Is Nigeria a country, a State or a nation? Can it be described by all three terms? These nominative terms have confused a lot of people no doubt, usually using these terms wrongly. Well, let’s get to the bottom of it forthwith!
What’s the Difference Between a Country and a Nation?
A country is a self-governing political entity. The term country can be used interchangeably with State (note the capital “S”).
A nation, however, is a tightly-knit group of people who share a common culture and history; and who are larger than a single tribe or community. For example, the Yorubas, Ibos, and Hausa-Fulanis of Nigeria.
Nations do not necessarily live within a single country. For example, the Yorubas can also be found outside Nigeria in parts of Benin Republic, Togo, and the influence of their culture remain in far-flung places like Brazil, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and some other islands of the Caribbean.
However, a nation-state is a nation which has the same functions as a State, that is, a country made up of people of the same ethnic stock. Examples like Japan, South Korea, North Korea, Mongolia, Iceland, Finland, Denmark etc.
What Are States and Independent Countries?
For an entity to be called a State or an Independent Country and which Nigeria is, it must fulfill these criteria:
- Has space or territory which has internationally recognised boundaries (boundary disputes are OK).
- Has people who live there on an ongoing basis.
- Has economic activity and an organised economy that regulates foreign and domestic trade and issues money.
- Has the power of social engineering, such as education.
- Has a transportation system for moving goods and people.
- Has a government which provides public services and police power.
- Has sovereignty – king, queen, president, prime minister etc. No other State should have power over the country’s territory.
- Has external recognition. A country has been “voted into the club” by a comity of countries like the United Nations.
There are currently 196 independent countries or States around the world. Territories of countries (like there are in Canada) or individual states or parts of a country (like there are in Nigeria, Japan and the United States) are not countries in their own right.
Examples of entities that ARE NOT countries include: Hong Kong (which is administered by China), Bermuda (which is an overseas territory of the United Kingdom), Greenland (administered by Denmark), Puerto Rico (administered by the United States Congress) and most notably the constituent parts of the United Kingdom (Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland, and England) are also not countries.
A state (with a lower-case “s”) is usually a division of a federal State – such as the 36 states that make up Nigeria, the 50 states of the United States of America, the 101 departments that make up France, and the 47 prefectures that make up Japan.
Finally, there are some States which have two nations, such as Canada (with French and English speaking parts) and Belgium (with French and Dutch speaking parts) with these languages both recognised as the official languages of these countries.
There are also nations without States. For example, the Kurds of Syria, Iran, Iraq and Turkey, the Yorubas, Ibos, Hausa-Fulanis of Nigeria, among others.
I hope you can now tell the difference between a country, nation, and State? In that vein, which is Nigeria, and which are the Yorubas, Ibos and Hausa-Fulanis? Can you confidently answer?
This post was adapted from about.com