Nigeria 🇳🇬

Nigeria lies in Western Africa, part of Africa. The long form of the name is Federal Republic of Nigeria. The capital is Abuja.

Its territory runs to 923,768 km², which ranks it 33rd of the 249 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Tanzania and just ahead of Venezuela. Put next to a country most people can picture, it is almost exactly the same size as Venezuela.

Some 232.7 million people call it home, placing it 6th of 249 by population — between Pakistan above it and Brazil below. Measured only against its own subregion, it is 4th of 17 in size and 1st in population.

Spread across 923,768 km², that works out at about 252 people per square kilometre, which makes it densely populated. For comparison, the median entry on this list sits near 91 per square kilometre.

People from Nigeria are called Nigerians.

Officially it is monolingual: English. English is one of the widely shared official languages here, listed by 90 other entries including American Samoa, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda and Australia.

Inside Africa it places 1st of 59 by population, and it accounts for 51% of everyone living in Western Africa.

Put next to every other entry on this site, Nigeria ranks 33rd of 249 by area and 6th by population. That works out at 0.62% of the combined land area of all 249 entries and 2.9% of their combined population. Those denominators matter: this list includes territories and dependencies as well as UN member states, so a rank here is not the same as a rank among sovereign countries.

For a sense of scale, the entries immediately either side of Nigeria in the size ordering are Tanzania at 945,087 km² and Venezuela at 916,445 km², against Nigeria's 923,768 km². If you can already picture one of those, you can picture this one.

Density tells a different story from either raw figure. Nigeria averages 252 people per square kilometre of total area, which makes it densely settled by global standards — 61st of the 247 entries that have both a population and a measured area. Total area includes inland water, so the true figure for habitable land is higher than this.

Within Western Africa, Nigeria is the most populous of the 17 entries this site lists, and 4th by area. Ghana is next in line by population.

Every entry in Western Africa has its own guide here, so if you want to work through the whole neighbourhood rather than one country at a time, Ghana is the place to carry on.

• 🇬🇭 Ghana
• 🇳🇬 Nigeria

The coordinates the dataset gives are 10.0° N, 8.0° E, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 1,113 km from the equator, in what geographers would call tropical latitudes.

Venezuela, Somalia and Panama sit at almost exactly the same latitude on other parts of the globe.

Its land neighbours number 4: Benin, Cameroon, Chad and Niger. The largest of them by area is Chad, while the most populous is Cameroon. Together those neighbours hold about 90.9 million people.

With both a coast and land borders, it has the trade options a landlocked country does not.

The Nigerian naira (NGN) is used only in Nigeria among the 249 entries on this site. Its own currency is one of the clearest markers of an economy that sets its own monetary policy rather than importing somebody else's.

Language reaches wider still. English is listed for 91 entries here, Nigeria among them, so a visitor who speaks it can be understood across a large part of the map. Shared language tends to outlive the empires, trade routes and migrations that spread it, which is why the linguistic map and the political one rarely line up.

It uses the Nigerian naira (₦, NGN). No other entry in this dataset uses it, so the currency is specific to Nigeria.

Abuja is the seat of government and the answer most quizzes are looking for.

The top-level domain is .ng. To phone it from abroad you dial +234. Its ISO codes are ng and NGA, which is what most databases and flag files use.

It holds a seat at the United Nations, one of 192 entries here that do. The other 57 entries are territories, dependencies or observers, which is why totals on this site run to 249 rather than the familiar 195.