"Atlas of the World" is a series of columns newly created by the military sub-plane, which is inspired by the "Kunyu Wanguo Quantu" compiled by the Italian missionary Matteo Ricci in the 12th year of Wanli (1584) of the Ming Dynasty and Li Zhizao, the Shaoqing of Guanglu Temple in the Ming Dynasty.
▲One of the later copies of "Kunyu Wanguo Quantu".
This map is deeply loved by the Mingshen Sect, and the edict is to copy and draw 12 copies in the present world, the original map is now lost, and it is the earliest existing world map with complete latitude and longitude lines in China. Each issue of "Atlas of the World" will select one of the nearly 200 countries and regions in the world, from history, geography, humanities, economy, diplomacy, military and other aspects to popularize science, so that you can understand a country in one article.
As the fourth issue of Atlas of Nations, we introduce Nigeria, the country with the highest GDP in Africa, today.
The richest man in Africa
In December 2005, Goldman Sachs released a list of 11 countries with bright development prospects, including Nigeria, in a list called "11 countries of the future".
In 2013, eight years after the report's release, Nigeria's GDP surpassed South Africa's for the first time, reaching US$520 billion (equivalent to Hebei in 2020), becoming Africa's largest economy and the world's 26th largest economy, and has since been the "richest man in Africa" for more than a decade.
What is unique about Nigeria as a country, and how does it become the richest man in Africa? Let's take a look at it from beginning to end.
Nigeria, the full name of the "Federal Republic of Nigeria" (Federal Republic of Nigeria), belongs to the West African country, located in the westernmost part of the Gulf of Guinea, bordering Benin to the west, Niger to the north, and Chad and Cameroon to the east.
▲Geographical location of Nigeria
Nigeria's name is inspired by the Niger River, the mother river of West African countries, and was suggested on January 8, 1897 by a British journalist Flora Shaw in The Times that the British colony on the Niger River be named "Nigeria" instead of the former "Royal Nigerien Company Territory".
The river is the third largest river in Africa after the Nile and Congo rivers, originating in Guinea, running through the entire territory of Nigeria and flowing into the Gulf of Guinea, feeding countless West African people. The journalist later happened to be the wife of Baron Lugi, the Governor of British Hong Kong and the Governor of Nigeria.
▲ Reporter Flora Shaw and her husband Baron Lugi, when Luge was the governor of Hong Kong, he proposed to take the initiative to return the British lease of Weihaiwei in exchange for a permanent lease of Hong Kong, but it was not supported by the British
On January 1, 1914, in his capacity as British Governor of the Northern and Southern Protectorates of Nigeria, Lugard signed an official document merging the North and South Protectorates of Nigeria into the "Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria", and "Nigeria" became the official name of the region.
Interestingly, Nigeria's neighbor, Niger, is also named after the Niger River, known locally as the "baba", or the king of rivers.
▲The Niger River flows through many West African countries
Flag of Nigeria
Nigeria, which was named after the British and had long been a British colony, was helpless. To this day, Nigeria is still a member of the British Commonwealth and English is considered the official language.
Nominally, Nigerians even revere King Charles III of the United Kingdom as head of state, which is a testament to the unsettled and chaotic relationship between the two countries.
The British colonial imprint is also deeply imprinted on the Nigerian flag of different periods, and the huge British rice flag always occupies the main visual position of the flag, which never changes. On the contrary, circular motifs that symbolize the local characteristics of the colony, such as the African elephant, are crowded aside and change frequently.
▲The flag of British Nigeria during the colonial period
A similar flag style continued until the eve of Nigeria's independence in July 1959, and the national flag represented the image of a country.
Therefore, in order to mobilize the people of the whole country to join the major event of Nigerian independence, the Nigerian government openly solicited proposals for the design of the new Nigerian flag in the newspaper media.
Michel Tevo Akinkunmi, a 23-year-old Nigerian university student studying in the UK, stumbled upon the announcement, and immediately began to design and draw the first draft of the new national flag: a red sun rises in the middle of the green, white and green flags.
▲The first draft of Akinkunmi's national flag
After a national flag competition, Akinkunmi's flag proposal stood out from nearly 3,000 entries. However, after the jury selected, the red sun in the middle was deleted. The green left represents agriculture and the white represents unity and peace.
On October 1, 1960, Nigeria became independent from the United Kingdom, and the green, white and green three-stripe flag officially became the legal flag of Nigeria.
▲Flag of Nigeria
Human Geography
Nigeria is not only the most populous country in Africa, with a total population of about 219 million, ranking sixth in the world, but also the most populous country in the world with a predominantly black population.
According to statistics, Nigeria's labor force is expected to be more than 60 million, accounting for about 30% of the total population.
More importantly, Nigeria's population structure is very young, with a median age of 18.2 years and 60% of young people under the age of 25, which is enough to prove that Nigeria still has plenty of economic potential to be unleashed.
▲The population pyramid of Nigeria
Nigeria has a large number of ethnic groups and 525 languages, and in order to promote cultural unity, the official language of Nigeria is English, but it is currently spoken by only a few urban elites, and most rural people do not speak it at all. The most widely spoken languages are the three major ethnic groups, Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba.
The majority of the population in the northern region is Muslim, while the predominantly Christian religion in the southern region, each of which accounts for about half of the country's population.
Nigeria is home to more than 250 ethnic groups, the largest being the Hausa-Fulani (about 80 million, 30% of the country), the Yoruba (about 40 million, 15.5% of the country), and the Igbo (20 million).
▲Approximate distribution map of the main ethnic groups in Nigeria
Nigeria ranks 14th among the 54 sovereign countries in Africa, with a total area of about 923,800 square kilometers, and is the first among the coastal countries of the Gulf of Guinea.
From the perspective of geographical structure, Nigeria has a vast territory, many rivers and mountains, and complex and diverse terrain. Whether it is plains, river valleys, hills, basins, plateaus and mountains, it can be said that there is no shortage of everything.
According to the topographical differences, the whole territory of Nigeria can be roughly divided into five regions, namely the southern coastal plain region, the southeastern highlands region, the central Niger-Benue River basin region, and the Sokoto River valley basin region in the northwest and the Chad basin region in the northeast.
On the whole, Nigeria has a pronounced undulation of terrain, with an average altitude of about 1,000 meters from north to south.
The highest point in Nigeria is located in the north-west of the massive intrusive rock, Zuma Rock, which rises 300 meters above the ground. Known as "one of the Seven Wonders of Africa", this peculiar giant rock is also regarded as a god of protection by Nigeria.
▲Nigeria's huge invasion rock: Zuma Rock
Due to its tropical location, Nigeria has a warm and humid climate as a whole, with no spring, summer, autumn and winter, only dry and rainy seasons.
From north to south, it has a tropical desert climate, a semi-arid steppe climate, a savannah climate, and a tropical monsoon climate. It is hot in the north, with distinct rainy and dry seasons, and gradually towards the south, it begins to become moderately warm and abundant.
▲ The population is concentrated in the coastal and delta areas
The population of Nigeria is spread over three points according to three major ethnic groups, although the majority of the population is concentrated in the large city of Lagos State in the southwest and the delta region in the south.
▲Overlooking the coastal city of Lagos in Nigeria, it is prosperous
History of Nigeria
Nigeria is a typical multi-ethnic country, with the earliest inhabitants dating back to 13,000 BC, and at various times in its history, many ethnic groups in Nigeria have established their own feudal kingdoms and tribes in their main settlements.
Between 50 and 90 AD, Roman explorers made three expeditions to Nigeria in search of gold, and brought back a two-horned rhinoceros to be exhibited at the Colosseum.
▲Three expeditions to the south during the Roman period
The Kanem-Bornu kingdom was founded by the local Zaghawa nomadic tribe in present-day northeastern Nigeria around the 9th century, and by the 14th century the kingdom was a well-known center of Islamic culture.
The Hausa-Fulani, on the other hand, live mainly in the north of the country and have a population of more than 60 million. Around the 11th century AD, the Hausa people established several city-states in West Africa, forming a loose alliance known as the "Hausa city-state", which can be said to be one of the creators of West African civilization.
Although the people of the city-states had the same blood, language, and culture, the city-states were not always so close-knit, and wars were common. Until the middle of the 19th century, the city-state of Hausa was unified by the Fulani Empire.
In southwestern Nigeria, the Yoruba established a series of small kingdoms such as Ife, Oyo, and Benin.
▲The 16th-century royal Benin ivory mask, a national treasure
These kingdoms were economically and culturally developed, and the Yifei culture represented by cast copper and terracotta appeared. Among them, the Kingdom of Benin reached its heyday in the 16th century, and its culture is famous for its exquisite works of art such as cast bronze sculptures, ivory carvings, and wood carvings.
The Igbo, Ibibio, Ijo and other people living in southeastern Nigeria did not have a unified state in history, and their organizational form was based on family village communities.
As for central Nigeria, the Nupe and Jukun developed into independent kingdoms, but they were often controlled by the northern powers.
From the historical trajectory of the development of various ethnic groups, it can be seen that although the same ethnic group will form a certain national identity, the contact between the ethnic groups in the northern, eastern and western regions is limited, and the contact is more for trade, territorial conflicts and disputes, and the situation of scattered sand between various ethnic groups has not been ended until foreign colonial rule.
▲ Africa has been divided among several colonial powers for a long time
Since 1472, Nigeria and other African regions have been invaded by Portuguese, Dutch, French, English and other colonists, and the ivory and gold black slave trade has been carried out.
After establishing its first colony in Nigeria in Lagos in 1861, the British used it as a base to expand inland, destroying several kingdoms.
▲ Pay attention to the location of Benin
In 1892, a British expedition of more than 200 people broke into the Beninese region with the express refusal of the King of Benin, and was subsequently ambushed by the Beninese army, of which only 2 survived. In retaliation, and at the same time to teach the surrounding countries and chiefs a stern lesson that "whites cannot be killed", the British Admiral Rosen organized thousands of soldiers to invade the Kingdom of Benin.
The Kingdom of Benin was soon conquered, the king was captured, the British burned the palace and looted a large number of bronze sculptures, and over the next decade, the British conquered large swaths of Nigeria through military force.
▲After the British colonists burned down the royal palace of Benin, they took a photo with a large number of looted bronze sculptures
▲The bronze sculpture of Benin on display in the British Museum today
Britain first encroached on southern Nigeria, establishing the Protectorate of South Nigeria in 1900, and then the Protectorate of North Nigeria in accordance with the Anglo-French Agreement of 1898.
In 1914, Britain merged North and South Nigeria into the Royal Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria, and Nigeria fell completely under British colonial rule, both nominally and substantively.
As with other colonies, the British colonialists adopted a policy of "indirect rule" of divide and rule with regard to Nigeria.
Politically, on the one hand, the colonial authorities maintained the situation in which the various ethnic groups in Nigeria were in their own countries and did not interfere with each other, and divided the three main ethnic areas of the Hausa-Fulani, Igbo and Yoruba into northern, western and eastern districts, inducing the three ethnic groups to rule their respective areas and create friction and conflict in the process of gaining the dependence of other small and medium-sized ethnic groups.
On the other hand, the colonizers tried to amplify the contradictions between the three ethnic groups and vigorously supported the upper Hausa-Fulani group as the pillar of their political rule, but at the same time appointed the Yoruba and Igbo in the south as senior civil servants in the government, creating a mutual check between the three.
▲ Nigeria is more illiterate in the north, and the education level in the south is higher, which is still the case (the picture shows the female literacy rate in Nigeria in 2013, the redder the lower, the bluer the higher)
In terms of education, the colonial authorities in Nigeria implemented different education systems in the north and south, continuing Islamic education in the north and modern education systems in the south, converting to Christianity, creating a gap in educational attainment between the north and the south and structural inequalities.
In the local colonial army, the officers were British, and the soldiers and senior non-commissioned officers were made up entirely of northern Nigerians, who were considered a "fighting people" by the locals, similar to the Sikhs of British India.
▲ The officers are all white British
During World War I, a British Nigerian army launched an offensive against German Cameroon and successfully occupied the land, after which Cameroon was divided between Britain and France under the Treaty of Versailles, and "British Cameroon" was administratively incorporated into British Nigeria.
But not all colonies bring revenue to the home country, and Nigeria, like most African colonies, needs to invest billions of dollars a year, subsidizing and infrastructuring local infrastructure, eating up taxpayers' money and bringing little benefit to the home country's economy.
As a result, in 1925, the newly inaugurated Governor Graeme Thomson decided to introduce draconian austerity measures, including mass layoffs and increased taxation, especially for women, which was opposed by the Nigerian women's group, and in 1929 it led to mass protests known as the "Women's Revolution".
Tens of thousands of protesting women destroyed more than a dozen indigenous courts, looted factories, and stormed prisons and released prisoners before being violently suppressed by colonial forces. The Women's Revolution was seen as the historical demarcation point of British colonial rule in Nigeria, and many subsequent protests were inspired by it.
Since then, youth movements have emerged in Nigeria calling for independence and for Nigeria to be granted the status of a British Dominion, as in Australia or Canada.
▲ British West African soldiers, who participated in the war against Japan in the jungles of Burma in World War II, but history has forgotten them
During World War II, 45,000 Nigerian soldiers served in the British army and fought against Italy in Africa and Japan in Southeast Asia. They were led by British commanders, but these soldiers were not treated equally by the promised whites, they were paid less, and they were "whipped" with a disciplinary punishment specifically aimed at black soldiers.
On the battlefield, if the Japanese captured black soldiers, they almost never killed them alive. Nigerian soldiers sacrificed a lot, but the commander of the Burma Garrison, Sir William Slim, did not mention "Nigerian comrades" at all in his victory speech.
▲ Kuniyoshi, a Japanese soldier who participated in the Burma campaign, recalled that the first person he killed was an African soldier
These unequal treatment allowed the Nigerian soldiers in Burma to learn from the local Indians who were fighting against colonialism and wanted independence, and returned to Nigeria in 1946 with a new idea of independence.
After the end of World War II, Britain did not have time to care about the African colonies, and in 1947 it approved the establishment of a federal government in Nigeria, and in 1952 the first elections were held, where the British "-stirring stick" stumbled and divided Britain into three federal states, each with internal autonomy, namely the Hausa in the north, the Igbo in the south, and the Yoruba in the southwest.
▲Nigeria is divided into three federal states by the British (population distribution map, 1952-53)
Because of the election issue, riots and struggles broke out between the north and the south the following year. By 1958, the Nigerian army began to move away from recruiting only soldiers from the north, as it had done before, to recruit from all over the country. With the evacuation of British officers, the army vacated a large number of officer posts. And Southern soldiers, who are generally highly educated, can easily get the position of officer. This was opposed by the northern military, and the conflict later turned into the Biafra War in 1966.
On October 1, 1960, the British Parliament agreed to the independence of Nigeria, officially declared the "Federal Republic of Nigeria", and became a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, and also joined the United Nations.
But the decades of racial rivalry and social divisions that Britain deliberately cultivated during the colonial period to control the land will slowly destroy all of Nigeria's development and efforts.
The current state of politics in Nigeria
Independence did not bring real peace, and the contradictions between the three main ethnic groups were not completely resolved, which also led to many military coups in Nigeria after independence.
After independence, Nigeria's ethnic camp was divided into two factions, the north and the south, and the first prime minister was originally served by Balawa, a member of the Hausa ethnic group who belonged to the northern ethnic camp.
However, with the successive ascension of Baleva, the northern peoples remained in power, and promulgated policies favorable to the northern peoples, increasing taxes on the southern peoples, which made the Igbo and Yomamba people in the southern ethnic camp increasingly dissatisfied, and the two sides often clashed, and in 1964 alone, a special tax rebellion killed more than 4,000 Igbo.
▲Nigeria's first Prime Minister Baleva
In January 1966, a coup d'état was carried out by a group of predominantly Igbo soldiers from the south, successfully killing 22 key heads and ministers, including Prime Minister Baleva, Prime Minister Bello in the north, and Prime Minister Agintara in the southwest, but the coup was subsequently suppressed.
With almost all of the heads of state dead, the government was transferred to the Chief of Army Staff, Alonsi, who immediately dissolved Parliament and imposed a centralized system when he took power, and then abolished the three federal states, making Nigeria a single country, with uniform taxes and laws across the country.
Alonsi is an Igbo, which makes the northerners suspect that this coup d'état is a conspiracy by the Igbo people to seize power, and the northern peoples will definitely not be able to bear it.
Half a year later, in July 1966, Alonsi was killed in a military coup d'état by the northern military during his visit, and at the same time, the Igbo people living in the north were massacred by the army and the Hausa civilians in retaliation, killing at least 8,000-30,000 people in three months, and 1 million people fled to the south, after which the Igbo people were almost invisible in the north.
In response, the South also carried out massacres of non-Igbo.
In 1967, Lieutenant Colonel Ojuku, the military leader of the southern Igbo, declared independence and established the "Republic of Biafra", not intending to play with the Nigerian gang, and the Nigerian civil war broke out.
▲Soldiers transporting artillery shells during the Nigerian civil war in 1968
This was followed by a 30-month civil war between Nigeria and the Republic of Biafra, which was one of the largest humanitarian disasters in Africa since World War II, in which more than 1.5 million people were killed, most of them from starvation and disease.
Digression: After the fall of the Republic of Biafra, the restoration was announced on April 8, 2023, and a government-in-exile was established in the United States, and the IDF also issued certificates to them online.
▲ The red is the Republic of Biafra, and the green is the puppet state "Republic of Benin" supported after the occupation of Biafra, which only existed for 7 hours.
Although the civil war ended with the defeat and surrender of the Biafala Republic and its post-war reaccession to Nigeria, in the decades following the civil war, there were frequent coups in Nigeria, such as the two main commanders involved in the pacification of Biafa who became military dictators.
Between 1975 and 2000, eight presidents came to power, four of whom were deposed and one was assassinated, and the country was torn between democracy and military dictatorship, and even more so in unsuccessful coups.
▲A timeline of regime change in Nigeria
It was not until 1999, after 33 years of military rule in Nigeria, that the military junta voluntarily relinquished power, amended a series of constitutions, and reintroduced party elections and democracy into politics.
Today, Nigeria is divided into three levels of government: federal, state and local, and the country is divided into 1 Federal Capital Territory, 36 states and 774 local governments.
The federal republican form of government basically follows the example of the United States, realizing a system of separation of powers, and the president is directly elected by the referendum as the head of state and government for a term of four years, and can be re-elected at most once.
The powers of the President are regulated by the Nigerian Parliament, which is divided into the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Senate has 109 seats, 36 states have three seats each, and the Capital D.C. has one. The House of Representatives elects a percentage of delegates according to the number of people in each state, for a total of 360 seats. Members and deputies are elected by the people.
There are currently 18 registered political parties in Nigeria, with the main ones being the People's Democratic Party and the All Progressives Congress.
▲ The emblem of the two parties
People's Democratic Party: is a socially conservative political party in Nigeria that belongs to the center-right party. Between 1999 and 2011, the party won all presidential elections and is the oldest strong party in Nigeria.
All Progressive Congress Party: The party was formed in February 2013 as a result of an alliance of Nigeria's three major opposition parties: the Nigerian Action Congress, the Progressive Change Congress, and the All Nigeria People's Party, together with some members of the Comprehensive Progressive Grand Alliance, in an attempt to counter the then ruling People's Democratic Party.
In 2015, the All-Progressive Congress defeated the People's Democratic Party (PDP) to win the presidential election, marking the first time in Nigeria that an opposition party had successfully defeated the ruling party in a general election and achieved a peaceful transfer of state power (all of which were previously direct military coups).
President Mohamad Buhari has a lot to tell, he came to power in a coup d'état in 1983, was ousted by a coup d'état in 1985, and since then has run for many elections, and finally was re-elected president in 2015 and re-elected in 2019. In 2021, a tweet he posted warning about separatists in the country was officially deleted by Twitter, and the Nigerian government responded by banning Twitter from the country.
In 2023, the All Progressive Congress party won the general election again, with party member Bora Tinubu taking the presidency.
▲Nigeria's current president, Bora Tinubu
The richest man in blacks
Billionaire Alico Dangote, who was named "the richest man in Africa" and "the richest black man" by Forbes magazine, is a Nigerian with more than $10 billion. It is enough to see how high Nigeria's GDP is in Africa.
▲Alico Dangote, the richest man in Africa and the richest man in blacks, ranks 43rd in the world, mainly operating cement, oil, real estate and other businesses in Nigeria and its surroundings.
Nigeria is rich in natural resources, especially oil and gas.
Among them, the proven oil reserves rank second in Africa, the ninth in the world, the 15th in the world in oil production, the sixth in the world in oil exports, and the first in Africa and the tenth in the world in natural gas reserves.
▲Nigeria's export category is dominated by oil and natural gas
After Nigeria joined the "OPEC" (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) after the end of the civil war in 1971, it became the largest oil producer and exporter in Africa with oil exports as its main economic source, accounting for 98% of the total export income and 83% of the country's total income.
Relying on oil, Nigeria has not only become the first African country to repay in full about $30 billion in loans from the Paris Club (an international organization of 22 wealthy countries that acts as loan intermediaries). GDP has soared, rapidly approaching the middle-income standard, and in 2007 Nigeria was ranked 37th in the world.
▲The southern delta is full of dense oil fields
Nigeria has become the richest man in Africa in large part because of its oil sales. But it is not a blessing that such a large and once backward African country can have a huge amount of oil and rely on oil exports to develop.
Nigeria also has considerable natural endowments in agricultural production, with large tracts of fertile land and 68 million hectares of arable land. Its production of peanuts, cocoa, sorghum and many other agricultural products is in the leading position in the world, especially the annual output of cassava is 40 million tons, ranking first in the world.
With the rise of the oil industry, agriculture shrank rapidly and production plummeted. Nigeria's strategy of investing heavily in the agricultural sector has also led to a recovery in crop yields, growing at an average annual rate of more than 7 percent.
In 2021~2023, Nigeria's agriculture accounted for about 24% of the country's GDP, while sharing the labor market supply, and nearly 60% of the country's population was engaged in agricultural production.
However, at present, the Nigerian economy has obvious resource-driven characteristics, and there is a greater dependence on the oil industry, and changes in the oil market and oil price fluctuations have a greater impact on the economy.
▲The most prosperous city: Lagos, this blue light rail was built by a Chinese company
At the same time, poor infrastructure is also a major flaw in Nigeria. According to the Global Competitiveness Report released by the World Economic Forum, Nigeria's infrastructure indicators have remained around 130th among 141 economies in the world, and as the richest man in Africa, its infrastructure is still below the average of African countries.
The main traffic lifeline of Nigeria is roads, with a total length of more than 190,000 kilometers, which are responsible for almost 95% of the country's freight traffic and 96% of passenger traffic.
However, according to statistics, nearly 40% of the country's roads are in a state of disrepair and need to be repaired or rebuilt. Even in the capital, Abuja, the road conditions are not as good as those in China's third- and fourth-tier towns.
In the southeastern and northwestern parts of Nigeria, due to the impact of the rainy season and disrepair, the road conditions are generally poor, the road surface is seriously damaged, and the road condition of rural roads can be called extremely poor.
▲The third bridge in Nigeria crosses a slum where garbage is burned
On the other hand, Nigeria's electricity supply is similarly lagging behind, with 94% of the country's population already connected to the grid, but only half of the population has a record of electricity use, only 1% of respondents say they have access to electricity 24 hours a day, and most say they cannot afford to pay the high electricity bills. Many people buy their own generators or solar power.
The backward level of infrastructure construction and the gap between the rich and the poor caused by the high proportion of oil have become a major bottleneck restricting Nigeria's economic and social development.
Nigeria's military
According to the well-known website "Global Firepower", Nigeria's military strength can currently rank fourth in Africa and 36th in the world.
Nigeria has actively participated in various foreign operations and United Nations peacekeeping missions, including in Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Somalia.
In 1990, he led the multinational forces of the West Africa Monitoring Group to intervene in the civil war in Liberia, and in 2004, he led the African Union troops to deploy to Sudan and Mali.
▲ The area where Boko Haram extremists are located (black)
In recent decades, there has been an armed insurgency in northern Nigeria linked to ISIS extremist terrorists, with repeated attacks on government facilities, suicide bombings, or kidnappings to massacre civilians. In 2017, they also attacked a convoy of U.S. and Nepalese troops, killing four U.S. "Green Berets".
▲The camera on the head of the US special forces filmed the entire battle-death process, which shocked the world after it was made public by extremists
▲ After the U.S. special forces fell to the ground, they were re-gunned and bleeding all over the ground
In order to eradicate this group of extremists, Nigeria has increased its military spending in recent years, and its defense budget in 2023 is close to 4 billion US dollars, significantly ahead of South Africa, Algeria and other countries. In the past two years, Nigeria has begun to vigorously encircle and suppress "Boko Haram", and has achieved certain results, at least 40,000 people have been exterminated in 2022.
The Nigerian Armed Forces (SAF) consists of the Army, Navy and Air Force, the Joint Task Force, the Militia and the Reserve, with a total strength of approximately 193,000 troops. A system of voluntary military service is introduced, and conscription is carried out once a year.
▲The insignia of the Nigerian Army, Navy and Air Force
The weapons of the three armed forces of Nigeria belong to the international brand, and most of them are weapons of the Cold War period, which are old and outdated, and the relatively cutting-edge weapons are basically imported from China in recent years.
For example, the army has just arrived with more than 30 VT-4 main battle tanks, a batch of SH-1, SH-5, and SH-2 truck guns, and more than 100 CS/VP3 mine-protected anti-ambush vehicles and Dongfeng CSk131 armored vehicles.
▲LG3 grenade launcher from NORINCO
▲ All heavy armored vehicles from China
The Nigerian Navy has 75 warships, most of which are patrol boats, and is ranked as the fifth strongest in Africa. The three largest warships of the Navy, one launched by Germany in 1980 and two launched by the United States in 1967, are all very old warships, and the newer ships are two P18N frigates exported by China in 2015 (056 foreign trade version).
▲ Chinese-made P18N frigate
The Nigerian Air Force has more than 30 main fighters. Except for the 9 old J-7s, the rest are trainer aircraft or "Super Tucano" propeller attack aircraft, and the real air workforce is China's 3 JF-17 "Thunder".
▲Nigeria's Thunder fighter
It is worth mentioning that Nigeria is also considered to be one of the strongest countries on the African continent with drone capabilities. In addition to purchasing a large number of "Orion" UAVs from France to carry out reconnaissance patrols and early warning surveillance and other tasks, the Nigerian Air Force has received at least 5 "Pterodactyl-2" combat UAVs and 6 Rainbow series UAVs from China, which have repeatedly achieved miraculous results in striking terrorists in the territory.
▲Nigerian Air Force and Rainbow UAV
▲ Nigeria used the Pterodactyl-2 air attack on "Boko Haram", blowing up dozens of people with one shot
It is not difficult to see that Nigeria's military equipment is quite sinicized.
In fact, since the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Nigeria on February 10, 1971, bilateral relations have been developing smoothly. In 2005, the heads of state of China and Nepal reached a consensus on the establishment of a strategic partnership between the two sides.
In a 2017 survey of 16 countries and the European Union's influence around the world, 83 percent of Nigerians had a positive view of China, even more than Pakistan, which is known as the "Pakistan Railway".
In 2023, China has become Nigeria's largest trading partner, and I hope that in the future, China and Nepal will continue to deepen exchanges and continue to carry out more cooperation in the political, economic and cultural fields that will benefit the two peoples.
Today, in Nigeria, high-rise buildings are rising with the help of China's infrastructure, railways and highways have been paved, and hydropower stations, power plants and airports are being built in the hands of Chinese companies. In the future, Nigeria's infrastructure will gradually improve, and I believe that the country's development prospects will be better.
Finally, I would like to ask you a question: if you were the president of Nigeria, how would you operate to make it bigger and stronger?