Explore
Understand Nigeria one place at a time
Eighteen places so far, across all six zones. Every story on this site belongs to one of them — start with the place, not the headline.
- AbeokutaOgunA city founded in the shelter of a rock, and still arranged around it.7.16°N 3.35°E
- ArgunguKebbiA river town on the Sokoto-Rima, known for one morning a year and misunderstood the rest of it.12.74°N 4.53°E
- ArochukwuAbiaThe seat of an oracle that governed trade across the whole Igbo interior.5.39°N 7.91°E
- BadagryLagosA lagoon town an hour from Lagos that carries more history than the city does.6.43°N 2.89°E
- BauchiBauchiSallah horsemen, beekeepers and the country's oldest game reserve, in one state.10.31°N 9.84°E
- CalabarCross RiverAn old river port that reinvented itself as the country's carnival city.4.98°N 8.34°E
- IdanreOndoA town that lived on top of the hills for centuries, then moved down and left itself there.7.12°N 5.10°E
- Ikot EkpeneAkwa IbomThe Raffia City — a town whose entire reputation rests on what it can weave.5.18°N 7.71°E
- JosPlateauA highland city cold enough to need a jumper, which no one believes until they arrive.9.90°N 8.86°E
- KanoKanoA thousand-year-old commercial city that has never stopped being one.12.00°N 8.59°E
- KatsinaKatsinaA scholarly city on the Niger border, with a minaret older than the printing press.12.99°N 7.60°E
- KwaraKwaraThe state the Niger runs along on its way south — and the place a new piece of the national grid was put down in.8.50°N 4.54°E
- LokojaKogiWhere the Niger meets the Benue — the geographic argument for Nigeria existing at all.7.80°N 6.73°E
- MaiduguriBornoThe capital of the old Kanem-Borno empire, and a city that absorbed a region.11.83°N 13.15°E
- MakurdiBenueA city built on both banks of the Benue, and organised entirely around crossing it.7.73°N 8.54°E
- ObuduCross RiverCattle country on the Cameroon border, at a temperature the rest of the region does not have.6.67°N 9.17°E
- OnitshaAnambraA river port with what is often called the largest market in West Africa.6.14°N 6.80°E
- OsogboOsunA river, a grove and a goddess — and a modernist art movement that grew out of all three.7.78°N 4.54°E
- ZariaKadunaA walled city that became a university town without giving up the walls.11.09°N 7.72°E