Nigeria, Geography

Nigeria is situated in West Afrika on the Gulf of Guinea. The country lies between 4° and 14° North of the Equator and between 2° and 14° East of the Greenwich Meridian. It shares a border ith Benin Republic (West), Niger (North), the Republics of Chad and Cameroon (East) and the Atlantic Ocean (South).

Nigeria is endowed with natural resources including a land mass estimated at 930,000 square kilometers. It has over 900 km of coastal waters which, when combined with the 320 km Exclusive Economic Zone znd the vast resources of rivers and lakes, provide enormous fishery resources. The topography of the country consisits of plain, lowland and plateau areas. The plateau area reaches a height of over 1800 meters in the Jos Plateau.

The vegetation can be divided broadly into tropical rain forest areas in the south and the savannas in the north. There are also low-lying mangrove swamp forests along the coastal line in the south and the savannas. The climate is hot and humid with temperatures between 25-35°C throughout the year and an annual rainfall of up to 4,000 mm in the south. The climate is mostly hot and dry in the north with occasional sandstorms or harmattan. Temperatures up to 40°C are recorded in the hottest months while the plateau area can record temperatures as low as 15°C in some months of the year. With exception of some parts of southern Nigeria that have bimodal rainfall patterns, rainfall is limited to one season (Jagtap 1995). In the south, the rainy season is from March to September, while in the north, it is from July to september. About 75% of the country’s total land area is suitable for agriculture/arable farming, forestry and animal husbandry. Rainfall agriculture is generally practised while irrigation is carried out mostly along the large rivers and dams.