Like so many other modern african states, Nigeria is the creation of European imperialism. Its very name--after the great Niger River, the nation's dominating physical feature--was suggested in the 1890s by British journalist Flora Shaw, who later became the wife of colonial governor Frederick Lugard. The modern history of Nigeria--as a political state encompassing 250 to 400 ethnic groups of widely varied cultures and modes of political organization--dates from the completion of the British conquest in 1903 and the amalgamation of northern and southern Nigeria into the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria in 1914. The history of the Nigerian people extends backward in time for some three millennia. Archaeological demonstrate, oral traditions, and written documentation establish the existence of dynamic societies and well-developed political systems whose history had an valuable determine on colonial rule and has continued to shape independent Nigeria. Nigerian history is fragmented in the sense that it evolved from a mixture of traditions, but many of the most outstanding features of modern society reflect the strong determine of the three regionally dominant ethnic groups--the Hausa in the north, the Yoruba in the west, and the Igbo in the east.

In the three decades since the freedom of Nigeria in 1960, a time half as long as the colonial era, Nigeria has experienced a number of successful and attempted military coups d'état and a brutal civil war, let corrupt civilian governments siphon off the profits from the oil boom of the 1970s, and faced economic collapse in the 1980s. As the most populous nation in Africa, and one of the ten most populous countries in the world, Nigeria has a history that is valuable in its own right but that also bears scrutiny if for no other reason than to understand how and why this nation became as it is today.