After Nigeria gained independence from Britain in 1960, its key constitutional question was the relationship between the central government and its ethnically distinct regions (see Map 31.5). Under the federal system created after independence, each region had a dominant ethnic group and a corresponding political party. After independence Nigeria’s ethnic rivalries intensified, and in 1967 they erupted in the Biafran war in which the Igbo ethnic group in southeastern Nigeria fought unsuccessfully to form a separate nation. The war lasted three years and resulted in famine that left millions dead.

The wealth generated by oil exports in the 1970s had contradictory effects on Nigerian society. On one hand, a succession of military leaders who held power after a 1966 coup grew increasingly corrupt throughout the 1970s. On the other hand, oil wealth allowed the country to rebuild after the Biafran war. By the mid-1970s Nigeria had the largest middle and professional classes on the continent outside of South Africa. Nigeria’s oil boom in the 1970s resembled Mexico’s experience: the expectation of future riches led to growing indebtedness, and when global demand and oil prices collapsed amid the global recession of the early 1980s, Nigeria faced a corrosive debt crisis.

Oil wealth allowed Nigeria to develop one innovative solution to its ethnic divisions: the construction of a modernist new capital, Abuja, modeled on Brazil’s project in Brasília (see “Populism in Argentina and Brazil” in Chapter 31). Located in the center of the country at the confluence of major regional and ethnic boundaries, Abuja symbolized equal representation in government. Residential areas in the new city were divided by ethnicity, but shopping and services were located between them to encourage commingling.

Except for an early period of civilian rule, Muslim army officers ruled Nigeria until 1998, when the brutal military dictator General Sani Abacha suddenly died. Nigerians adopted a new constitution in 1999, and that same year they voted in free elections and re-established civilian rule. Elections in 2003 ended thirty-three years of military rule. Nonetheless, ethnic tensions remained. Since 2000 ethnic riots have left thousands dead in the predominantly Muslim northern Nigerian states.