Nigeria has never had a political profile in Western countries to match its size. It has the largest African population by far: according to some estimates, it may be as high as 200 million people, which would be almost twice as many as its nearest rival, Ethiopia. The country also has the continent’s largest economy (although it barely makes the top twenty for GDP per capita).

It casts a huge cultural shadow, with a film industry second only to Bollywood in terms of output, and world-renowned authors such as Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, and Buchi Emecheta — not to mention musicians like Fela Kuti. Its soccer team is a familiar presence at the World Cup. Yet Nigeria’s political leaders and movements haven’t won the same renown.

Unlike Algeria in the north, Kenya in the east, or Angola in the south, Nigeria didn’t go through a violent, protracted struggle before winning its independence from European rule in 1960. The Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba is still a celebrated figure more than half a century after his death, but few people outside Nigeria now remember Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, the country’s first prime minister, who, like Lumumba, was ousted and killed in a military coup, the first of many.