100 Fun Facts About Nigeria

What is the capital of Nigeria?

Abuja was planned from scratch in the middle of the country, on a site picked because every region could reach it, and took over from the old coastal capital in December 1991.

Which currency replaced the pound as Nigeria's money in 1973?

The naira, its name a clipping of 'Nigeria', arrived in 1973 when the country decimalised its money and dropped the colonial-style pound for a unit split into 100 kobo.

As of 2025, Nigeria is Africa's most populous country and ranks where in the world?

Sixth, behind India, China, the US, Indonesia and Pakistan: birth rates have stayed high while child deaths have fallen sharply, so the population grows by several million every year.

How many states make up the Nigerian federation, alongside the Federal Capital Territory?

36 states is where the map settled in 1996: military rulers kept redrawing it by decree, first turning the old regions into 12 states in 1967 and then adding more four times over.

Which are the three largest of Nigeria's more than 250 ethnic groups?

Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo each dominated one of the three regions Nigeria was divided into at independence, a three-way split that shaped the new country's politics.

What is the official language of Nigeria?

English came with British rule and stayed on as the language of government, business and school, while its creole cousin, Nigerian Pidgin, became the everyday common tongue of tens of millions.

Who coined the name Nigeria in 1897?

Journalist Flora Shaw proposed 'Nigeria', after the River Niger, in The Times because 'Royal Niger Company Territories' was too much of a mouthful; five years later she married the territory's British governor.

Which ancient culture of central Nigeria made its famous terracotta figures more than 2,000 years ago?

Nok takes its name from the small tin-mining village where the first of its terracottas was dug up by accident in 1928.

The priest-kings of Nri held sway over which people of south-eastern Nigeria into the 20th century?

The Igbo looked to the eze Nri as a priest-king who ruled by ritual rather than force, and the bronzes found at Igbo-Ukwu may come from the burial of one of his forerunners.

Which Yoruba holy city is famed for its naturalistic bronze and terracotta heads?

Ile Ife is where Yoruba tradition says the world began; its heads were so lifelike that Leo Frobenius, the German who collected some in 1910, insisted a lost colony of ancient Greeks must have made them.

Usman dan Fodio's jihad against the Hausa kingdoms in the early 19th century established what?

The Sokoto Caliphate took shape when the followers of Usman dan Fodio, a Fulani preacher who had fallen out with the rulers of Gobir, elected him Commander of the Faithful and went to war in his name.

Which Yoruba city holds the sacred grove of the river goddess Osun, a UNESCO World Heritage Site?

Osogbo is also where foot soldiers from Ibadan routed the Fulani cavalry around 1840, the battle that stopped the northern jihad from pushing any deeper into Yorubaland.

British troops burned which kingdom's capital in 1897 and carried off thousands of its royal brass plaques and sculptures?

Benin's palace treasures, the work of royal guilds of brass casters, were shipped to Britain and sold on to museums; in 2022 Germany agreed to return more than 1,000 of them to Nigeria and began handing them back.

Which British administrator conquered northern Nigeria by 1903 and merged north and south into one colony in 1914?

Frederick Lugard left local government in the hands of the north's traditional rulers under British guidance, the system that became known as indirect rule, and was the merged country's first governor-general.

Which Nigerian was the first woman to lead the World Trade Organization?

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala made her name at home by negotiating a deal with creditor nations that wiped out $30 billion of Nigeria's debt, $18 billion of it cancelled outright.

Nigeria became independent on which date?

On 1 October 1960 Nigeria became independent, yet Elizabeth II stayed on as head of state, as Queen of Nigeria: the country only became a republic, with its own president, exactly three years later.

Who was Nigeria's first prime minister at independence?

Abubakar Tafawa Balewa led independent Nigeria for just over five years: in January 1966 he was overthrown and killed in the first of Nigeria's military coups.

Which part of Nigeria declared itself the independent Republic of Biafra in May 1967?

The East, formally the Eastern Region, was declared independent by its military governor after massacres in the north in 1966 sent about a million of its people fleeing home as refugees.

Which army officer led breakaway Biafra through the 1967–70 civil war?

Odumegwu Ojukwu, an Oxford history graduate, flew to Ivory Coast on the eve of Biafra's surrender in January 1970 and came home only in 1982, after a presidential pardon.

Which two powers were the main arms suppliers to Nigeria's federal government during the civil war?

The UK and the Soviet Union, rivals in the Cold War, found themselves arming the same side, while France supplied weapons to breakaway Biafra.

Which body did Nigeria join in 1971, eleven years after independence?

OPEC took Nigeria in two years before the 1973 price surge; the oil money that followed drew people off the land, and a country that once exported palm oil and peanuts was soon importing rice.

Which Nigerian military ruler was the first to hand power to an elected civilian government?

Olusegun Obasanjo handed over to the elected Shehu Shagari in 1979; jailed in 1995 by a later military regime, he walked free in 1998 and within a year had won the presidency himself as a civilian.

Which dictator's regime hanged writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa in 1995?

Sani Abacha's regime hanged Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight fellow Ogoni activists who had campaigned against oil pollution of their homeland; in response the Commonwealth suspended Nigeria's membership.

Whose 1993 presidential election win did Nigeria's military annul?

Moshood Abiola was arrested in 1994 after proclaiming himself president and died in custody four years later; the election date, 12 June, is now Nigeria's Democracy Day in his honour.

Which Islamist group kidnapped the Chibok schoolgirls in 2014?

Boko Haram seized 276 girls from their boarding school in a single night; the outcry, under the banner #BringBackOurGirls, went worldwide and brought Nigeria offers of foreign help in the search.

Who was inaugurated as Nigeria's president on 29 May 2023?

Bola Tinubu had fled into exile in the 1990s as a pro-democracy campaigner against military rule; nearly three decades on he won the presidency with just under 37 percent of the vote.

In 2024 Nigeria reinstated which national anthem, used from 1960 to 1978?

We Hail Thee has words by Lillian Jean Williams, a British expatriate living in Nigeria at independence; it was dropped in 1978 for an anthem written by Nigerians, then brought back by act of parliament in 2024.

What is the highest point in Nigeria, a 2,419-metre peak on the border with Cameroon?

Chappal Waddi stands where the Cameroon Highlands spill across the border, the most mountainous corner of a country that is otherwise mostly plains and plateaus.

Which two great rivers meet at Lokoja in central Nigeria before flowing south to the delta?

The Niger and the Benue meet at Lokoja, where the Benue, the larger river's greatest tributary, roughly doubles its flow; British merchants set up a trading post at the confluence in the 1850s.

Which Nigerian-born centre, nicknamed 'The Dream', led the Houston Rockets to back-to-back NBA titles in 1994 and 1995?

Hakeem Olajuwon grew up as a football goalkeeper and handball player and never played basketball until he was 15; the footwork he learned in goal became the basis of his game.

Which 400-metre monolith towers over Nigeria's capital, with the presidential complex at its foot?

Aso Rock looms over the Presidential Villa, the National Assembly and the Supreme Court, and it gave the president's residence its everyday name: Aso Rock Villa.

As of 2025, which country's film industry is the only one to out-produce Nigeria's Nollywood?

India leads the world for film output; Nollywood climbed to second by skipping cinemas altogether, shooting cheaply and selling straight to home video from the early 1990s.

Which 1992 straight-to-video thriller is credited with launching the Nollywood era?

Living in Bondage, about a businessman who sacrifices his wife to a cult to get rich, went straight to VHS and became a smash, proving that Nigerian films could make money without cinemas.

Fela Kuti is regarded as the principal innovator of which musical genre?

Afrobeat blends jazz, funk and highlife with Yoruba rhythms; after a 1969 stay in Los Angeles, where he met Black Power activists, Fela Kuti turned it into protest music aimed at Nigeria's military rulers.

What did Fela Kuti call the commune he declared independent of Nigeria's military government?

Kalakuta Republic was stormed and burned by soldiers in 1977, after Fela's song Zombie mocked the army; his mother was thrown from an upstairs window and died of her injuries the following year.

Which Nigerian singer won the Grammy for Best Global Music Album with his 2020 record Twice as Tall?

Burna Boy had lost the year before with African Giant to Angélique Kidjo, who used her acceptance speech to salute him; his grandfather, Benson Idonije, was Fela Kuti's first manager.

Nigeria's fiercest rivalry over jollof rice is with which country?

Ghana and Nigeria trade friendly blows in the 'jollof wars' over a dish that probably began in neither: it is named after the Jolof, or Wolof, empire of what is now Senegal, where it was likely first cooked.

Which Nigerian won the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature?

Wole Soyinka spent 22 months as a political prisoner during the civil war after appealing in print for a ceasefire, and wrote much of his collection Poems from Prison in his cell.

Chinua Achebe's first novel, published in 1958 and built around a man named Okonkwo, is called what?

Things Fall Apart, its title borrowed from a W. B. Yeats poem, helped set off the flowering of Nigerian writing in the 1960s; No Longer at Ease and Arrow of God complete its trilogy.

Which Nigerian won the Booker Prize in 1991?

Ben Okri won with The Famished Road, narrated by Azaro, a spirit child caught between the living and the spirit world; he went on to write two sequels, turning the story into a trilogy.

What are the colours of the Nigerian flag?

Green, white and green was not quite the winning entry: the student's design also had a red sun on the white stripe, and the judging committee took it out before independence day.

Who designed the Nigerian flag, winning a contest that drew almost 3,000 entries?

Taiwo Akinkunmi was an engineering student in London when he sent in his design, so the flag of the new nation was drawn up in the capital of the colonial power it was about to leave.

What is the nickname of Nigeria's national football team?

Super Eagles replaced 'Green Eagles' in 1988: by one former goalkeeper's account the players pointed out that no eagle is green, and the new name was announced after that year's Africa Cup of Nations final.

Nigeria became the first African team to win Olympic football gold at which Games?

At Atlanta 1996 Nigeria trailed Brazil 3–1 in the semi-final, levelled in the 90th minute and won 4–3 on Nwankwo Kanu's sudden-death goal, then beat Argentina 3–2 in the final.

Which former captain coached Nigeria to the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations title?

Stephen Keshi became only the second man, after Egypt's Mahmoud El-Gohary, to win the trophy as both player and coach; he resigned the day after the final, then changed his mind a day later.

What name did West African leaders choose in 2019 for the single currency Nigeria and its neighbours plan to share?

The Eco has been put off again and again; in 2021, after the pandemic derailed the latest plan, the bloc's leaders set a new launch target of 2027.

Roughly how many distinct languages are spoken by Nigeria's more than 250 ethnic groups?

About 500 languages from three of Africa's great families are spoken, among them Yoruba, Hausa and Kanuri; day to day, tens of millions bridge the gaps with Nigerian Pidgin.

Which Nigerian city was named by Portuguese explorers, having previously been called Eko?

Lagos got its name from the Portuguese, who landed in 1472 and later built a slave trade there; Britain's drive to suppress that trade led it to shell the town in 1851 and annex it ten years later.

Nigeria's 90–87 win in July 2021 made it the first African team to beat which country at men's basketball?

The USA lost to a Nigerian squad that included several NBA players; nine years earlier, at the London Olympics, the Americans had won the same fixture 156–73.

Nigeria's women made history at the 2018 Winter Olympics as Africa's first team in which sport?

Bobsled had never had an African team at the Games until Seun Adigun, a hurdler at the 2012 Summer Olympics, founded one in 2016 and took it to Pyeongchang two years later.

In 1972, Nigeria changed which everyday rule so that it matched its French-speaking neighbours?

Driving on the right replaced the keep-left rule Britain had introduced, because every country around Nigeria already kept right. The switch came on 2 April 1972.

In 2015, Nigeria's Wellington Jighere became the first African world champion of which board game?

Scrabble made Jighere a national hero: he took the 2015 world title in spite of jet lag, the first win for any African player.

Which star of the film 12 Years a Slave was born in London to Nigerian parents?

Chiwetel Ejiofor earned a Best Actor Oscar nomination as Solomon Northup, and he also starred in Half of a Yellow Sun, a drama set during Nigeria's civil war.

Which NBA Most Valuable Player was born in Europe to parents who had emigrated from Nigeria?

Giannis Antetokounmpo grew up feeling like an outsider to both the Greek and Nigerian communities of Athens, then won back-to-back NBA MVP awards in 2019 and 2020.

Which social network did Nigeria block for seven months in 2021 after it deleted a president's post?

Twitter was blocked from 5 June 2021 to 13 January 2022, after it removed a post in which the president threatened a crackdown on regional separatists.

The Oil Rivers Protectorate on Nigeria's coast took its name in the 1880s from what source of oil?

Palm trees supplied the oil, not petroleum: Britain set up the protectorate to control the large trade in palm oil that gave the delta's rivers their name.

What kind of vehicle is an okada, the Nigerian taxi nicknamed after a defunct airline?

A motorcycle taxi earned the name because it could weave through heavy traffic and deliver passengers quickly, just as Okada Air did before it closed in 1997.

In 2001, Nigeria's Agbani Darego became the first indigenous African to win which global title?

Miss World had gone to entrants from South Africa and Egypt before, but those earlier winners were of European descent.

What name is given to the dry, dusty wind that blows from the Sahara across Nigeria each winter?

Harmattan season runs from the end of November to the middle of March, and the wind picks up fine dust and sand as it crosses the desert.

At Nigerian weddings and parties, what do guests do when they 'spray' the celebrants?

Throw banknotes at them, or press notes to the forehead: the custom is so loved that it survives a 2007 law that makes it punishable by six months in prison.

Who became Nigeria's first president in 1963, when the country dropped the British monarch?

Nnamdi Azikiwe, known as Zik of Africa, had already spent three years as governor-general, the Queen's own representative in Nigeria.

Which general led Nigeria through the 1967–70 civil war, then urged reconciliation with the losers?

Yakubu Gowon told the country that the war had left neither winners nor losers. He had become Nigeria's youngest military chief of staff at 31, the year before the fighting began.

Nigeria's Ikeja international airport is named after which head of state, assassinated in 1976?

Murtala Muhammed was ambushed in his car less than seven months into his rule, aged 37, during a failed coup, and the airport was renamed for him the same year.

In 2015, who became Nigeria's first sitting president to lose an election and concede defeat?

Goodluck Jonathan conceded before every state had even declared, giving Nigeria its first peaceful handover from a sitting government to an elected opponent since independence.

Which warrior queen of Zazzau in northern Nigeria is said to have walled the cities she conquered?

Amina first won fame as a leading warrior in her brother's cavalry, and many of the earthworks tradition credits to her survive today, still called Amina's walls.

Which power used its feared cavalry to dominate south-western Nigeria in the 17th century?

The Oyo Empire answered its rivals with horsemen so devastating that neighbouring kingdoms grew fearful of it, and it held sway over Dahomey to its west.

Which realm of northeastern Nigeria, rich on Saharan salt, was among the longest-lived in history?

The Kanem–Bornu Empire is believed to have been founded around the year 700, and its rulers, who bore the title mai, held that office for a thousand years.

The 1929 Women's War against colonial warrant chiefs is often named after which Nigerian city?

Aba's name stuck because British records called the protests the Aba Women's Riots; the women used song, dance and public shaming until many chiefs resigned.

Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti's 1940s tax revolt forced the ruler of which Nigerian city to abdicate?

Abeokuta's ruler, the Alake, stepped down in January 1949 after marches of up to 10,000 women; their leader was also the mother of the musician Fela Kuti.

Which organisation suspended Nigeria from 1995 to 1999 after the execution of writer Ken Saro-Wiwa?

The Commonwealth acted at once, because its leaders were gathering for their 1995 summit when the hanging was carried out on the eve of the meeting.

Which sea area, where the equator meets the prime meridian, washes Nigeria's southern coast?

The Gulf of Guinea contains the spot at zero degrees latitude and zero degrees longitude, a point of open sea that mapmakers nickname Null Island.

Nigeria shares which much-shrunken lake with three neighbours at its far northeastern corner?

Chad, the lake, lost most of its open water in just two decades, shrinking from about 25,000 square kilometres to roughly 2,000 through drought and water diversion.

Which northern Nigerian city was famous for its groundnut pyramids, huge stacks of peanut sacks?

Kano's pyramids vanished as Nigeria's economy shifted from farming to crude oil, and one former site is now a football field.

Which Nigerian port city hosts a December carnival billed as Africa's biggest street party?

Calabar's carnival was relaunched in 2004 by a state governor keen to promote tourism, drawing participants from other African countries and the diaspora.

Which city on a cool central Nigerian plateau is nicknamed Tin City after its colonial-era mines?

Jos boomed after the British found vast deposits of ore nearby, and at more than 1,200 metres its climate is closer to temperate than almost anywhere else in Nigeria.

Which critically endangered ape survives only in forested hills on the Nigeria–Cameroon border?

Cross River gorilla numbers were put at fewer than 250 mature animals in 2014, and the shy apes were not filmed professionally in the wild until 2009.

Which Nigerian city launched the country's first television station, WNTV, in 1959?

Ibadan's WNTV went on air in late 1959 from two transmitters, a venture of the Western regional government that federal television absorbed in 1977.

After a World Court ruling, Nigeria handed which disputed peninsula to Cameroon in 2008?

Bakassi was fully ceded on 14 August 2008, exactly two years after the first part changed hands, although a Nigerian court had asked for the handover to wait.

Dr Ameyo Adadevoh is honoured in Nigeria for quarantining a traveller with which disease in 2014?

Ebola killed Dr Adadevoh herself weeks later; she had refused pressure from Liberian officials to discharge Nigeria's first patient so he could attend a conference.

Graduates on Nigeria's compulsory National Youth Service Corps year are usually posted where?

Outside their home state, by design: the scheme was created in 1973, after the civil war, to build common ties among young people from every part of Nigeria.

Which Nigerian street food is thin-sliced meat grilled on skewers in a fiery peanut-and-chili rub?

Suya, also known as tsire, is sold as an evening snack, and its rub mixes chili, cayenne, ginger and dried onion with ground peanut cake.

Garri, a coarse flour eaten daily across Nigeria, is made from which starchy root crop?

Cassava roots are heated as garri is made, which helps to remove the toxins that occur naturally in the plant; soaked in hot water, the flour becomes the stiff dough eba.

Nigeria grows about two-thirds of the world's crop of which tuber, often pounded into a stiff paste?

Yams from Nigeria made up 67 percent of the 75 million tonnes harvested worldwide in 2020, and the crop is honoured with annual festivals.

Which bitter nut is traditionally presented to guests in Nigeria as a sign of goodwill?

Kola gave cola soft drinks their name, because its caffeine-laden seeds were used to flavour them; the nut itself is 2 to 4 percent caffeine.

Egusi soup, one of Nigeria's best-loved dishes, is thickened with the ground seeds of which plant?

Melon seeds are dried and ground into a protein-rich meal, then simmered with leafy vegetables, chili peppers, onions and meat or shrimp.

The pitch of a Nigerian talking drum rises to imitate speech when the player does what?

Squeezes it under the arm: the waist of the hourglass drum sits between arm and ribs, so pressing its leather cords tightens both heads for a higher note.

What is a gele, worn by Nigerian women at weddings and other big celebrations?

A sculpted head tie, the gele comes from Yoruba dress: a length of cloth, usually handwoven aso oke, is pleated and wrapped by hand to match the rest of the outfit.

Which festival of charging horsemen in northern Nigerian cities follows the end of Ramadan?

Durbar riders gallop at full speed towards the emir and pull up at the last moment to salute him, a tradition UNESCO listed as intangible heritage in 2024.

At Nigeria's Argungu festival, thousands of men leap into a river at a gunshot to do what?

Catch the biggest fish, with one hour to do it: many competitors use only their hands, and the winning fish in 2005 weighed 75 kg and took four men to lift.

One town in south-western Nigeria has earned a nickname as the world capital of what?

Twins are born there at an unusually high rate, which researchers have tried to explain through both the local diet and simple genetics.

Which Nigerian novelist wrote Half of a Yellow Sun and gave a TEDx talk that Beyoncé sampled?

Chimamanda Adichie spent four years on the civil-war novel, and the talk on feminism that Beyoncé borrowed from in 2013 later appeared on a Dior T-shirt.

Which Nigerian singer topped the US Hot 100 in 2016 as a featured guest on Drake's hit One Dance?

Wizkid was introduced to Drake by the grime artist Skepta, and the feature made him the first Nigerian artist to reach number one on the Billboard chart.

Which singer of the 1984 hit Smooth Operator was born in Nigeria and moved to Britain aged four?

Sade is short for Folasade, her middle name, and Smooth Operator became the most successful American single from her band's debut album, Diamond Life.

Which Nigerian singer earned an Oscar nomination for co-writing Rihanna's song Lift Me Up?

Tems became the first Nigerian singer nominated for the Best Original Song Oscar, and she also holds a Grammy won for a melodic rap performance.

Which Genevieve Nnaji drama became the first Netflix original film produced in Nigeria?

Lionheart was also Nigeria's first Oscar submission, but the Academy disqualified it because only about ten minutes of its dialogue were in a Nigerian language.

Which striker scored Nigeria's first-ever World Cup goal in 1994, then wept as he gripped the net?

Rashidi Yekini struck in a 3–0 win over Bulgaria, and his tearful celebration became one of the tournament's iconic images; he scored 37 goals for Nigeria in all.

Tobi Amusan became Nigeria's first athletics world champion in 2022 by winning which event?

100 m hurdles history came a round early: in the semi-final she ran 12.12 seconds, taking the world record from an American who had held it since 2016.

Chioma Ajunwa became the first Nigerian to win an Olympic gold medal with victory in which event?

Long jump gold came on her very first attempt in the final, a leap of 7.12 metres; she had earlier gone to a Women's World Cup as a footballer.

Which former slave founded Nigeria's trading state of Opobo, only for Britain to exile him?

King Jaja was invited to negotiations in 1887, seized on boarding a British vessel, tried in Accra and exiled to the West Indies; Opobo's power then rapidly declined.

Nigeria's first commercial crude was struck in 1956 at which town in present-day Bayelsa State?

Oloibiri's well was struck by Shell Darcy on 15 January 1956, and Nigeria shipped its first crude from the field two years later.