Nigeria Travel Guide

Africa's largest city is a spread of islands and mainland districts around the Lagos lagoon. Victoria Island and Ikoyi hold the international hotel and restaurant cluster, the diplomatic district and the Nike Art Gallery, one of West Africa's largest contemporary-art collections; the Lekki peninsula is the modern coastal belt with the Lekki Conservation Centre's 401-metre canopy walk (one of the longest in Africa), the Lekki Arts & Crafts Market for handmade textiles and adire indigo cloth, and the long Atlantic beach line that includes Elegushi and Eleko. Lagos Island holds the National Museum on Awolowo Road, the Brazilian-Quarter colonial architecture along Tinubu Square and the Idumota market crowd. Tarkwa Bay across the harbour is a quiet boat-access fishing community with calm-water swimming. The Eyo masquerade festival, when granted, fills Lagos Island in spectacular white-robed processions; the Felabration week each October at the New Afrika Shrine in Ikeja celebrates the music and legacy of Fela Kuti.

Abuja was designed from scratch as the federal capital and inaugurated in 1991. The Three Arms Zone holds the Presidential Villa at the foot of Aso Rock, the National Assembly and the Supreme Court along a single ceremonial axis; the National Mosque and the National Christian Centre face each other across that axis as a deliberate symbolic statement of the country's two largest religious communities. The Millennium Park is the city's largest green space, the Jabi Lake and the Wonderland leisure park sit at the western end, and the Nike Art Centre Abuja (the federal capital branch) and the Thought Pyramid Art Centre frame the contemporary-art scene. Out of the city, the Zuma Rock monolith on the Kaduna highway is one of Nigeria's most photographed natural landmarks, and the Gurara Falls in Niger State are an easy day-trip on the way to Minna. The Aso Rock and Mpape Crushed Rock viewpoints give the modernist city its full skyline.

Calabar in Cross River State on the Cameroon border is one of Nigeria's most rewarding city stops and the headquarters of Africa's largest street carnival. The Carnival Calabar runs through December, with the headline parade on 27–31 December — costumed bands, Afrobeats and highlife music, and a city programme that fills hotels months ahead. The colonial old town along Marina Road carries the Slave History Museum at the Old Residency Building (a serious thematic UNESCO Memory-of-the-World context) and the Tinapa free-trade resort just outside the city. Out of Calabar, the Obudu Mountain Resort plateau in the Sankwala Mountains rises to about 1 700 metres above sea level, with cool air, the longest cable-car system in West Africa and a horse-riding and golf cluster. The Cross River National Park around Okwangwo and Oban holds one of West Africa's largest remaining contiguous rainforests with critically endangered Cross River gorillas and chimpanzees on the Cameroon border.

The south-western Yoruba heartland holds the country's deepest layer of traditional culture. Ile-Ife in Osun State is the historic spiritual centre of the Yoruba — the Ife Museum holds the world-famous Ife bronze and terracotta heads, considered among the finest royal portraits in West African art history. The UNESCO-listed Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove on the bank of the Osun river is the country's headline cultural-religious site, with the modernist sculptural garden built by the Austrian-born artist-priestess Susanne Wenger from the late 1950s; the annual Osun-Osogbo Festival in August culminates in the procession of the Arugba carrying offerings to the river. Abeokuta in Ogun State holds the dramatic Olumo Rock granite outcrop overlooking the Ogun River, climbed by metal staircases to a panoramic city view, and the Adire Centre for traditional indigo-resist textile-dyeing. Ibadan further east holds the University of Ibadan (Nigeria's oldest, 1948), the Cocoa House skyscraper and the Mapo Hall colonial-era civic centre.

Yankari National Park in Bauchi State is Nigeria's flagship wildlife destination — elephants, baboons, patas and tantalus monkeys, hippos, crocodiles, hartebeest and several hundred bird species across savannah and woodland habitats, with the headline Wikki Warm Springs (a clear blue-green spring at constant 31°C, swimmable around the clock) at the heart of the park. Game drives leave from the central Wikki Camp twice daily. The Sukur Cultural Landscape in Adamawa State is Nigeria's second UNESCO World Heritage site and one of the most intact pre-colonial cultural landscapes in West Africa — terraced fields, ceremonial paved avenues and the surviving palace of the Hidi (chief) of Sukur on a Mandara-massif plateau. The Gashaka-Gumti National Park in Taraba State is the country's largest reserve, and the Cross River National Park (already mentioned in the Calabar entry) is the south-eastern rainforest twin. Nigeria is not a Big-Five safari destination on the East/Southern African pattern; visitors come here for the cultural-landscape and birding density rather than for game volume.

The Igbo south-east is one of the country's most distinctive regional cultures and runs from Enugu on the Niger plateau down to Owerri, Aba and the Atlantic coast at Port Harcourt and Calabar. Enugu, the regional capital, holds the Coal Camp colonial-industrial heritage (Nigerian coal mining ran from Udi from 1916), the Awhum Waterfall and Cave outside the city and the Ngwo Pine Forest. Onitsha on the Niger river holds Africa's largest open-air market — the direct heir of the city's centuries as the great inland distribution point between coast and interior — and the Niger Bridge crossing into Asaba. The Igbo-Ukwu archaeological site in Anambra State produced one of the most important early West African bronze-casting finds (9th–10th century AD bronze ceremonial vessels of strikingly sophisticated design) and the National War Museum at Umuahia is one of the regional museums. Abia State holds the Long Juju of Arochukwu shrine cave system. The eastern coast reaches the Niger Delta — Port Harcourt for the river-and-mangrove cultural circuit, the Bonny Island offshore industrial-heritage cluster and the river-village transport networks of the Delta.

Nigeria is the global home of Nollywood and of Afrobeats, and a creative-industries trip can anchor a Lagos visit. Nollywood produces around 2 500 films a year (the world's second-largest film industry by output, after India's Bollywood) — much of it in Lagos and Asaba — and several production studios in Lekki and the Lagos Film Village offer visitor tours by appointment. Afrobeats grew out of the Lagos club scene and the New Afrika Shrine that Femi Kuti runs in Ikeja in honour of his father Fela Kuti; Burna Boy, Wizkid, Davido, Tems, Asake and Rema headline the global crossover. Felabration each October fills the Shrine for a week of legacy concerts. The Lagos Theatre Festival (February–March), the Lagos Photo Festival (October–November), the Ake Arts and Book Festival (Lagos, October–November) and the Lagos International Jazz Festival are the structural fixtures of the year. Nollywood and Afrobeats are also accessible from outside Nigeria — they are Nigeria's strongest cultural exports and shape the city in a way that is visible on a short visit.