One Picture And One Story Week #94 | Nigeria's Diversity

Hello friends of Steem for Pakistan, I hope we are all doing well. My picture and story for this week is going to be a topic you would learn from. I love it when I learn new things and about people's culture. Let's dive right in...

Firstly the picture above is of a special tribe in Nigeria, which is the TIV tribe. I will be using this picture to tell the story about Nigeria and its diversity; just like the attire worn by the Tiv people.

Nigeria is in the western region of Africa. It has more than 200 million people, a handful of tourist attractions, natural resources and a lot of rivers. But we will be looking at just the diversity of this country today.

With 36 states and the capital which is Abuja, Nigeria has over 250 ethnic groups and more than 500 languages. Yes you heard it right more than 500 languages. I had always thought we don't have up to that number of languages in Nigeria but after some traveling, I just knew it might be more than that. In my state alone which is Akwa Ibom state, we have a lot of tribes...people with different cultures, people with different languages.

In my state, we have three major languages and more than 10 other languages I might not even know. Out of these languages spoken in my state, I understand only 3 perfectly well which are Ibibio, annang and eked. I don't understand Oron, itumbunoso, ibeno, esit eket and other languages spoken by people who are in the same state as I am.

Let me put it in the right perspective, a country like England, might have just one language which is English but in Nigeria, we have a state with more than 20 languages...that sounds amazing right?

How are we able to stay together even in this diversity?
How are we able to achieve unity?

Have you ever heard of the Men and the women of the same tribe speaking different languages?
Yes, in Cross River state, the men speak entirely a different language from the women.

I don't understand how that happened but it is real. The diversity of Nigeria is really special.

In Nigeria, every state has at least 2 languages. We have Hausa, we have different variations of Yoruba, we have different variations of Igbo. Last week, someone spoke her own variation of Igbo and it took another Igbo person some minutes to understand what she was saying. I was surprised that they can come from the same tribe but speak different variations.

Every tribe has a special food/delicacy..The Yorubas have the amala and ewedu, Igbos the egusi and Ibibio/Efik the afang. We also have different attires of dressings. There are deities too for every tribe and this makes Nigeria spectacular. You can not get enough of the stories from our diverse cultures. Nigeria is a story in itself. The moment you look at Nigeria you can see the oneness story.

Because how can a country with more than 250 ethnic group and 500 languages understand each other and stay together in unity?
That is the story of Nigeria...Unity in Diversity.

Thanks for reading my story about my country.

I invite @davidmarkgeorge, and @imohmitch to participate in this contest.