Nigeria

Nigeria is a big country in West Africa.

It has a coast by the ocean. It has rainforests, grasslands and big rivers. The capital city is Abuja.

Nigeria is a country on the west coast of Africa, on the Gulf of Guinea. It is larger than the U.S. state of Texas, and more people live there than in any other African country. Its neighbors are Benin, Niger, Chad and Cameroon.

The country is named after the Niger River, which flows through it to the sea. The south has swamps and rainforests, the middle has plateaus and hills, and the north has wide plains of grassland. The capital is Abuja, a city built in the middle of the country.

Nigeria is bordered by Niger to the north, Chad and Cameroon to the east, Benin to the west and the Gulf of Guinea of the Atlantic Ocean to the south. Its area is about 923,768 square kilometers, and Britannica calls it Africa's most populous country; the World Bank estimated 237,527,782 people in 2025.

In general the country has plains in the north and south, interrupted by plateaus and hills in the center. The Sokoto Plains lie in the northwest and the Borno Plains extend to the Lake Chad basin in the northeast; the Jos Plateau, near the center, is covered by lava surfaces dotted with extinct volcanoes. The highest land is along the southeastern border with Cameroon, where Chappal Waddi in the Gotel Mountains reaches 2,419 m. Modern Nigeria dates from 1914, when the British joined the protectorates of Northern and Southern Nigeria.

Abuja is the capital city.

Lagos is the biggest city. It is built on islands and by a lagoon. Kano is a very old city in the north.

Abuja, the capital, is a planned city in the center of the country. It was built during the 1980s and has been the capital since 1991, when it replaced Lagos. Its buildings include the National Assembly, where the country's lawmakers meet.

Lagos is Nigeria's largest city and main port, built on islands, sandbars and lagoons along the coast. Kano, in the north, is one of the country's oldest towns; it grew through trade across the Sahara and was once a walled city. Ibadan and Benin City are other important old cities in the south.

Abuja, in the Federal Capital Territory created in 1976, was the first planned city built in Nigeria. The site, on the grass-covered Chukuku Hills about 480 km northeast of Lagos, was chosen for its central location and room to grow, and Britannica adds that it was chosen so that no single ethnic group would be favored; it has been the capital since December 1991. Its Three Arms Zone holds the presidential palace, the National Assembly and the Supreme Court.

Lagos, centered on Lagos Island in Lagos Lagoon, is the largest city and chief port; Portuguese traders first landed there in 1472, and the city grew from about 250,000 people in 1861 to some 8 million in the early 21st century. Kano, Zaria and Katsina are older than the Yoruba towns and owed their existence to trans-Saharan trade. Ibadan is among the large Yoruba towns, and Benin City was the center of the historic state of Benin.

The south of Nigeria is hot and rainy.

The north is drier, with grass and scattered trees. There, a hot, dry wind called the harmattan blows for months. Two big rivers, the Niger and the Benue, join together.

Nigeria's weather changes from south to north. In the south the rainy season lasts from March to November, and the southeast gets more than 3,000 millimeters of rain a year. In the far north the rains last only from mid-May to September, and no more than 500 millimeters falls. A hot, dry wind called the harmattan blows from the northeast for more than three months in the north.

The plants change in belts too: mangrove swamps along the coast, rainforest a little inland, then grassland with baobab trees, and open savanna in the far north. The Niger and its biggest branch, the Benue, are the main rivers, and the Niger reaches the sea through a huge, swampy delta.

Nigeria has a tropical climate with rainy and dry seasons that vary by place: hot and wet most of the year in the southeast, a savanna climate in the north and west, and a steppe climate in the far north. The rainy season shortens northward, from March to November in the south (with a short dry 'August break') to mid-May to September in the far north; rainfall drops from more than 3,000 mm in the southeast and about 1,800 mm in the southwest to no more than 500 mm in the far north. The harmattan, the hot, dry northeast trade wind, blows for more than three months in the north but rarely for more than two weeks on the coast.

Vegetation runs in east-west belts: mangrove and freshwater swamps on the coast and in the Niger delta, dense rainforest, then grassland with baobab, tamarind and locust bean trees, and semidesert near Lake Chad. The Niger delta's oxbow lakes, meanders and levees give way to brackish mangroves at the coast; the delta also holds large oil and gas reserves, whose exploitation since the mid-20th century has harmed the environment.

About 238 million people live in Nigeria.

They speak hundreds of languages. English is the official language. Many people also speak Hausa, Yoruba or Igbo. In the south, people eat soups with yam or cassava.

About 238 million people lived in Nigeria in 2025, belonging to an estimated 250 ethnic groups. The three major groups are the Hausa-Fulani, mostly in the north, the Yoruba in the southwest and the Igbo in the southeast; the Ibibio, Edo, Tiv, Nupe, Kanuri and many others have their own homelands and languages. English is the official language, and Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, Fula and English Creole are widely spoken.

In the early 2000s about half of people were Muslim and slightly fewer Christian. Food differs from place to place. In the south, soups made with tomatoes, onions, pepper and palm oil are eaten with gari (ground cassava), yam paste or plantains; rice is eaten everywhere, and in the north grains such as millet are important.

Nigeria's languages belong to three broad families: Niger-Congo (including Yoruba, Igbo, Edo, Tiv, Nupe, Efik, Ibibio and Fula), Nilo-Saharan (mainly Kanuri) and Afro-Asiatic (including Hausa). English is the official language; Hausa, official in the northern states from 1951 to 1967, is the most widely spoken, and radio and television programs of traditional music, dance and storytelling are available in some 25 languages. The middle belt holds the greatest concentration of ethnic groups, more than 180. About half of the people live in rural areas, and almost three-fourths were younger than 30.

At the start of the 21st century about half the population was Muslim, slightly fewer Christian, and a small number followed traditional religions; Islam is predominant in the north and Christianity in the east, and the constitution guarantees religious freedom. The family is the central institution, gathering for births, weddings and funerals. Nigerian art ranges from Nok terra-cottas to Ife sculpture and Benin bronzes, music from juju (King Sunny Ade) to Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, and in 1986 Wole Soyinka became the first Black African to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.