 1972 Gen Gowon declared that the army would relinquish power, and the country return to civilian rule by 1976; but when he made the 14th independence anniversary speech on 1 October 1974, this deadline had been postponed, and Gowon announced that the army would continue to govern indefinitely, although it was stressed that the policy of a return to civilian rule had not been abandoned. The military government was able to justify such a declaration largely on the grounds that a national consensus did not exist on the subject of an appropriate civilian government system for Nigeria.

In fact, Gowon had contributed himself to an even more confused political and ethnic situation in Nigeria by stating consistently his commitment to the creation of more states, to supplement the 12 that had existed since 1968. On 29 July 1975 Gowon was overthrown while he was attending the Organization of African Unity (OAU; later African Union) Conference in Uganda.

Military rule under Muhammad and Obasanjo, 1975-79

Nigeria's new head of state and commander-in-chief of the armed forces was Brig Murtala Ramat Muhammad, who announced immediate changes in the military leadership, and ‘retired’ all former members of the government, state governors, civilian federal commissioners, and all administrators of East Central State. New military governors were appointed for Nigeria's 12 states. Whereas Gen Gowon's watchword had been ‘Peace before Politics’, Muhammad asserted that his predecessor had headed a regime that survived on ‘nepotism, favouritism, and corruption’.

Muhammad established the Federal Council of States, which was given the brief of examining the suitability of Lagos as the federal capital, as well as assessing the possibilities for creating more states. In this latter respect Muhammad followed Gowon's policy in one direction, and 7 new states were created giving a total of 19.

Muhammad was not in power sufficiently long for his regime to make any fundamental changes or monumental mistakes, and the attempted coup that resulted in Gen Muhammad's death in February 1976 was probably an attempt by a group of officers to gain control within the Supreme Military Council, rather than an effort to reorientate Nigerian politics. The insurgence proved to be confined to a group of Lagos-based officers, led by Lieut Col Dimka, who were quickly arrested and later executed. Nigeria remained under the control of the Supreme Military Council, and the new head of state was Lt Gen Olusegun Obasanjo.

Civilian rule overthrown

Obasanjo announced a gradual return to civilian rule, and in 1979 the leader of the National Party of Nigeria, Shehu Shagari, became president. In December 1983, with the economy suffering from falling oil prices, Shagari's civilian government was deposed in another bloodless coup, led by Maj Gen Muhammadu Buhari. In 1985 another peaceful coup replaced Buhari with a new military government, led by Maj Gen Ibrahim Babangida, the army chief of staff. At the end of the year an attempted coup by rival officers was thwarted.

Babangida's reforms

In an effort to end political corruption, President Babangida banned former and existing government officials from any future civilian administration. A ban on political activity was lifted in May 1989, but the government rejected the applications of former political associations for recognition as political parties, instead creating two official parties, one to the left and one to the right of the political spectrum.

In August 1991, 9 new states were created, bringing the total to 30. In the same month, the total of local government councils increased to 500 with the addition of 47 new ones. The changes were seen as moves towards the decentralization of power. In December 1991 the ban prohibiting existing government officials running for office in a new government was lifted, and the federal government was moved from Lagos to Abuja, the new federal capital. The introduction of a system of primary elections, on the US model, was announced in 1992, and a delay in the return to civilian rule was expected.

First free presidential election declared void

Babangida's Social Democratic Party (SDP) won the majority of seats when assembly elections were held in July 1992, but it was later announced that the assembly would not be opened until after presidential elections had taken place. The first free presidential election in June 1993 was won by the SDP candidate, Moshood Abiola (1938-98), but the results were suspended. Babangida promised fresh elections but later persuaded the SDP and the main opposition party, the National Republican Convention, to agree to talks aimed at establishing an interim government, excluding Abiola. In August Babangida postponed the talks and stepped down, nominating Ernest Shonekan, a civilian, as his successor.

Military rule restored

Shonekan headed an interim administration until November 1993, when he was replaced by the defence minister, Gen Sani Abacha (1943-98). Later that month all political parties were banned. Abiola was arrested and charged with treason in June 1994, triggering an escalation of protests by the pro-democracy movement. In October 1994 the High Court ruled that Abiola's detention was illegal and in December 1994 a national constitutional conference recommended the continuation of military rule until 1996. During 1995 there was mounting international concern over human-rights abuses by the military regime. Some 100 human-rights activists were arrested, and in November 1995 Ken Saro-Wiwa, an environmentalist and leading spokesperson for the Ogoni people, was executed along with eight of his colleagues. World leaders pleas for clemency went unheeded, and following the executions, Nigeria was suspended from the Commonwealth.

Social conditions

An official population policy encouraging mothers to have no more than four children was ratified 1988, half the population being under 15.

Political changes

General Sani Abacha in mid-November 1997 dissolved his cabinet and said that he was granting an amnesty for some political prisoners. Abacha, whose government had been accused of holding hundreds of political prisoners, did not specify which detainees, or how many, would be freed. He promised to hold elections in 1998, handing power to a civilian government by 1 October. In April 1998 Sabacha won a crucial vote allowing him to stand unopposed in ‘democratic’ presidential elections planned for August. Nigeria's main opposition group, the United Action for Democracy, asked Nigerians to boycott the elections. Polling stations were closed late April 1998 after a very low turnout in Nigerian assembly elections. The vote had been boycotted by the opposition to protest against Abacha. Abacha died suddenly 8 June 1998, leaving no obvious successor. General Abdulsalam Abubakar, the compromise choice of Nigeria's military government, was named the new head of state. Abubakar, former chief of defence staff, committed himself to General Abacha's programme to restore civilian government, but did not say whether this would happen by 1 October, as planned. In July Moshood Abiola died, reportedly of a heart attack, whilst still under house arrest. In August 1998 three new parties were formed: the People's Democratic Party (PDP), the People's Democratic Congress, and the Liberal Democratic Party. In September 1998, a Nigerian court freed 20 Ogoni activists imprisoned in 1994 (together with the writer Ken Saro-Wiwa who was later executed) on charges of murdering four pro-government chiefs.

Underlining the new political liberalization, in October 1998 Wole Soyinka, a leading dissident and Nobel prize-winning author, returned home, after four years of self-imposed exile.

The PDP was elected in mid-December 1998 to control most local councils. It was the first in a series of polls that would culminate in a presidential election in February 1999. The PDP also took a lead in elections for state governors and assemblies in January 1999, but the right-of-centre All Peoples Party (APP) took six key marginal states and the left-leaning Alliance for Democracy swept all six states in its southwestern stronghold.

In February 1999 the People's Democratic Party won 55 of the 109 Senate seats. In March 1999 Olusegun Obasanjo was elected president, ending 15 years of military rule, amid claims of fraud.

Nearly 16 years of military rule ended in Nigeria in May 1999 when Gen Abubakar handed over to Olusegun Obasanjo, and Nigeria rejoined the Commonwealth from which it was banned in 1995. Obasanjo attacked his military predecessors for corruption and put all government contracts made since January under review. Nigeria's new civilian president in June began a purge of the army. Obasanjo purged 29 senior officers from the military and seized hundreds of millions of dollars of stolen wealth from the allies of the late dictator Sani Abacha.

Fighting between Nigeria's two largest ethnic groups, Hausas and Yorubas, in the southwest of the country broke out in July 1999, resulting in many deaths. As fears spread of wider unrest, the president continued to purge some of the old guard, having nearly 200 new staff officers appointed. More ethnic fighting broke out in August in Ondo state in southwestern Nigeria.

The new civilian government in Nigeria began cracking down in October 1999 on multinational oil companies based in the Niger Delta, giving them six weeks to produce a firm environmental clean-up plan. The region accounted for 95% of the country's daily crude oil production. The six major multinational oil companies operating in Nigeria were Royal Dutch/Shell, Mobil, Chevron, Elf, Agip, and Texaco. The government of President Obasanjo blamed the multinational companies for the continuing unrest in the Niger Delta region, which had resulted in scores of deaths. After riots in both the Niger Delta (between the army and civilians) and in the capital, Lagos (between Nigeria's two biggest ethnic groups), throughout November and December 1999, President Obasanjo ordered that ethnic minority militants be shot on sight. Critics claimed that this heralded a return to a culture of human rights abuse and a reinstatement of military rule within Nigeria.

Introduction of Islamic law

Zamfara, a state in northern Nigeria, formally adopted strict Islamic sharia law in January 2000, the third state to do so. President Obasanjo, a born-again Christian, refused to attend the ceremony at which the law was proclaimed, declaring it unconstitutional. Ethnic and religious violence following the introduction of sharia law led to the deaths of over 1,000 people. In May a curfew was imposed upon the northern city of Kaduna after at least 200 people were killed in clashes between Muslims and Christians. In June similar violence broke out in the south of the country after the body of a murdered Christian was found in the region. Later in June, the governor of Kano, the largest city in north Nigeria, announced that sharia law would come into effect there in December, at the beginning of Ramadan, the ninth month of the Muslim calendar. Sharia law also came into effect in October in Yobe and (in a modified form) in Kaduna.

The same month, violence between the two largest ethnic groups, the militant Yoruba separatists' group Odua People's Congress (OPC), and the Hausas erupted again in Lagos. Over 100 people were killed. The OPC was outlawed and the security forces given the mandate to arrest anyone found to be backing the OPC or a tribal militia group. Over 200 people, including the leader of the OPC, Frederick Fashuen, were arrested.

In April 2001, the heads of Nigeria's army, navy, and air force all retired amid speculation that President Obasanjo might be trying to rid the armed forces of men loyal to the previous regime.

Ethnic violence

The killing of a traditional ruler of the Azara people of central Nigeria in June 2001 sparked off fighting between them and the neighbouring Tivs. Hundreds of people were reported dead, and some 70,000 people, mainly Tivs, were forced to leave their homes. The country was also shaken in early July by ethnic and religious fighting in both Nassarawa state in the centre of the country, and the northern Bauchi state. Hundreds of people were reported killed after Christians rebelled against an attempt to impose Islamic law in the town of Tafawa-Balewa. Further clashes broke out between Christians and Muslims in the city of Jos in central Nigeria in September. Around 500 people were killed in a week-long bout of violence, and tens of thousands of people fled the fighting. Tensions had risen between the indigenous residents, who were mainly Christian or Animist, and the wealthier Hausa-Fulani Muslims.

After militants in central Nigeria killed 19 soldiers in October 2001, armed men in civilian clothing responded by attacking four villages, killing some 200 people. Nigerian soldiers were accused of carrying out the massacres. Tens of thousands of ethnic Tiv villagers began fleeing to escape the ensuing army crackdown. President Obasanjo had previously ordered the army to halt all military activity in the area, but his army chief said that the crackdown would continue until the Tiv militias blamed for killing the 19 soldiers were caught.

Protests over petrol prices

In January 2002, a general strike froze Nigerian cities, as unions protested against an 18% rise in the heavily subsidized price of petrol. The government declared the strike illegal and arrested several labour leaders after the protest paralysed the port city of Lagos, and disrupted commerce in several others, including Abuja, Ibadan, Kano, Kaduna, Makurdi, and the oil industry centre of Port Harcourt.

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Azikiwe, Nnamdi Benue

Gowon, Yakubu Lagos

Macaulay, Herbert Samuel Heelas Ransome-Kuti, Olunfunmilayo

Shagari, (Alhaji) Shehu (Usman Aliyu) Soyinka, Wole