Until their own differences pitched them into civil war, Nigerians once mocked the rivalry that developed between British colonial officers posted to the arid and predominately Muslim north and those sent to the creeks and jungles in the south.

“The officers of the north were lean, lanky and brown while those of the south were flabby and white. While those of the north galloped on horseback ... the ones in the south were carried along the bush paths, across crocodile-infested rivers by natives bearing hammocks,” Kole Omotoso records in a humorous take on Nigerian history.