Thursday, 28th March 2024
To guardian.ng
Search
Breaking News:

9 Things You Probably Did Not Know About Nigeria

By Makale Sakoh
07 January 2016   |   4:00 pm
Patriotic Nigerians all over the world, here are 9 things you probably did not know about your beloved country Nigeria. Although Nigeria is always the hot topic of the day, she has some interesting history and facts we should familiarize ourselves with. Did you know that……………… 1.Nigeria is home to seven percent (7%) of the…

landmarks

Patriotic Nigerians all over the world, here are 9 things you probably did not know about your beloved country Nigeria. Although Nigeria is always the hot topic of the day, she has some interesting history and facts we should familiarize ourselves with.

Did you know that………………

1.Nigeria is home to seven percent (7%) of the total languages spoken on earth. Taraba state alone has more languages than 30 African countries.

2. The National Youth Service Corps was established by the decree No.24 of 22nd of May,1973, during the military regime of General Yakubu Gowon.

nysc-lifemag

3. The Nigerian civil war/ Biafran war lasted for 2 years, 6 months, 1 week and 2days (6th of July, 1967 to 15th of January, 1970).

 

4. The Nigerian National flag designed by Micheal Taiwo Akinkumi in 1959, originally have a red quarter sun on the white part as a symbol of divine protection and guidance, but this was removed by the committee.

 

5. The Walls of Benin (800-1400AD), in present day Edo State, are the longest ancient earthworks in the world. They enclose 6500 square kilometers of community lands that connected about 500 communities and is over 16000 km long.

Wall-of-Benin

6. Ile-Ife, was paved as early as 1000AD, with decorations that originated from Ancient America suggesting there might have been contact between the Yorubas and the Ancient Americans half a millenium before Columbus ‘discovered’ America.

 

7. The Niger Delta  is the second largest delta on the planet. It also has the highest concentration of monotypic fish families in the world, and is also home to sixty percent of Nigeria’s mangrove forests. Nigeria’s mangrove forests are the largest in Africa and third largest on earth.

 

8. Sungbo’s Eredo, a 160 km rampart equipped with guard houses and moats, is reputed to be the largest single pre-colonial monument in Africa. It is located in present-day Ijebu-Ode, Ogun State and when it was built a millennium ago it required more earth to be moved during construction than that used for building the Great Pyramid of Giza (one of the Seven Wonders of The Ancient World). The most astonishing thing is that Sungbo’s Eredo was the biggest city in the world (bigger than Rome and Cairo) during the Middle Ages when it was built!

TO GO WITH AFP STORY BY MIKE SMITH Green vegetations devastated as a result of spills from oil theives at Nembe Creek in Niger Delta on March 22, 2013. Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC) has threatened to shut down production in April for nine days in the entire Nembe Creek Truck Line (NCTL) to remove a number of bunkering points on pipelines vandalised by oil thieves in the region. "Whenever we observe a spill, or have a spill on our lines, we shut down production to depressurize and isolate the line, only then can we safely repare our lines because it is then safe to manipulate the line", said Jurgen Jonzen, SPDC corporate pipeline asset manager. Last year, 157 bunkering points were removed and 116 were leaking on the whole SPDC exploitation. Since 2009, SPDC has exprienced an upsurge in vandalisation of pipeline network by criminals causing severe environmental devastation of the region and forcing the company to lose 60 000 barrels daily this year.  AFP PHOTO / PIUS UTOMI EKPEIPIUS UTOMI EKPEI/AFP/Getty Images

9. Nigeria boasts of being  the most habitable place for ‘Butterflies’. It is widely believed that areas surrounding Calabar, Cross River in the Southern part of Nigeria is home to the world’s largest diversity of butterflies.

Now you have some historical monuments to visit as a tourist and facts about some of Nigeria’s government, politics and culture.

 

0 Comments