A dugout canoe found at Dufuna in Yobe State in 1987 is more than 8,000 years old, making it one of the oldest known boats in Africa.
The Nok culture of central Nigeria produced life-size terracotta figures more than two thousand years ago, among the earliest large sculptures known south of the Sahara.
Bronzes found at Igbo-Ukwu in Anambra State, first uncovered in 1938 and later excavated by Thurstan Shaw, date to about the 9th century and show highly skilled lost-wax casting, thought to be linked to ritual kingship.
Centred on Lake Chad and later Borno, Kanem-Bornu lasted roughly a thousand years, making it one of the longest-lived states in African history.
The Nri Kingdom of the Igbo heartland was a ritual state whose ruler, the Eze Nri, held religious authority over neighbouring communities; Nri tradition places its origin around the 10th century.
Ile-Ife is regarded in Yoruba tradition as the origin of the Yoruba people. Its naturalistic heads in brass, copper and terracotta date to roughly the 12th to 15th centuries and rank among the finest works of medieval African art.
The Benin court produced brass plaques and cast heads that rank among Africa's finest art. British forces looted thousands of pieces in 1897, and since 2022 several institutions in Europe and the US have begun returning items.
Kano, Katsina and Zazzau (Zaria) grew rich on trans-Saharan trade in leather, dyed cloth and kola, and became centres of Islamic scholarship.
Old Oyo rose from the savanna edge with a cavalry-based army and dominated much of Yorubaland and neighbouring kingdoms until the early 19th century. Its capital Oyo-Ile fell to Ilorin forces around 1835, and the Alaafin's court later settled at present-day Oyo, while new powers such as Ibadan and Abeokuta rose in the Yoruba wars that followed.
Long before 1900 the land was a patchwork of powerful states: Oyo, Ife, Benin, Nri, Kanem-Bornu, the Hausa city-states, the Jukun Kwararafa confederacy, the Sokoto Caliphate and many more.
Benin City's walls and moats and Sungbo's Eredo near Ijebu-Ode are among the largest pre-mechanical earthworks in the world.
The Bights of Benin and Biafra were among the main embarkation regions of the Atlantic slave trade, and ports such as Badagry and Calabar are now memorial and heritage sites.
Usman dan Fodio's jihad of 1804 created the Sokoto Caliphate, one of the largest states in 19th-century Africa, whose Sultan remains a leading Muslim authority today.
Britain annexed Lagos in 1861 and chartered the Royal Niger Company in 1886, then conquered Benin (1897), the Aro (1901-02) and the Sokoto Caliphate (1903) before merging its territories in 1914.
The name Nigeria was proposed in 1897 by the British journalist Flora Shaw, after the Niger River.
On 1 January 1914 Frederick Lugard merged the Northern and Southern Protectorates into a single colony and protectorate of Nigeria.
Herbert Macaulay founded Nigeria's first political party in 1923, and later leaders such as Nnamdi Azikiwe, Obafemi Awolowo and Ahmadu Bello drove the road to independence.
Thousands of Igbo and Ibibio women protested British taxation and the warrant-chief system in 1929, one of the most significant anti-colonial movements in West Africa.
Nigeria became independent on 1 October 1960 and a republic in 1963.
The Nigerian Civil War of 1967-70 followed the declaration of the Republic of Biafra in the south-east and ended in January 1970. The federal government's post-war policy was summed up as 'no victor, no vanquished'.
Nigeria grew from three regions to 12 states in 1967, then 19 (1976), 21 (1987), 30 (1991) and 36 (1996), plus the Federal Capital Territory.
Oil revenues surged after the 1973 price rise, transforming public spending and shaping the economy for decades.
Nigeria's first coup came on 15 January 1966, and military governments ruled for most of the period until 1999, broken by the Second Republic of 1979-83 under President Shehu Shagari.
The federal capital moved from Lagos to the purpose-built city of Abuja on 12 December 1991.
The presidential election of 12 June 1993, widely regarded as one of Nigeria's freest, was annulled by the military government, and MKO Abiola is widely believed to have won it. June 12 has been marked as Democracy Day since 2019.
Democratic rule returned on 29 May 1999 under Olusegun Obasanjo. Later milestones include the first handover between elected civilians in 2007, the first defeat of a sitting president at the polls in 2015, and Bola Tinubu succeeding Muhammadu Buhari in 2023.
Since 2009 an insurgency by Boko Haram and its offshoot ISWAP has devastated parts of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa, displacing millions of people.
In October 2020 youth-led protests against police brutality, centred on Lagos, spread across the country and became one of Nigeria's largest modern protest movements.
A 2014 rebasing of Nigeria's GDP made it Africa's largest economy at the time.
NaijaAtlasMinerals · Ecosystems · Power · Lakes & Ports