The Federal Republic of Nigeria, usually referred to as Nigeria, is a federal republic in West Africa, bordering Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in the north. Its coastline in the south lies on the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean. 

It contains 36 states and the Federal Funds Territory, where by the capital, Abuja is found. Nigeria is officially a democratic secular place.

Nigeria has been house to a selection of kingdoms and tribal states about the millennia. The modern day condition originated from British colonial rule starting in the nineteenth century, and took its existing territorial shape with the merging of the Southern Nigeria Protectorate and Northern Nigeria Protectorate in 1914. 

The British established up administrative and legal buildings while practising oblique rule through traditional chiefdoms. Nigeria grew to become a formally impartial federation in 1960. It seasoned a civil war from 1967 to 1970. 

It thereafter alternated involving democratically elected civilian governments and military services dictatorships until finally it achieved a steady democracy in 1999, with the 2011 presidential election regarded the very first to be reasonably absolutely free and good.

Nigeria is typically referred to as the "Huge of Africa", owing to its massive inhabitants and financial state. With 186 million inhabitants, Nigeria is the most populous region in Africa and the seventh most populous region in the globe. 

Nigeria has the 3rd-premier youth populace in the environment, right after India and China, with extra than 90 million of its inhabitants below age 18. The state is viewed as a multinational point out as it is inhabited by more than five hundred ethnic groups, of which the three largest are the Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba these ethnic groups speak in excess of five hundred unique languages and are discovered with a wide variety of cultures.

The official language is English. Nigeria is divided roughly in 50 % involving Christians, who stay mostly in the southern element of the place, and Muslims, who stay primarily in the north. A minority of the inhabitants practise religions indigenous to Nigeria, such as those indigenous to the Igbo and Yoruba ethnicities.

Nigeria, an African region on the Gulf of Guinea, has a lot of natural landmarks and wildlife reserves. Guarded regions these types of as Cross River Countrywide Park and Yankari Countrywide Park have waterfalls, dense rainforest, savanna and uncommon primate habitats. 

A single of the most recognizable websites is Zuma Rock, a 725m-tall monolith outside the house the cash of Abuja that’s pictured on the national forex.