Nigeria in Africa: Foreign Polocy and Areas of Cooperation.

A description of Nigeria is necessary partly to situate the context of this discussion and partly to enlighten our distinguished audience about the responsibility of Nigeria within the continent. Nigeria, with a landmass of 923.769 km², is a multiethnic, multicultural, multilingual and multireligious society. It is a federation whose constituent units were changed in number from three at independence in 1960 to four by 1963. Under military regimes in the periods 1966-1979 and 1984-1999, the units were incrased from four to twelve states in 1967, to 21 in 1987, to 30 in 1991 and to the present 36 states in 1996. There are 774 local government areas and federal capital territories in Abuja. At present, it has an estimated population of 130 million people comprising about 350 distinct ethnic groups. Nigeria is a predominant youthful and excitable population, given that about 60% of its total population is under 20 years old with a gender ration of 48:52 male to female espectively. Furthermore, about 25% of the total population lives in urban areas, while a much higher percentage is actively mobile which may have resulted in an increasingly highly rural-urban migration. An interestging observation of the diverssityt of Nigeria can be gleaned from the spread of her dominant languages. It is a fact that over 400 languages are spoken within here border, and two of the dominant languages have a spread beyond the Nigerian orders by others nationals - Hausa, is spoken in seven other African coubtriues, while Yoruba, is spoken in four African countries as well as in Brazil, The Caribbean and Haiti. Nigeria's population of 130 million people means that one in every four African is a Nigerian, thus making it easy formany other Africans to fake Nigerian citizenship, especially for illegal purposes. It is the fact that Nigeria is a home to the highest concentration of Christian and muslim faithful than anywhere else on the continent. Thus, the management of diversities is very important to Nigeria, as it is equally critical to many other countries in Africa because of their spill-over consquences. It has been argued by critical observers that the education helps to create identity consciousness and aspirations. Today in Nigeria, about 50% of the adult population