Niger

Coordinates: 16°N 8°E / 16°N 8°E / 16; 8

Niger (ⁱ/ˈnaɪdʒər/ or /niːˈʒɛər/;French: [niʒɛʁ]), officially the Republic of Niger, is a landlocked country in Western Africa, named after the Niger River. Niger is bordered by Libya to the northeast, Chad to the east, Nigeria and Benin to the south, Burkina Faso and Mali to the west, and Algeria to the northwest. Niger covers a land area of almost 1,270,000 km², making it the largest country in West Africa, with over 80 percent of its land area covered by the Sahara Desert. The country's predominantly Islamic population of 17,138,707 is mostly clustered in the far south and west of the country. The capital city is Niamey, located in the far-southwest corner of Niger.

Niger is a developing country, and is consistently one of the lowest-ranked in the United Nations' Human Development Index (HDI); it was ranked last at 187th for 2013. Much of the non-desert portions of the country are threatened by periodic drought and desertification. The economy is concentrated around subsistence and some export agriculture clustered in the more fertile south, and the export of raw materials, especially uranium ore. Niger faces serious challenges to development due to its landlocked position, desert terrain, high fertility rates and resulting overpopulation without birth control, poor education and poverty of its people, lack of infrastructure, poor health care, and environmental degradation.

Boko Haram

Boko Haram, referred to by themselves as Wilāyat Gharb Ifrīqīyyah (Arabic: الولاية الإسلامية غرب أفريقيا‎, (Islamic State West Africa Province, ISWAP), and Jamā'at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Da'wah wa'l-Jihād (Arabic: جماعة أهل السنة للدعوة والجهاد‎, "Group of the People of Sunnah for Preaching and Jihad"), is an Islamic extremist group based in northeastern Nigeria, also active in Chad, Niger and northern Cameroon. The group's leader is Abubakar Shekau. The group had alleged links to al-Qaeda, but in March 2015, it announced its allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Since the current insurgency started in 2009, it has killed 20,000 and displaced 2.3 million from their homes.

After its founding in 2002, Boko Haram's increasing radicalization led to a violent uprising in July 2009 in which its leader was summarily executed. Its unexpected resurgence, following a mass prison break in September 2010, was accompanied by increasingly sophisticated attacks, initially against soft targets, and progressing in 2011 to include suicide bombings of police buildings and the United Nations office in Abuja. The government's establishment of a state of emergency at the beginning of 2012, extended in the following year to cover the entire northeast of Nigeria, led to an increase in both security force abuses and militant attacks.

Niger Delta

The Niger Delta is the delta of the Niger River at the Gulf of Guinea on the Atlantic Ocean in Nigeria.

It is a very densely populated region sometimes called the Oil Rivers because it was once a major producer of palm oil. The area was the British Oil Rivers Protectorate from 1885 until 1893, when it was expanded and became the Niger Coast Protectorate. The delta is an oil-rich region, and has been the centre of international controversy over pollution, corruption (notably by the Abacha regime), and human rights violations.

Geography

The Niger Delta, as now defined officially by the Nigerian government, extends over about 70,000 km² (27,000 sq mi) and makes up 7.5% of Nigeria's land mass. Historically and cartographically, it consists of present-day Bayelsa, Delta, and Rivers States. In 2000, however, Obasanjo's regime included Abia, Akwa-Ibom, Cross River State, Edo, Imo and Ondo States in the region. Some 31 million people of more than 40 ethnic groups including the Bini, Efik, Esan, Ibibio, Igbo, Annang, Oron, Ijaw, Itsekiri, Yoruba, Isoko, Urhobo, Ukwuani, Kalabari and Ogoni, are among the inhabitants in the Niger Delta, speaking about 250 different dialects.

Nigeria

The Federal Republic of Nigeria, commonly referred to as Nigeria ⁱ/naɪˈdʒɪəriə/, is a federal constitutional republic in West Africa, bordering Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in the north. Its coast in the south lies on the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean. It comprises 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, where the capital, Abuja is located. Nigeria is officially a democratic secular country.

Modern-day Nigeria has been the site of numerous kingdoms and tribal states over the millennia. The modern state originated from British colonial rule beginning in the 19th century, and the merging of the Southern Nigeria Protectorate and Northern Nigeria Protectorate in 1914. The British set up administrative and legal structures whilst practising indirect rule through traditional chiefdoms. Nigeria became a formally independent federation in 1960, and plunged into a civil war from 1967 to 1970. It has since alternated between democratically-elected civilian governments and military dictatorships, until it achieved a stable democracy in 1999, with its 2011 presidential elections being viewed as the first to be conducted reasonably freely and fairly.