Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0262/02626.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 35KB | 568 lines

$Unique_ID{COW02626}
$Pretitle{357}
$Title{Nigeria
Chapter 2A.   The Society and Its Environment}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Robert Rinehart}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{area
population
ethnic
river
plains
groups
meters
states
north
northern}
$Date{1981}
$Log{Statue of Oya*0262601.scf
Figure 14.*0262602.scf
Modern National Theatre*0262603.scf
}
Country:     Nigeria
Book:        Nigeria, A Country Study
Author:      Robert Rinehart
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1981

Chapter 2A.   The Society and Its Environment

[See Statue of Oya: Traditional goddess of rivers and a wife of Shango,
legendary founder of the Yoruba nation]

     Nigeria's sheer size and heterogeneity-physical, social, religious, and
linguistic-and the change that it continues to undergo make the contours and
structures of its society difficult to define. Its large population-probably
more than 80 million in 1980-is distributed in varying densities over land
characterized by a range of features-from rain forest to several kinds of
savanna to the semiarid Sahel. Nigerians speak well over 300 languages (many
with dialects) and are divided into nearly as many ethnic groups, the more
important of which comprise numbers of subgroups. The relevance of these
subethnic entities to the lives and loyalties of their members is usually
greater than that of the more comprehensive ethnolinguistic categories. The
largest of these categories are the Hausa, Yoruba, and Ibo, together
constituting roughly 60 percent of the population. These more inclusive
entities have played a considerable role in the ordering of political and
social relations, but they are not so much primordial groups, ancient and
permanently formed, as emergents in the course of historic political,
economic, and social competition.

     Sometimes cutting across and sometimes supporting other cultural and
social ties are the religious affiliations and commitments of Nigerians. A
little less than half the people are professed Muslims-chiefly Sunni. Included
are most Hausa, other important groups in northern and middle Nigeria, and
roughly half the Yoruba. The identification with Islam is important to all of
these people, but the range of conformity to orthodox Islam varies
considerably as does the place of indigenous elements in their religious
thought and ritual. Professed Christians constitute roughly 35 percent of the
population-half the Yoruba, a substantial portion of the Ibo, and other groups
in the south and in the middle of Nigeria. Here also the range of commitment,
belief, and practice varies from full espousal of the form and content of the
historic mission-related denominations to deep involvement in the pentecostal
churches that have flowered in the twentieth century. Those who adhere fully
to indigenous religions are a minority, but the world views generally
characteristic of such religions also inform popular Islam and Christianity.

     During the colonial period Nigeria's ethnic and subethnic groupings came
to be identified with differences in wealth, status, and power. This
perception bore some resemblance to the distribution of the society's rewards,
but internal differences within each ethnic group were substantial and became
greater as independence neared and arrived. By that time an elite based in
good part on command of education had emerged and gained access to positions
in government, public corporations, and large-scale-often
foreign-owned-private enterprises. Nigeria's relatively open economy also
permitted the rise of a group of wealthy businessmen, chiefly in the
commercial and services sector. An exception to the allocation of status and
power based on education and enterprise was the ruling aristocracy in the
northern emirates that dominated the Northern Region (later the northern
states). In all but a few cases this aristocracy was of Fulani origin and
Muslim (as were the Hausa over whom it ruled). Its members have by and large
adapted to the new order, acquiring the necessary education in many cases and
bringing nonaristocrats with Western skills and wealth into the modern ruling
class. However this aristocracy has not retired to a purely traditional
status.

     Despite coups, countercoups, and political rearrangements, this
heterogeneous class and the social and economic order it rules have persisted.
The members of the class may be said to share only a wish to remain at the top
of the social, economic, and political hierarchies and a corresponding
reluctance to preside over revolutionary change in the socioeconomic order.
They do not care to diminish social mobility, if only because the expectation
of mobility reduces the likelihood of violently expressed dissatisfactions.
Within the class, interests, life-styles, and social bases differ. Whether
these differences may overshadow their common interests cannot be foreseen.

     Most Nigerians, though divisible by occupation and income into
socioeconomic strata, show few signs of sustained class consciousness. Three
quarters are still farmers, although some also trade or engage in local
crafts. They tend to be oriented to local (ethnic) or provincial notions of
status. If they are disturbed by the behavior of governments or bureaucrats,
they react to the immediate local problem and do not demonstrate a
pan-Nigerian peasant consciousness. The much smaller urban working class may
be said to have a similar short-run perspective. If they have a longer run
approach, it is-with some exceptions-to abandon wage earning and go into
business for themselves. Some skilled workers and others long committed to
urban life may see wage work as permanent and themselves as part of a working
class.

The Physical Setting

     Nigeria, easternmost of the countries that face the Gulf of Guinea in
the West African bulge, lies only a few degrees above the equator (see fig.
1). The country has a total area of 923,768 kilometers. The greatest
east-to-west distance is somewhat over 1,120 kilometers, and the north-south
distance is about 1,040 kilometers. The outstanding geographic feature is the
basin of the Niger and Benue rivers, running east and west through the center
of the country. The two rivers join and flow south to the Bight of Biafra.

Geographic Regions

     Distinguishable geographic divisions stretch in generally east-west zones
across the country. A low coastal zone characterizes the far south. North of
this zone lies an area of hills and low plateaus. Through the middle of the
country extends the great valley of the Niger and Benue rivers. Beyond it to
the country's northern border is a broad plateau. Along the eastern border is
found a distinct zone of mountainous country.

     Within these general divisions, geographic regions are demarcated by
differences in landforms, drainage patterns, and variations in natural
vegetation (see fig. 12). Generally, vegetation zones depend upon rainfall,
and the density and height of trees and grasses vary with it, diminishing from
south to north as rainfall declines (see fig. 13).

     The Low Plains are bordered on the Gulf of Guinea by a stretch of often
swampy land interspersed with lagoons and creeks. The outer edge of the
coast consists of sand spits in the west that change to mud as the coast nears
the Niger delta. Behind the spits and lagoons, creeks form a continuous
waterway from the western border to the Niger delta. On the mainland many
smaller rivers lost themselves in the freshwater swamps that line the northern
edges of the lagoons. The only major opening to the gulf is at Lagos, the
capital.

     The plains rise gently northward from below 180 meters to altitudes up
to 300 meters. To the south they are heavily forested and dissected, and
erosion has produced low, relatively flat-topped hills. The area in the north
is suitable for cocoa cultivation (see Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries,
ch. 3). In Bendel State the land consists of a sandy coastal plain with
gentle slopes and low elevations. The central an