Stats: 3,173,446 members, 7,888,390 topics. Date: Saturday, 13 July 2024 at 06:37 AM |
Nairaland Forum / Entertainment / Celebrities / 12 Things You Didnt Know About Nigeria (456 Views)
Top 5 Celebrities You Didnt Know Were Twins (video) / Facts You Didnt Know About 16 Year Old Actress,regina Daniels’s Siblings / Facts You Didnt Know About 16 Year Old Nollywood Actress, Regina Daniel And Her (2) (3) (4)
(1) (Reply)
12 Things You Didnt Know About Nigeria by Nobody: 4:27pm On Nov 18, 2016 |
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. The importance of this
fact is appreciated when one
understands that language is the
“soul of culture” (as Ngugi wa
Thiongo famously said). It is
language that births the proverbs,
riddles, stories and other aspects of
culture that give us identity.
UNESCO puts forward that the
world’s languages represents an
extraordinary wealth of creativity.
Linguistic diversity correlates with
cultural diversity. This means
Nigeria can look inwards and drive
itself to become the greatest hub
for cultural tourism on earth, and
consequently empower its citizens
tremendously in the process.
2. The Walls of Benin (800-1400AD),
in present day Edo State, are the
longest ancient earthworks in the
world, and probably the largest
man-made structure on earth. They
enclose 6500 square kilometers of
community lands that connected
about 500 communities. At over
16000km long, it was thought to be
twice the length of the Great Wall
of China, until it was announced in
2012 (after five years of meticulous
measurement by Chinese
surveyors) that the Great Wall is
about 21,000km long.
3. The Yoruba tribe has the highest
rate of twin births in the world.
Igbo-Ora, a little town in Oyo state,
has been nicknamed Twin capital
of the World because of its
unusually high rate of twins that is
put as high as 158 twins per 1000
births. In a video I watched last
year on YouTube presented by Titi
(a white lady who speaks Yoruba),
and which was centred on twin
births in Igbo-Ora, one of the locals
boasted that every family in the
town has at least one twin!
4. Sarki Muhammad Kanta The
Great of Kebbi, was the only ruler
who resisted control by Songhai,
West Africa’s greatest empire at
that time. He founded and ruled
the Hausa city-state of Kebbi
around 1600 A.D and built Surame
its capital, a planned city which
was almost impossible to penetrate
during war. In fact UNESCO
describes Surame as “one of the
wonders of human history,
creativity and ingenuity”, and
probably the most massive stone-
walled constructions in West
Africa. He is listed in Robin
Walker’s 50 Greatest Africans.
5. Africa’s oldest known boat is
The Dufuna canoe which was
discovered in Dufuna village, Yobe
state, by a Fulani Herdsman in
May 1987, while he dug a well.
Various radio-carbon tests
conducted in laboratories of
reputable universities in Europe
and America indicate that the
canoe is over 8,000 years old, thus
making it the oldest in Africa and
3rd oldest in the world. The
discovery of the canoe has
completely changed accepted
theories of the history and
sophistication of marine technology
in Africa.
6. Sungbo’s Eredo, a 160 km
rampart equipped with guard
houses and moats, is reputed to be
the largest single pre-colonial
monument (or ancient fortification
if you like) 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!
7. Sarki Abdullah Burja of Kano
(ruled 1438-1452 AD), the 18th ruler
of Ancient Kano, created the first
Golden Age in Northern Nigeria
and ushered in a period of great
prosperity. During his reign, Hausa
became the biggest indigenous
language spoken in Africa after
Swahili. He is on the list of 50
Greatest Africans in Robin Walker’s
wonderful book, “When We
Ruled”.
8. The Jos Plateau Indigobird, a
small reddish-brown bird, is found
nowhere else on the planet but
Plateau state, Nigeria.
9. The Anambra waxbill, a small
bird of many beautiful colours, is
found only in Southern Nigeria and
nowhere else on earth.
10. The Niger Delta (which is the
second largest delta on the planet),
has the highest concentration of
monotypic fish families in the
world, and is
also home to sixty percent of
Nigeria’s mangrove forests. You
should know too that Nigeria’s
mangrove forests are the largest in
Africa and third largest on earth.
11. According to the World
Resources Institute, Nigeria is home
to 4,715 different types of plant
species, and over 550 species of
breeding birds and mammals,
making it one of the most
ecologically vibrant places of the
planet.
12. Ile-Ife, in present day Osun
State, 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. Copied from [url="www.africanpoint.wapka.mobi"]AfricanFacts[/url] |
(1) (Reply)
2016 Headies: Hosts For This Year`s Award Show Unveiled / OAP Dotun (@do2dtun) Writes To Daddy Freeze On His Negative Comments About Yorub / Tekno Stuns Fans In Liberia, Watch The Video Here..
(Go Up)
Sections: politics (1) business autos (1) jobs (1) career education (1) romance computers phones travel sports fashion health religion celebs tv-movies music-radio literature webmasters programming techmarket Links: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) Nairaland - Copyright © 2005 - 2024 Oluwaseun Osewa. All rights reserved. See How To Advertise. 14 |