Nigeria, Two Countries, One State

The news that Muslims and Christians are fighting in Nigeria again (its a common occurrence in Nigeria), reminded me that the European Colonial era has not completely played itself out.

Africa's Ethnic And Colonial Legacy Borders 

By this I mean that the borders of some countries actually represent European spheres of economic influence and not real natural borders.

 

There are many examples of this across the globe, such as the New Guinea being split between the British and Dutch empires, and this has left the Island as one half a free state (albeit with strong Australian support), and the other half under the rule of Muslim Indonesia (even though Islam never actually got this far), with an independence movement spasmodically fighting the Indonesian government ever since.

 

However its on the African continent that these issues most display themselves:

• Nigeria is really a Muslim North and a Christian South, and has been in almost constant turmoil ever since it was founded.
• Sudan is also really a Muslim Arab North and a Christian Negro South, with warfare a constant ever since (update -confirmed by split up after this post)
  

and a look that the political map of the continent, shows a ragtag of 'artificial' states with those 'straight line' borders that cut across the natural borders of land, race, language and religion, that would define countries in a natural political development.

Mind you if Africa was split amongst its ethnic and language groups, it may not have actually proved viable either, as these wiki Language and Ethnicity maps show.