The federation is not one country evenly divided. Its largest state is 21 times the size of its smallest; its densest is 58 times as crowded as its emptiest.
Population can be measured four different ways — pick one in chapter 03 and every ranking, density and extreme on this page recomputes.
local government areas, fixed by the First Schedule of the 1999 Constitution, distributed across 37 units whose populations were last officially counted in 2006 — the last census Nigeria has held.
Change the metric below and the extremes change with it.
Sudan savannah on the Kano close-settled zone — the most intensively farmed dryland in West Africa, worked continuously for over a thousand years. Most populous state at the 2006 census.
Savannah on the Gwagwa plains, ringed by the Bwari–Aso hills and dominated by Aso Rock and Zuma Rock (on the Niger State boundary). Created in 1976 out of Niger, Plateau (via Nasarawa) and Kwara territory.
How it is arrived at: The National Population Commission's official gazetted head-count: 140,431,790 nationally, published state by state. This is the only counted number on this page — nothing is modelled.
Why you might use it: The only per-state figure with legal standing, and the base every other row here is derived from. Each state's share of the national total (Abia, for example, is 2.02%) is fixed at its 2006 value.