Nigeria, The most populous nation in Africa and the tenth largest nation by population in the world, is located at the eastern terminus of the bulge of West Africa. As with many of the other nations of Africa, Nigeria's national boundaries result from its colonial history and cut across a number of cultural and physical boundaries. Nigeria has a total area of 923,768 square kilometers, about 60 % the size of the state of Alaska, and the greatest area of the nations along the coast of West Africa -although in Africa as a whole, it is only the 14th largest nation by area. The maximum north-south distance within the nation is about 1,040 kilometers, while the maximum east-west distance is about 1,120 kilometers. Although it represents only about 3 % of the surface area of Africa, Nigeria contains about 20 % of total African population. In this and other respects, it is arguably the single most valuable nation on the continent.

Aside from Lagos, the most rapid recent rates of urbanization in the 1980s were around Port Harcourt in the Niger Delta region, which was at the heart of the oil boom, and generally throughout the Igbo and other areas of the southeast. These regions historically had few urban centers, but numerous large cities, including Onitsha, Owerri, Enugu, Aba, and Calabar, grew very rapidly as commercial and administrative centers. The Yoruba southwest was by 1990 still the most highly urbanized part of the nation, while the middle belt was the least urbanized. The problems of Lagos, as well as the desire for a more centrally located capital that would be more of a force for national unity, led to the designation in 1976 of a site for a new national capital at Abuja.