Maps of Nigeria: on the left side the map shows Islam and Christianity zones, on the right side the map shows literacy rate with a higher literacy rate in the South than the North.
Although to be fair, the cause-effect relationship between poverty and low education in the north might actually be reverse from what is implied.
That is they are not poor because they are ill educated, they are ill educated because they are poor.
The poverty is mostly a climate issue. The north of Nigeria borders on the Sahara desert, and desertification has been making crop production worse for decades. Meanwhile much of Nigeria's wealth is in oil, which is mostly located in the Southeastern delta region. That's what caused the coup and subsequent civil war. Because the northern Hausa-Fulani states wanted national control of the oil revenue to direct federal funds toward infrastructure improvements in the North (as well as their own pockets) while the southeastern Igbo people wanted to keep the oil revenue in their own local economies (as well as their own pockets). The Hausa coup actually followed as a response to an initial, failed Igbo coup.
That said, there is also historical reason for the difference in wealth and industry as well. The southern parts of Nigeria were the ones with the most contact with colonial administrators. Because they're on the coast, and that's where the major trade hubs and ports were. So that's where the large universities were built, and where the rich merchants and politically influential civil servants were. So the Hausa had a somewhat valid concern about being dominated by a class of people who had benefited from colonial trade and
An excellent example of how to make people correlate #data without any context.
