Nigeria, officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean to the south. It covers an area of 923,769 square kilometres (356,669Ā sqĀ mi). With a population of more than 236 million, it is the most populous country in Africa, and the world's sixth-most populous country. Nigeria borders Niger in the north, Chad in the northeast, Cameroon in the east, and Benin in the west. Nigeria is a federal republic comprising 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, where its capital, Abuja, is located. The largest city in Nigeria by population is Lagos, one of the largest metropolitan areas in the world and the largest in Africa.
Nigeria has been home to several indigenous material cultures, pre-colonial states and kingdoms since the second millennium BC. The Nok culture, c.ā1500 BC, marks one of the earliest known civilisations in the region. The Hausa Kingdoms inhabited the north, with the Edo Kingdom of Benin in the south, Igbo Kingdom of Nri in the southeast and in the southwest, the Oyo Empire. The present day territory of Nigeria was home to a vast array of city-states. In the early 19th century the Fula jihads culminated in the Sokoto Caliphate. The modern state originated with British colonialization in the 19th century, taking its present territorial shape with the merging of the Southern Nigeria Protectorate and the Northern Nigeria Protectorate in 1914. The British set up administrative and legal structures and incorporated traditional monarchs as a form of indirect rule. Nigeria became a formally independent federation on 1 October 1960. It experienced a civil war from 1967 to 1970, followed by a succession of military dictatorships and democratically elected civilian governments until achieving a stable government in the 1999 Nigerian presidential election.
