WI: Present-day Nigeria ISOTed back to 1965

[SinghSong]

In this scenario, the entirety of present-day Nigeria, along with all its infrastructure and all of the people residing there, gets ISOTed back in time to 1965 (with the date chosen both because it precedes the military coups which led to the Nigerian Civil War IOTL, and because present-day Nigeria's HDI score of 0.54 is on a par with the historical HDI score of the 1965 United States). For reference, present-day Nigeria has a total GDP (PPP) of $1.116 trillion (which would be enough to place it 3rd in the world rankings in 1965, higher of those of the contemporary UK and West Germany, though narrowly behind those of West & East Germany combined), a GDP (PPP) per capita of $5,280 (comparable to those of contemporary Japan & Argentina), and a population of 211.4M (which would be the 4th largest in the world in 1965, slotting in between the USA's c.200M, and the USSR's c.230M- with the entirety of downtime Africa, for context, having a population of c.280M). What do you think would happen next- how would you envision things panning out, how well (or poorly) would present-day Nigeria fare, and how radically do you feel that their apparent arrival from the future would alter the balance of power?

 

[Alex Richards]

I have a horrible feeling we're going to see Boko Haram essentially taking over Chad in this scenario.

 

[SinghSong]

I have a horrible feeling we're going to see Boko Haram essentially taking over Chad in this scenario.

Certainly a possibility (hell, OTL's Chadian Civil War effectively kicked off a few months after the date of the ISOT, with a few of FROLINAT's early leaders such as Ahmed Hassan Musa sharing similar views to Boko Haram's leaders)- though downtime attitudes towards anti-insurgency military campaigns using extreme prejudice are a lot more lax, which could result in Boko Haram finding out that they've bitten off a lot more than they can chew, especially since they themselves'll have to find new downtime contacts to obtain their supply of arms and munitions from (and stuff/info to purchase them with) post-haste. Especially if they do cross the lake to try and take over downtime Chad- which, let's not forget, was still a part of the French Community rather than being fully independent (as Niger and the other nations formerly part of the short-lived Sahel-Benin Union were) at this point in time, with full control over critical functions such as foreign affairs, defense, national security and to some degree policing there still very much in French hands.

Under the military assistance agreement and mutual defense pact signed with Chad as one of the preconditions for greater self-government, France maintained a significant military presence in Chad, with these accords having included a secret provision which allowed Chad to request direct French military intervention in the event they were need to ensure the domestic "maintenance of order"- under which circumstances, French military officers would take direct command of Chadian forces. And the French embassy in Fort-Lamy also kept a signed, undated letter from Tombalbaye requesting protection in case his personal safety was jeopardized. Mightn't De Gaulle and the French be a lot more willing to fund a larger military operation in TTL's Chadian conflict against Boko Haram than they did IOTL's Chadian Civil War (which would boost their PR and international relations a lot more, especially with the ISOTed Nigerians, and give them first-dibs on obtaining and reverse-engineering any uptime technology from there)?