Enugu
[key], city, SE Nigeria. It is a diversified industrial center and a road
and rail hub. Furniture, ceramics, textiles, shoes, asbestos, cement, oxygen
and acetylene gases, and steel are the chief products. Enugu developed as a
mining town after the discovery of coal in 1909. In 1916 the railroad from
Port Harcourt
reached Enugu. The city served as capital of Nigeria's former Southern
(1929–39) and Eastern (1939–67) regions, and of the
short-lived secessionist state of Biafra (1967–70). Coal mining in
the area reached its height in the 1950s, slowed in the 1960s and 1970s
because of civil war and Nigeria's increased petroleum production, and ended
in the early 21st cent. A campus of the Univ. of Nigeria is in Enugu, as
well as Enugu State Univ. of Science and Technology and other colleges.
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