MAPS OF HISTORY · HISTORY OF · Nigeria

ONE LAND · 3 ATLASES

Nigeria, on the map of history

What was Nigeria before it was Nigeria? Below, every era of this land in the Maps of History collection — who ruled it, what it was called, and when control changed — each line linked to the dated map that shows it. Modern borders stand in as an honest approximation; every atlas says so on the map itself.

Nigeria · The Great War, 1914–1918

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Nigeria · The Cold War, 1945–1991

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Nigeria · The Decolonization of Africa, 1945–1994

The most populous nation in Africa — a British-built federation of three great regions and some 250 peoples — became independent on 1 October 1960, the continent’s great federal experiment. Within six years the same regional fault lines cracked into two coups, anti-Igbo pogroms, and the Biafran secession and war, in which perhaps a million died, mostly of famine. Oil wealth and enormous scale made Nigeria both Africa’s giant and its hardest balancing act.

OPEN THE DECOLONIZATION OF AFRICA ON THE LIVING MAP →