Nigeria, the African nation as we know it in the twenty-first century, as it came to be in the late twentieth century, is a young nation. The history of Nigeria, however, can be traced back to the prehistoric era, with settlements existing as early as 11,000 BCE. Until the arrival of colonialism in Africa, the idea of the nation did not exist. Rather, communities formed and flourished on the basis of tribes and / or feudalism. A number of independent kingdoms, each rising and falling and existing independently, were forcibly grouped together by the British to facilitate their exit, under the guise of granting Africa Independence, and to create geographical entities comprehensible to Western systems of governance. These independent kingdoms now comprise most African nations today. Nigeria is made up of about twelve different tribes / empires, but the chief among them concerning the history of independent Nigeria are the Hausa, the Fulani, and the Igbo people. The conflict between the Muslim peoples of Nigeria, the Hausa and the Fulani, and the Igbo people caused a civil war. The bloodshed that has littered the history of African nations throughout their independent existences has often been considered a direct consequence of the forcible and careless unification of tribes into nations without any understanding of the politics that govern their relationships.
Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958) is a historical novel, set in the British colony of Nigeria at about the turn