This is an example of a country that has fallen down; it has collapsed. This house has fallen. Chinua Achebe Nigeria is one of the most complex and fascinating countries in the world. It is staggeringly diverse, its population (twice that of Britains) is split into some 300 different ethnic groups and its geography ranges from the dense tropical jungles of the south to the arid Sahel of the north. One in six of all Africans live in Nigeria. This House Has Fallen is both a gripping account of the contemporary crisis in a country seemingly always on the edge of a nervous breakdown and an evocation of the reality of day to day life under impossible circumstances.