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Northern Nigeria is a very diverse part of Nigeria. Often people who haven’t done any research on Nigeria think that inhabitants of Northern Nigeria are one of two ethnicities: Hausa or Fulani. In reality there are about more than 95 ethnicities in total.
If Northern Nigeria were a country, it would be the sixth largest Muslim, majority country on earth.
Within this category “Northern Nigeria” I included Kebbi, Sokoto, Zamfara, Katsina, Kaduna, Kano, Jigawa, Bauchi, Gombe, Yobe, Borno and Adamawa.
I have treated the “Middle Belt” as Kwara, Niger, Kogi, Abuja, Nasarawa, and Plateau.
The population of Northern Nigeria is 79.1 million. The two states with the most diversity are Kaduna with 22 ethnicities and Adamawa with 39 ethnicities.
Northern Nigeria is more populous than Tanzania (which has a population of 62 million people). There are only three countries with a larger population than Northern Nigeria: Ethiopia, Egypt, and DRC.
Compared separately to the second and third most populated countries in Africa, Northern Nigeria has more ethnicities than Ethiopia and also more ethnicities than Egypt.
Adamawa, with a population of 5 million, hosts 39 ethnic groups, equivalent to the level of diversity you would find in Mali which has 40 ethnic groups.
