Incredible facts about Nigeria
In Africa, one of the largest black nations in the continent is the Federal Republic of Nigeria, calmly known simply as Nigeria. It’s a land filled with music and colours and beautiful people.
In the article, the Afrinik will give you guys facts about Nigeria, now let’s take a look when we get into the facts, I want to know when you think of Nigeria, what’s the first thing that comes to your mind for me it’s the food like jollof rice oh my goodness!
The name Nigeria
Now the name Nigeria, where did it even come from? Nigeria gets its name from the River Niger, which actually is the largest river in West Africa. The name was coined by a late 19th-century British journalist named Flora Shaw.
Now, the river covers a distance of 2600 miles and runs into the Atlantic Ocean via the Gulf of Guinea after it passes through a huge Delta known as the Niger Delta. In fact, the Niger Delta is the second largest Delta in the world,
Nigeria Language
Nigeria is also a very multicultural place, there are over 500 ethnic groups in Nigeria, and the three largest of those are Hausa, Ibo and Yoruba, but they are not just multicultural it’s also multilingual.
Nigeria has 7% of the total amount of languages spoken on earth. However, the official language in Nigeria is English. There are also 600 distinct language groups there, so it’s very multicultural and multilingual, but when it comes to religion, there are like three of them all right, not just three of them.
Religion in Nigeria
Still, they have three basic religions: Islam, Christianity, and the traditional religion. In Nigeria, Islam is prevalent in the northern part of Nigeria, Christianity is heavily practised in the eastern part of Nigeria as well as in the middle of the country, and we have the traditional religion.
According to history, Islam was introduced to Nigeria by a trader from Mali and Christianity was introduced by British missionaries.
Nigeria is also considered the giant of Africa at times, but why!
Okay, so let’s take a look, Nigeria has a very large population and economy. It’s the most populous black nation on the earth as well as the seventh most populous country in the world, with a population of two hundred million people at the time of writing this report. Did you also know that nearly half the population of Nigeria is younger than fifteen years old?
Twins in Nigeria
The Yoruba ethnic group has the highest rate of twins in the world, Aura in Igbo land, which is a little town in the oil state, has been nicknamed the twin capital of the world because of its unusual high birth rate for twins.
They estimated it’s about one hundred and fifty-eight twins per 1000 births. That’s pretty high now. Many people do speculate that this high birth rate is due to the large consumption of yams by Nigerians. What is it again? That’s just a rumour. Yams are good for you though many Nigerians eat yams.
The wall of Benin
Despite its large population, Nigeria is still largely a rural country. Only 48 percent of the population actually lived in cities. The walls of Benin, constructed from 800 to 1400 AD, is located in the present Edo state. These walls are the largest ancient earthworks in the world and probably the largest man-made structure on earth.
They enclose 6,500 square kilometres of land and there are over 16,000 kilometres long originally. The walls of Benin were thought to be twice as long as the Great Wall of China. However, back in 2012 after very careful measuring, it was announced that the Great Wall of China is still the longest wall ever and that measures 21,000 kilometres long.
Plant and Animal species
According to the World Resources Institute, Nigeria is home to four thousand seven hundred and fifteen different types of plant species and over five hundred and fifty species of breeding birds and mammals.
Nollywood
Then, let’s talk about the movie industry in Nigeria. The movie industry, dubbed Nollywood, is the second biggest movie industry globally in terms of the production of movies. First, we have Bollywood in India, Nollywood in Nigeria, and then Hollywood in America and in fact, Nollywood produces up to 50 movies a week, in terms of the output, that is over a thousand movies annually.
Meal
Okay, let’s check out these numbers zero-one-zero or one-zero-one (010 101). Those numbers actually refer to the meals of the day. So, if you have zero-one-zero, it means that you skip breakfast and dinner, but you have lunch and if you have one-zero-one, that means you have breakfast and dinner, but you skip lunch.
Richest person in Nigeria
But we know that Nigeria has a very rich culture and a huge economy but who’s the richest person in Nigeria? Here’s a Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote. According to Dangote: “it is always better to be humble. You know they say that no condition is permanent”. According to reports, he’s estimated to be worth 16 billion dollars, he’s a CEO of the Dangote group and currently he’s 65 years old.
