Nigeria: Economic Beacon of West Africa Quiz

Answer: Nigeria We Hail Thee

'Nigeria We Hail Thee' was the first post-independence national anthem adopted in 1960. It was replaced in 1978 following a national competition. The lyrics of the newer anthem are a compilation of words and phrases taken from the best five submissions to the competition.

Answer: Nok

The Nok civilisation existed in what is now Kaduna state in central Nigeria between 1000 BC and 200 AD, after which it seems to have disappeared. It was a sophisticated farming community of between 2000-4000 people who began smelting iron by 500 BC to make tools.

The discovery of Nok statues, depicting humans and animals, was first made by Europeans mining for tin in the area in 1928. These terracotta statues are remarkable for their detail, including in some cases the depiction of physical deformities and the ravages of disease.

The purpose the statues were made for is unclear, though it seems possible they were used as part of the burial process or to ward off misfortunes such as crop failure or infertility.

Answer: Abuja

The decision to relocate the capital away from the Yoruba-dominated southwest where Lagos is situated, to a more central location, was taken at the time of Nigeria's independence from Britain in 1960. However, it was not until the late 1980s that building work on this new planned capital began.

The city, which forms the core of Nigeria's Federal Capital Territory, became the country's new capital on 12th December 1991. In 2006, Abuja's metropolitan population was 778,507, although parts of the city and surrounding areas were growing at more than 25% each year - and the development of several shanty towns around Abuja led to the beginning of an eviction campaign by government of tens of thousands of residents from 2003.

Answer: Fulani/Hausa

There are more than 250 ethnic groups in Nigeria, leading frequently to intense rivalries and conflict, but the three major groups are the Fulani/Hausa (traditionally occupying the north of the country), the Yoruba (west) and Igbo (southeast) - between them comprising two-thirds of the population. Unlike the predominantly Christian Igbo and mixed Christian/Muslim Yoruba, the Fulani/Hausa are devoutly Muslim and Sharia law is the pre-eminent legal code in the north.

The Fulani/Hausa occupy the semi-arid Sahel region of Nigeria and have close links to Muslim Arab peoples in North and East Africa.

Despite being probably the smallest of these three major ethnic groups in Nigeria (though still well in excess of 20 million), the Fulani/Hausa have been the dominant political force in Nigeria since the civil war at the end of the 1960s.

Answer: Eko

At the time of the exploration of West Africa by Portuguese sailors in the late 15th century, Lagos was a settlement of Awori people of the Yoruba ethnic group living on islands and around the creeks of the lagoon. Lagos means 'lakes' in Portuguese. The British declared Lagos the capital of their Nigerian colony in 1914 and it remained so after independence in 1960 and until 1991.

It is the second largest city in Africa (after Cairo) and, although population figures are disputed, the metropolitan Lagos area was believed to number well over 15 million during the first decade of the 21st century.

The city's main port is in the Apapa district, and its international airport is in the northern suburb of Ikeja - both of which districts I lived and went to school in while I was there in the 1960s.

Answer: Borno

Borno in the far northeast of Nigeria, with the state capital at Maiduguri, has an 87-kilometre border with Chad as well as boundaries with Niger and Cameroon. Crucially, Borno's territory forms part of the Lake Chad Basin, which Nigeria's Yobe River feeds into (and once included part of the massively shrinking lake itself). Lake Chad, a vital water source for four African countries including Nigeria, had shrunk from its 1960 size of 26,000 square kilometres to approximately 1,350 square kilometres by 2008. Water extraction by local communities and global climate change are the two major factors in this ecological disaster that could see the lake disappear before the end of the 21st century.

Answer: Chappal Waddi

Chappal Waddi (2,409m) is a mountain located in the Gashaka Forest Park in Taraba state, in the southeast of Nigeria, close to the border with Cameroon. Most of Nigeria's mountainous terrain, including the Shebshi and Mandara mountain ranges, runs along the eastern border with Cameroon.

In the south of Nigeria the terrain is primarily coastal plains, rivers and deltas, mangrove swamps and tropical rainforest, leading to the Jos Plateau in the centre of the country, while in the north the semi-arid grasslands of the Sahel (stretching the width of Africa from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea) mark the transition to the Sahara desert further north.

Answer: Oil and petroleum

All these sectors are significant elements in a Nigerian economy which has been rapidly growing for decades. In 2006, Nigeria became the first African nation to completely repay its debt ($30 billion) to the 'Paris club' of wealthy nations' creditors. Nigeria is one of the largest petroleum producers in the world, including being a major oil exporter to the USA.

A downside has been the severe environmental degradation of the Niger Delta where the bulk of oil reserves are located. In November 1995, leading Nigerian playwright Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other campaigners from the local Ogoni people were hanged by the military government after a show trial in connection with protest activities directed against the oil company Shell and economic exploitation of the Ogoni.

In 2009, Shell made a $15.5 million out-of-court payment to relatives in a case concerning human rights violations, while denying allegations that any of its employees had colluded in Saro-Wiwa's conviction and execution.

Answer: Chinua Achebe

Albert Chinualumogu (Chinua) Achebe was born in 1930 in Ogidi village in the Igbo region of southeastern Nigeria. His first and best known novel "Things Fall Apart", a story of life in Igbo society, has been translated into 50 languages. As a member of the Igbo people he supported the call for a separate Biafran nation during the 1967-70 civil war and travelled internationally as an ambassador highlighting the people's suffering through war and starvation (an estimated one million Igbo died during this period).

His later novels include "No Longer at Ease" and "Arrow of God". Of equal stature is the Yoruba writer Wole Soyinka, a Nobel Literature winner in 1986. For criticising the war against Biafra in 1967, he was imprisoned for nearly two years by General Yakubu Gowon's military junta.

His later criticism of the military regime of General Sani Abacha in the 1990s led to him being sentenced to death 'in absentia'.

Answer: Miss World beauty pageant

Young fashion journalist Isioma Daniel, writing in the Lagos-based newspaper 'Thisday' on 16th November 2002, made a joke about the pageant, referencing the Prophet Mohammad. Riots broke out in response, in Kaduna - a city already polarised between its Christian and Muslim populations - and subsequently in Abuja, leading to the pageant being relocated to London.

As well as the dead and injured, churches, mosques and the Kaduna offices of 'Thisday' were burned and 11,000 were left homeless. The government of neighbouring Zamfara state issued a fatwa (sentence of death) against Isioma Daniel who fled to Norway. Further controversy accompanied the Miss World pageant even in London, where a large number of countries and contestants boycotted the competition in protest at the death sentence by stoning imposed by a Sharia court in Katsina state against Amina Lawal, a woman accused of adultery and having a child out of wedlock (the verdict was later overturned).