50 Fun Facts About Nigeria

What is the capital of Nigeria?

It replaced Lagos as capital on 12 December 1991.

What is Nigeria's largest city?

Its metropolitan area is among the largest in the world.

Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa and ranks where in the world?

Its population passed 242 million.

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

Five cities have more than a million people: Lagos, Kano, Ibadan, Benin City and Port Harcourt.

Which three ethnic groups together make up over 60 percent of Nigerians?

The country has more than 250 ethnic groups speaking 500 languages.

What is the official language of Nigeria?

Nigerian Pidgin, born in the slave-trade era, serves as a widespread lingua franca.

Who coined the name Nigeria in 1897?

Rejected alternatives included Niger Sudan and Hausa Territories.

Which culture, thriving from about 1500 BC, is among the region's earliest civilisations?

It is famous for its terracotta figures.

The Kingdom of Nri, considered the foundation of which people's culture, lasted until 1911?

The oldest lost-wax bronzes in West Africa come from Igbo-Ukwu, a city under its influence.

Which Yoruba city-state, developed by the 8th century, is famed for its terracotta and bronze heads?

Oyo rose to prominence later and stretched its influence to modern Togo.

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

By the 1890s it held about two million slaves and was one of Africa's largest pre-colonial states.

At which battle did the Yoruba forces of Ibadan halt the Sokoto jihad's push into Yorubaland?

The caliphate had already swallowed parts of the old Oyo Empire.

Britain annexed which port as a crown colony in August 1861?

It had bombarded the town in 1851 to depose the slave-trading Oba Kosoko.

Which British general conquered the northern caliphate in 1903 and later united Nigeria's protectorates?

He kept the title of sultan as a symbolic post under indirect rule.

The Northern and Southern Protectorates were merged into one Nigeria in which year?

The amalgamation took effect on 1 January.

Nigeria became independent on which date?

Elizabeth II remained head of state as Queen of Nigeria.

Who was Nigeria's first prime minister at independence?

Azikiwe led the NCNC and Awolowo the opposition Action Group.

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

Lt Col Emeka Ojukwu proclaimed it after pogroms against Igbos in the north.

How long did the Nigerian Civil War last?

It began on 6 July 1967 and ended in January 1970 after a long blockade of Biafra.

Which two powers were the main military backers of the Nigerian government during the civil war?

France and Israel aided Biafra, and Egyptian pilots flew for the federal side.

Nigeria joined OPEC in which year, during its 1970s oil boom?

Oil revenues made the federal government the centre of political struggle.

Who was the first Nigerian head of state to voluntarily hand power to a civilian?

He handed over to Shehu Shagari in 1979 and later won the presidency himself in 1999.

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

The execution got Nigeria suspended from the Commonwealth.

Stable multiparty democracy returned to Nigeria in which year?

General Abdulsalami Abubakar adopted a new constitution on 5 May that year.

Which Islamist group kidnapped the Chibok schoolgirls in 2014?

The abduction came during Goodluck Jonathan's presidency.

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

He won a disputed election with about 36 percent of the vote.

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

It replaced Arise, O Compatriots.

What is the highest point in Nigeria?

It rises to 2,419 metres near the Cameroon border.

Which two great rivers converge in the country and empty into the great southern delta?

The Delta is the country's main oil-producing region.

The forests around Calabar are believed to hold the world's largest diversity of what?

Cross River State lies in the south-east.

Abuja's skyline is defined by which 400-metre monolith?

Zuma Rock, taller at 725 m, stands just north of the city on the road to Kaduna.

Nigeria's film industry, Nollywood, ranks where in the world by number of films produced?

It has surpassed Hollywood, trailing only India.

Which 1992 Igbo-language film was the first massive hit of Nollywood's videotape era?

Most Igbo filmmakers nonetheless prefer to shoot in English.

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

It fuses West African music with American funk and jazz.

What did Fela Kuti name the commune he founded in 1970 and declared independent of military rule?

His son Femi has overseen reissues of his music since his death in 1997.

Davido, Wizkid and Burna Boy are leading stars of which genre?

P-Square, 2face and D'banj popularised the sound internationally in the 2000s.

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

The dish itself originated in Senegal, whose thieboudienne is UNESCO-listed.

Which Nigerian won the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature?

He was born into a Yoruba family in Abeokuta.

Chinua Achebe's 1958 novel, the most widely read African novel, is called what?

It opens the 'African Trilogy' with No Longer at Ease and Arrow of God.

Which Nigerian won the Booker Prize in 1991?

Achebe received the Man Booker International Prize in 2007.

What are the colours of the Nigerian flag?

Green stands for agriculture and white for peace and unity.

Who designed the Nigerian flag, winning a contest with over 3,000 entries?

Lieutenant David Ejoor raised it for the first time.

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

They reached fifth in the FIFA rankings in April 1994, the highest for any African side.

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

They beat Mexico, Brazil and Argentina on the way.

Nigeria first won the Africa Cup of Nations in which year, on home soil?

The side, led by Christian Chukwu, has won the trophy three times, most recently in 2013.

Nigeria proposed a single West African currency called what, expecting it to be led by the naira?

The idea reflects its Africa-centred foreign policy.

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

Most belong to the Niger-Congo family, such as Igbo and Yoruba, while Hausa is Afroasiatic and Kanuri is Nilo-Saharan.

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

In the 16th century the Portuguese became the first Europeans to trade directly with southern Nigeria, at Lagos and at Calabar.

Nigeria's national basketball team was the first from Africa to beat which country's men's team?

The team had earlier qualified for the 2012 Olympics by upsetting heavily favoured Greece and Lithuania.

Nigeria's women's two-person crew was Africa's first Olympic bobsled team at which Winter edition?

Nigeria also made Scrabble an official sport in the early 1990s and had about 4,000 club players by 2017.