A 2023 presidential aspirant on the platform of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Adamu Garba, on Tuesday called for the change of Nigeria’s name.
POLITICS NIGERIA reports that Garba said many countries in Africa changed their colonial names after independence, but Nigeria stuck to the name with all its attendant minuses. The 39-year-old therefore asked the country to go back to being called Nigritia.
Nigritia, or Negroland is an archaic term in European mapping, referring to Europeans’ descriptions of West Africa as an area populated with negroes. The modern nation of Nigeria is in the center. The term is probably a direct translation of the Arabic term Bilad as-Sudan, meaning “Land of the Blacks”, corresponding to about the same area.
“If Ghana can change its name from the Colonial Gold Coast, Kenya from British East Africa, Benin from Dahomey, Togo from Togoland, etc, why would Nigeria maintain a colonially induced name?
“We should rename this country back to its pre-colonial NIGRITIA.
“Identity is everything,” Garba said in a Facebook post.
