The Federal Republic of Nigeria, which is typically called just Nigeria, is a country on the western coast of the African continent,

bordered by Benin to the west, Niger to the north, Chad to the northeast, and Cameroon to the east.

Its coastline opens into the Gulf of Guinea, and the region has been occupied for at least 4,000

years since around 2000 BC.

And during that time, quite a few major pre-colonial ethnic groups and empires

were anchored in what is today, Nigeria, including the Igbo, the Yoruba, the Benin, the Kenumbornu,

and the Shokato Caliphate. The British conquered and colonized much of West Africa during the period of European expansion

into the region, at first selling their African captives as slaves, and then when the slave

trade was outlawed by the British in 1807, the area was used as a primarily agricultural colony, with regional chiefdom-based

governments established by the British in an attempt to keep things orderly, and the wealth

flowing back to England.

And though there were several significant armed conflicts with local opposition groups

into the early 20th century. The British were able

to get their claim on Western Africa, formalized with their European colonialist peers in the late

19th century, and thus were in a pretty good spot to keep the locals subjugated and

agriculturally productive. On January 1st, 1914, the British merged what were

called the Southern Nigeria Protectorate and the Northern Nigeria Protectorate into a single

region called the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria. Though the northern and southern regional distinctions remained

in place for administrative purposes. And culturally, the two were starkly divided, in part because the

southern region was more coastal, and as a result had more exposure to European trade and culture,

and in part because the north was allowed to continue adhering to Islamic traditions,

while the South had quite a few Christian schools established by missionaries.

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