Country in Review: Nigeria

[Mr. TM]

I thought about doing this thread where we can expand on our understandings of countries of the world. This might not pick off, but I think it is something fun that everyone could take part of in the forum. I will pick a country out at random, lay down some information about the country and ask other members to lay down what they know about the country and it's current events. This way we can together build our knowledge of the countries of the world. A coworker and I do this every so often, where we just talk about a country, which usually involves going through it's wikipedia page, its factbook page, and looking through the news about it, and it really helps explore some world wide themes. Always interesting to do South East Asia, Africa, and Latin America due to political, social and economical issues in those nations.

The first country that I wanted to discuss is a very important country in Africa.

Brief Facts from Wikipedia
Population: 154,729,000
President: Umaru Yar'Adua
Capital: Abuja

Now Nigeria is Africa's most populous country and has one of the fastest growing economies. This is due to its petroleum production which is top 10 in the world. As we know by many African nations rich in resources, especially singular resources (40% of their GDP is from petroleum), there are a lot of issues with human rights violations, and corruption.

A population boom is also occurring in Nigeria. A lot of money in the nation, and little development usually leads to a population growth. The population will play a major problem as the country's people will need assistance.

I don't know much else about Nigeria, I just know at one time they used to be a big producer of Palm Oil, and are now a big producer of another type of Oil. Funny story I do know about Africa is their "Oil Islands", which used to be named after the abundance of palm trees in the area, until the discovery of petroleum. Didn't have to change the names of the island.

The capital used to be Lagos, I remember that as a kid, however, it has since changed.

So expand on the issues I brought up, or bring up other issues of Nigeria. Do you like their culture? Geography? History? Have any insight into the political nature of Nigeria?

I am opening the floor.

 

[Tastycles]

I don't know very much about Nigeria, except to say that they are inevitibly going to seriously feel the consequences when they run out of oil. Oil has destroyed almost all of their other industries, and as a result, they have turned to piracy in some villages. When the oil goes, so does the economy. As it is, despite being one of Africa's richest nations in terms of what resources they have, the people are no better off than in the surrounding poorer countries.

Nigeria will probably descend into civil war in our life times, as is the norm in many sub Saharan African countries, unless it starts to plan for the future a little bit. I'm not holding my breath to be honest. That being said, Nigeria will make me a millionaire, because I have just got an e-mail telling me that I can claim the fortune of a deceased foreign businessman there...