Nigeria Things to See & Do Guide

Day 1—Arrive Lagos. Take a chartered taxi to Oshogbo.

Day 2—Oshogbo.

Day 3—Return to Lagos and fly to Kano.

Day 4—Kano.

Day 5—Return to Lagos and depart Nigeria.

If you have additional time, add a night in Jos to see the Jos Museum complex and perhaps another night at Yankari National Park.

Abuja is a planned city, built from scratch to be Nigeria's capital (which it became in 1991). It lies very close to the geographical center of Nigeria, a location chosen to appease all the ethnic groups. It has also been a very expensive undertaking and has cost billions of dollars to date. The planners designed the city to grow on a progressive basis: government buildings and light industry facilities were the first things built, with additional residential and cultural facilities following later. Abuja has an international airport, a new national stadium and conference center, and some of the country's best hotels. However, unless you are interested in urban planning or have business with the government, there is nothing particularly interesting in the city. 220 mi/350 km southwest of Kano.

Surrounded by an ancient moat and the remains of a city wall, this former Edo-Bini capital has a traditional oba's (king's) palace and a strong artistic tradition. The Edo have produced some of Africa's most celebrated bronze and terra-cotta sculpture, and the tradition continues in artisan shops on the newly restored Igun Street throughout the city. Although the best examples of local artwork were carted off by the British during the colonial years, the city's National Museum has a number of good pieces on display. The Igwe Festival in mid December features traditional dancing. 150 mi/240 km east of Lagos.

Calabar, one of Nigeria's oldest trading cities, is a place where few tourists go, which is a pity as it was one of our favorite places in Nigeria. Set on a hill overlooking a river, it is as picturesque as the country gets, and it has a friendly, relaxing atmosphere. The Calabar Museum, established in the old British Residency, has an excellent and large exhibit on the region's history, including slavery and the precolonial period. The nearby town of Oron, accessible by ferry, has another interesting museum filled with masks, puppets and funerary art. If you don't want to spend your entire day indoors, take a side trip to the Oban hills or Kwa Falls on the edge of the Cross River National Park. Calabar is also the location of two interesting and worthwhile primate protection projects that can be visited. The Calabar Drill Ranch rescues and takes care of endangered drill monkeys and chimpanzees, and the Cercopan Center cares for a number of guenon and mangabey monkeys. 355 mi/570 km east of Lagos.

Visit this city only if you have to. Ibadan is enormous, ugly and plagued with crime. If you do find yourself there, visit the Dugbe market (one of the country's largest) and the university. The university guesthouse also has a small market space where local traders bring cloth and other items (this market is less daunting than Dugbe, but it doesn't match Dugbe's variety). The university area once was known for its bookshops, but this is no longer the case, and the university's zoo should be avoided at all costs, as it is awful and the animals are kept in poor conditions. For a view of Ibadan's old, brown, stucco buildings, climb Mapo Hill in the old quarter of the city. 80 mi/130 km northeast of Lagos.

Home of Oranyan, the mythical founder of the Yoruba people, Ife is considered the cradle of Yoruba civilization. Visit the museum (a small but interesting collection of historical artifacts), the king's palace (you're not allowed inside but the gatekeeper will show you around the grounds) and a large stone monolith called Oranyan's Staff. 100 mi/160 km northeast of Lagos.

This pleasant tin-mining town on a high plateau near the center of Nigeria has a museum with displays of items from the Nok excavation, which uncovered ruins of civilizations that existed 4,000 years ago. The museum also has full-scale representations of buildings from around the country including the Zaria Mosque and the Kano Wall. About 140 mi/225 km east of Jos is the Yankari Game Reserve. Don't expect Yankari to equal the more famous reserves of East Africa, however. There are no organized photo safaris, tent hotels or even many guided expeditions, and thanks to decades of poaching, very few animals left. 410 mi/660 km northeast of Lagos.

Most tourists enjoy Kano, an atmospheric, mud-walled, 1,000-year-old Muslim center in the far northern part of the country. On the edge of the Sahel (the fringe of the Sahara), Kano is the oldest city in West Africa and has many cultural and historical links to the ethnic groups of the southern Sahara. It's a bustling and interesting city (the second-largest in the country with a population that could number as many 8 million-it's grown at a frenzied pace in recent years), and though it's noisy and crowded, it's much more bearable than Lagos.

Be sure to visit the walls of the Old City (there are 16 gates) and the massive Kurmi Market where trade has been conducted for centuries in the congested alleyways. Also in the Old City is the Central Mosque (now closed to non-Islamic visitors, but worth seeing from outside, especially during a Friday service when many thousands of men pray inside and outside in the courtyard). South of the mosque is the Emir's Palace (you can't enter it without a personal invitation from the emir), and across from the palace is the Gidan Makama Museum (historic and crafts exhibits). Indigo cloth is dyed at the Kofar Mata dye pits. The Gidan Dan Hausa (an old colonial governor's mansion) is worth a visit to see its unusual Hausa/Islamic architecture. There are great views of the city from the top of Dala Hill in the middle of the Old City, and from there you can look down on the old clay houses and frenetic markets. Excursions can be made to Katsina Daura (a traditional Hausa town), Birnin Kudu (rock paintings) and Sokoto (sultan's palace, market, leather goods). Kano has one of Nigeria's busiest airports, and because of a large expatriate community, some Western shops and restaurants.

Note: As with all the northern cities, Kano is staunchly Islamic and visitors, especially women, should dress and act respectfully (no bare legs or shoulders, no drinking alcohol in public, etc.). 520 mi/835 km northeast of Lagos.

Lagos, a giant sprawl of humanity, is not for the faint of heart. It's dirty, expensive, crime-ridden, congested, hot and humid. Lagos is, however, the largest and oldest market city in West Africa and is certainly one of the most important cities on the continent-travelers who really want to get a complete picture of Africa should schedule a day or two there to simply drink in the chaos. On the southern coast near the border with Benin, Lagos consists of four major islands and several mainland areas (bridges and landfills link everything). This is one city where having an escort is very important-otherwise, you'll never really get a sense of what's going on around you (or the best way to get around). If you don't know anybody in the city, hire a car and driver.

Sights include the National Museum on Lagos Island (a fine but somewhat neglected collection of West African art), the Iga Idunganran (Palace of the Oba of Lagos), old Portuguese-style houses from the early 20th century and the modern National Theater. Upscale residential neighborhoods such as Victoria Island house the city's best shops and restaurants, though there are lively, less-expensive markets throughout Lagos. The safest (and cleanest) beach around Lagos is at Tarkwa Bay. There, you can watch the many hundreds of oil tankers line up to get into Lagos Harbor.

The old slave port of Badagry is an easy day excursion from Lagos and has some interesting, if not uplifting, museums dedicated to the slave trade. There on a sand bar is the Point of No Return-the last spot of African soil slaves stood on before being transported to the slave ships. Day trips to Ibadan and Benin City are also possible.

For nightlife, King Sunny Ade (the best-known performer of West Nigerian juju music) performs Saturday night at his Ariya Nightclub when he isn't on tour. Femi Kuti, son of the late Afrobeat star Fela Kuti, carries on his father's music at the Shrine Club. On major Christian holidays-Christmas, Easter-you may see Carnival processions in the streets. These celebrations, called fantys, are traditionally put on by descendants of freed slaves who emigrated to Nigeria from Brazil.

Destroyed in the Biafran civil war, Onitsha has since been rebuilt. The city is famous outside Nigeria for its Onitsha Market Literature-short moralistic pieces about life in the region (a few of these pamphlets are, in fact, sold at the market). Onitsha is less a city than it is a collection of markets (there are seven major ones). It serves most of southeastern Nigeria. Onitsha has a rich ritual tradition, including a yearly installation of the Obi Onicha (divine king of Onitsha) and weekly masquerade performances. These events generally require an invitation from a local person, though you might get lucky and be in the right place at the right time (masquerades periodically burst out of compounds and parade through the streets and markets). The tasty, spicy local cuisine is based on fresh fish from the Niger River. The river is very wide there, possibly more than a mile/kilometer. 230 mi/370 km east of Lagos.

Oshogbo is one of Africa's most creative art centers and a must-see on any trip to Nigeria. The town is filled with artists working in the style of the Oshogbo school, producing original masks, tapestries, batiks and sculptures, often based on Yoruba folklore. We particularly recommend the gallery of Nike Davies-Okunday-she is one of Nigeria's best known batik artists. On the outskirts of town is the haunting Sacred Forest, a wooded area filled with shrines to the Yoruba gods. For the past 40 years, Austrian sculptor Suzanne Wenger has been renovating and adding to the shrines, making them even more stunning. (Wenger eventually became a priestess at the shrines.) You can pick up a guide who knows the history and the stories behind the shrines. Also, take along plenty of small change-you'll be expected to make a small donation at each shrine. The best time to go to Oshogbo is during the Oshun Festival, which takes place on the last Friday in August. 125 m/200 km northeast of Lagos.

This large, industrial port city offers little for tourists. This is the center for Nigeria's black gold-oil, which is pumped from the ground at the numerous oil instillations in the Niger Delta around Port Harcourt. A local cemetery is rumored to be the burial site of the Ogoni Nine, a group of executed dissidents that included the writer Ken Saro-Wiwa. Violent protests against foreign oil companies, who were frequent targets for the Ogoni Nine, are still going on in parts of the Niger Delta, making the region west of Port Harcourt unsafe for visitors. If you go to Port Harcourt, watch the bustle in the port or head to the market. Port Harcourt has a small airport and is accessible from the other major Nigerian cities by plane. 270 mi/435 km southeast of Lagos.

Nigeria's wildlife is less impressive than that of countries in East Africa, but Yankari, located on a savanna, does have a few lions, crocodiles, elephants, baboons, hippos and several species of antelope. The park is open November-June. We recommend touring the park on foot with a local guide, but a game-viewing truck makes a round of the park twice a day (when the truck isn't being repaired). The real reason to go to Yankari is to bathe in the Wikki Warm Spring-an idyllic stretch of crystal clear water at the bottom of a forested valley. 510 mi/820 km northeast of Lagos.