Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that can help answer the question.
Query: When was Niger founded?
Niger or Niger State is a state in Central Nigeria and the largest state in the country. The state capital is Minna, and other major cities are Bida, Kontagora, and Suleja. It was formed in 1976 when the then North-Western State was bifurcated into Niger State and Sokoto State. It is home to Ibrahim Babangida and Abdulsalami Abubakar, two of Nigeria's former military rulers. The Nupe, Gbagyi, Kamuku, Kambari, Dukawa, Hausa and Koro form the majority of numerous indigenous tribes of Niger State.
The Republic of Benin was formed in 1960 when the colony of French Dahomey gained independence from France. Prior to this, the area that is now the Republic of Benin was divided largely between two coastal kingdoms, Dahomey and Porto-Novo, and a large area of various tribes in the north. The French assembled these various groups together into the colony of French Dahomey, which was part of the various colonies of French West Africa from 1904 until 1960. In the independence era, the republic was extremely unstable for the first decade and a half of existence, with multiple governments and multiple military coups. In 1972, Mathieu Kérékou led a military coup deposing the Presidential Council and appointing himself as the head of state, a position he held until 1991 when the country returned to multiparty elections. Since that point, the state has held multiple presidential and legislative elections and a number of different parties have become important.
French Dahomey was a French colony of and a part of French West Africa
from 1904 to 1958. After World War II, by the establishment of the French Fourth Republic in 1947, Dahomey became part of the French Union with an increased autonomy. On 11 December 1958, the French Fifth Republic was established and the French Union became the French Community. The colony became the self-governing Republic of Dahomey within the Community, and two years later on 1 August 1960 it gained full independence (and in 1975 changed its name to Benin).During the 13th century, the indigenous Edo people of the west Niger area were run by a group of local chieftains, but by the 15th century a single ruler known as the 'oba' had asserted control, creating the Kingdom of Dahomey. Under the dynasty established by Ewuare the Great, the most famous of the obas, Dahoney's territory expanded to cover a region between the Niger River delta and what is now the Nigerian city of Lagos. The obas brought great prosperity and a highly organized state to Benin. They also established good relations and an extensive slave trade with the Portuguese and Dutch who arrived from the 15th century onwards.
As of 2017, Niger has the highest birth rate in the world with 49.443 per thousand people. 
Japan has one of the lowest birth rates in the world with 8 per thousand people.
While in Japan there are 126 million people and in Niger 21 million, both countries had around 1 million babies born in 2016.
Chief Ajayi was the former National Coordinator of Goodluck Support Group (GSG) USA. She congratulated His Excellency, Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR, who is now the current President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria for his doggedness in winning the 2015 presidential election; and also praised the former President, Mr. Goodluck Jonathan for his extraordinary statesmanship, godliness and courage to become the first ever incumbent Head of State in Nigeria to lose an election and wholeheartedly accepted defeat peacefully to prevent post election violence and crisis in Nigeria As a Community Activist, Chief Ajai has been lobbying the Nigerian federal government on behalf of all the Nigerians living in the diaspora in such areas as granting voting rights and approving housing scheme project for the diasporas.
Nigeria and other ECOWAS members agreed to a Protocol on Mutual Defence Assistance, in Freetown, Sierra Leone, on 29 May 1981. Among other organs such as a Defence Committee and Council, it provided for the establishment of an Allied Armed Force of the Community (AAFC) as needed.
Lagos Colony was a British colonial possession centred on the port of Lagos in what is now southern Nigeria. Lagos was annexed on 6 August 1861 under the threat of force by Commander Beddingfield of HMS Prometheus who was accompanied by the Acting British Consul, William McCoskry. Oba Dosunmu of Lagos (spelled "Docemo" in British documents) resisted the cession for 11 days while facing the threat of violence on Lagos and its people, but capitulated and signed the Lagos Treaty of Cession. Lagos was declared a colony on 5 March 1862.
By 1872 Lagos was a cosmopolitan trading center with a population over 60,000.
In the aftermath of prolonged wars between the mainland Yoruba states, the colony established a protectorate over most of Yorubaland between 1890 and 1897. The colony and protectorate were incorporated into Southern Nigeria in February 1906, and Lagos became the capital of the protectorate of Nigeria in January 1914.
Since then, Lagos has grown to become the largest city in West Africa, with an estimated metropolitan population of over 9,000,000 as of 2011.
Angola is a country in southwestern Africa. The country's name derives from the Kimbundu word for king.. It was first settled by San hunter-gatherer societies before the northern domains came under the rule of Bantu states such as Kongo and Ndongo. From the 15th century, Portuguese colonists began trading, and a settlement was established at Luanda during the 16th century. Portugal annexed territories in the region which were ruled as a colony from 1655, and Angola was incorporated as an overseas province of Portugal in 1951. After the Angolan War of Independence, which ended with an army mutiny and leftist coup in Lisbon, Angola's independence was achieved on November 11, 1975 through the Alvor Agreement. After independence, Angola later entered a period of civil war that lasted up until 2002.
Nagoya-juku was established as a castle town for nearby Nagoya Castle by the Owari Domain in 1613, but it had neither "honjin" nor sub-"honjin" at that time. Because it was located on the Minoji, it was connected to both the Nakasendō and the Tōkaidō, both of which were important trade routes at the time.
On 22–26 July 1952, the Free Officers, a group of disaffected officers in the Egyptian army founded by Gamal Abdel Nasser, and headed by General Muhammad Naguib, initiated the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 with the overthrowing King Farouk, whom the military blamed for Egypt's poor performance in the 1948 war with Israel and lack of progress in fighting poverty, disease, and illiteracy in Egypt. In the following two years, the Free Officers consolidated power, and, following a brief experiment with civilian rule, abrogated the 1953 constitution, and declared Egypt a republic on 18 June 1953, Muhammad Naguib as Egypt's first President.
Angola was a colony of Portugal for more than 400 years from the 15th century. The demand for independence in Angola picked up momentum during the early 1950s. The Portuguese régime, refused to accede to the demands for independence, provoking an armed conflict that started in 1961 when freedom fighters attacked both white and black civilians in cross-border operations in northeastern Angola, which was called the Colonial War. The principal protagonists included the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), founded in 1956, the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA), which appeared in 1961, and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), founded in 1966. After many years of conflict that weakened all of the insurgent parties, Angola gained its independence on 11 November 1975, after the 1974 coup d'état in Lisbon, Portugal, which overthrew the Portuguese régime headed by Marcelo Caetano.
On 20 October, Jason Ditz wrote an article for "The American Conservative" saying, "Niger provides a terrifying reminder of how far we are from being an informed American public that serves as a check and balance on what our military is doing in our name. We can't have a debate on US intervention overseas if we don't even know where are our forces are, let alone to what end". On 26 October, Phillip Carter and Andrew Swick wrote on Vox, sharing a similar view that missions similar to the one in Niger "have never been specifically authorized by Congress, let alone discussed and debated by the American public". On 27 October, "The New York Times" editorial board wrote that "the lack of clarity about the Niger operation is one more reason for Congress to replace the 2001 law authorizing military force against Al Qaeda with legislation to address current threats like the Islamic State, limit American interventions, and ensure regular congressional oversight".
Stamford Raffles founded colonial Singapore in 1819 as a trading post of the British East India Company. After the company's collapse in 1858, the islands were ceded to the British Raj as a crown colony. During the Second World War, Singapore was occupied by Japan. It gained independence from the UK in 1963 by federating with other former British territories to form Malaysia, but separated two years later over ideological differences, becoming a sovereign nation in 1965. After early years of turbulence and despite lacking natural resources and a hinterland, the nation developed rapidly as an Asian Tiger economy, based on external trade and its workforce.
Lagos is the most populous city in the state and in Nigeria as a whole. The conurbation is one of the most populous in the world. As of 2015, the population of Lagos city was approximately 16 million. Lagos is a port which originated on islands separated by creeks, such as Lagos Island, fringing the southwest mouth of Lagos Lagoon while protected from the Atlantic Ocean by barrier islands and long sand spits such as Bar Beach, which stretch up to east and west of the mouth. The metropolitan area of Lagos includes Ikeja (which is the capital of Lagos State) and Agege and Mushin.
In order to advance into Owari Province, the military governor of Suruga Province, Imagawa Ujichika, built Yanagi-no-maru, a precursor castle at Nagoya, between 1521 and 1528 during the Taiei era for his son, Imagawa Ujitoyo. It was located near the site of the later Ninomaru residence. Oda Nobuhide seized it from Imagawa Ujitoyo in March 1532 (Kyōroku 5), residing there and changing the name to Nagoya Castle. His son, Oda Nobunaga, was supposedly born there in 1534 (Tenbun 3), although this is subject to debate. After he defeated Oda Nobutomo at Kiyosu Castle in April 1555 (Kōji 1), he established his residence there. Around 1582 (Tenshō 10), the castle at Nagoya was abandoned.
Burkina Faso (, ; ) is a landlocked country in West Africa. It covers an area of around and is surrounded by six countries: Mali to the north; Niger to the east; Benin to the southeast; Togo and Ghana to the south; and Ivory Coast to the southwest. The July 2018 population estimate by the United Nations was 19,751,651. Burkina Faso is a francophone country, with French as the official language of government and business. Roughly 40% of the population speaks the Mossi language. Formerly called the Republic of Upper Volta (1958–1984), the country was renamed "Burkina Faso" on 4 August 1984 by then-President Thomas Sankara. Its citizens are known as "Burkinabé" ( ). Its capital is Ouagadougou.
Ancient Egypt was an ancient civilization of eastern North Africa, concentrated along the northern reaches of the Nile River in Egypt. The civilization coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh, and it developed over the next three millennia. Its history occurred in a series of stable "kingdoms", separated by periods of relative instability known as "intermediate periods". Ancient Egypt reached its pinnacle during the New Kingdom, after which it entered a period of slow decline. Egypt was conquered by a succession of foreign powers in the late period, and the rule of the pharaohs officially ended in 31 BC when the early Roman Empire conquered Egypt and made it a province. Although the Egyptian military forces in the Old and Middle kingdoms were well maintained, the new form that emerged in the New Kingdom showed the state becoming more organized to serve its needs.
According to the CIA's "The World Factbook", the country with the highest birth rate is Niger at 6.49 children born per woman and the country with the lowest birth rate is Taiwan, at 1.13 children born per woman.
Although the 2006 National Population Census of Nigeria credited the metropolitan area with a population figure of 7,937,932, the figure is at variance with some projections by the UN and other population agencies and groups worldwide. The population figure of Lagos State given by the Lagos State Government is 17,553,924. It was based on claimed conducted enumeration for social planning by the Lagos State Government "parallel census" and it believes that since the inhabitants of the metropolitan area of Lagos constitute 88% of the Lagos State population, the population of metropolitan Lagos is about 15.5 million.
Graham-Douglas was born on 8 May 1939 in Abonnema in the Akuku-Toru Local Government Area of Rivers State. He is of Ijaw origin. His brother, Napo Graham-Douglas, was the first indigenous Attorney-General of Nigeria, 
He attended secondary schools in Lagos and Port Harcourt. He studied at Acton Technical School, London (1963–1965) and then at the University of Lagos (1965–1969).
He earned a BSc. in Botany and Zoology.
The Ptolemaic Kingdom was founded in 305 BC by Ptolemy I Soter, a "diadochus" originally from Macedon in northern Greece who declared himself pharaoh of Egypt and created a powerful Macedonian Greek dynasty that ruled an area stretching from southern Syria to Cyrene and south to Nubia. Scholars also argue that the kingdom was founded in 304 BC because of different use of calendars: Ptolemy crowned himself in 304 BC on the ancient Egyptian calendar, but in 305 BC on the ancient Macedonian calendar; to resolve the issue, the year 305/4 was counted as the first year of Ptolemaic Kingdom in Demotic papyri.
Niger was a child prodigy, studying Talmud until the age of 17 at yeshivas in Berezin and Minsk. He was preparing for rabbinic ordination when he instead moved into the secular and political world, having become attracted to secular culture and Zionism. In 1904, he co-founded the Zionist Socialist Workers Party, and was a writer for the party paper "Der Nayer Veg" ("The New Path"). He was imprisoned and tortured for his political activity several times in Minsk, Kiev, Warsaw, Daugavpils (Dvinsk), Odessa, and Vilna, but he avoided execution after the intervention of family and friends.
Niamey was probably founded in the eighteenth century, but was of little importance to most of the country until the French developed a colonial post in the 1890s. This rapidly grew into an important centre. In 1926 it became the capital of Niger, and the population gradually increased, from about 3,000 in 1930 to around 30,000 in 1960.
The period from 1970 to 1988 was one in which the economy of Niger boomed, driven by revenue from the uranium mines at Arlit. In this period, the population of Niamey grew from 108,000 to 398,365 inhabitants. The city expanded from in 1970 to by 1977, in the process annexing peripheral villages such as Lazaret.
The persistent uranium price slump has brought lower revenues for Niger's uranium sector, although uranium still provides 72% of national export proceeds. The nation enjoyed substantial export earnings and rapid economic growth during the 1960s and 1970s after the opening of two large uranium mines near the northern town of Arlit. When the uranium-led boom ended in the early 1980s, however, the economy stagnated and new investment since then has been limited. Niger's two uranium mines (SOMAIR's open pit mine and COMINAK's underground mine) are owned by a French-led consortium and operated by French interests.
Exploitable deposits of gold are known to exist in Niger in the region between the Niger River and the border with Burkina Faso. Substantial deposits of phosphates, coal, iron, limestone, and gypsum also have been found. Numerous foreign companies, including American firms, have taken out exploration licenses for concessions in the gold seam in western Niger, which also contains deposits of other minerals.
The Evangelical Church of the Republic of Niger was founded in 1961. The congregations have considerable autonomy, so unity was very difficult to establish. It has 3,000 members, 31 congregations, and 59 house fellowships. A member of the World Communion of Reformed Churches.
Partner church relationship with the Reformed Church in America was also established.