Average Height in Nigeria (Men & Women)

How tall Nigerians are on average

Nigerian men born in 1996 reach an average adult height of 165.9 cm (5′5″), and Nigerian women 156.3 cm (5′2″). These figures come from the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC), which in 2016 pooled 1,472 measurement studies of more than 18.6 million people to estimate adult height for every birth year from 1896 to 1996 in 200 countries.

Nigerian men rank 169th of 200 countries and Nigerian women 152nd. Nigerian women do noticeably better in the world ranking than Nigerian men. The gap between the sexes is only 9.6 cm, one of the narrowest among the world's most populous countries.

The site's 165 cm page shows a typical Nigerian man's height against everyday objects, and the 157 cm page is close to the typical Nigerian woman.

What "born in 1996" means

NCD-RisC estimates height by birth cohort, everyone born in a given year, measured at age 18. The approach matters a great deal for Nigeria, because recent cohorts are shorter than earlier ones. An average of all Nigerian adults alive today would mix generations that grew up in quite different conditions. A cohort figure keeps them apart.

The underlying studies all measured height directly, using probability samples of the general population. Surveys of particular ethnic, occupational or patient groups were left out. For Africa, NCD-RisC notes that data in some countries were limited or came from community or sub-national studies, so the estimates carry wider uncertainty than those for countries with long series of national health examinations.

Rise and fall: a century of Nigerian height

The table shows a full arc. Nigerians grew taller through the first half of the 20th century, with men gaining 6.8 cm and women 5.9 cm between the 1896 and 1956 cohorts. Then the gains stopped and reversed. Men born in 1996 are 2.5 cm shorter than men born in 1976, and women born in 1996 are 2.7 cm shorter than women born in 1956. Across the full century, the net gain is just 4.9 cm for men and 3.2 cm for women.

Part of a sub-Saharan pattern

Nigeria is not unusual in its region. NCD-RisC reported that, as an exception to steady gains almost everywhere else, adult height decreased or at best stayed the same in many sub-Saharan African countries for people born after the early 1960s. In some countries, including Nigeria's neighbor Niger, the fall was about 5 cm from the peak. The researchers note that this reversed or reduced Africa's earlier height advantage over Asia, and they point to earlier studies showing child stunting in sub-Saharan Africa rising into the mid-1990s.

Our World in Data, summarizing the same body of research, describes average heights in sub-Saharan Africa falling since about 1970 even as health and nutrition improved. It mentions one proposed explanation, child survival selection: as more frail and undernourished children survive infancy, they join the adult population and can lower its average height, even though more survival is clearly good news. That hypothesis has not been proven for Nigeria specifically, but it helps explain why falling adult height does not always mean conditions got worse.

Height in the Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey

Nigeria's main source of measured height is the Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS), conducted by the National Population Commission with technical support from ICF under the DHS program. The 2018 round measured the height and weight of women aged 15–49 and of children under five.

The NDHS reports the share of women with short stature, defined as under 145 cm, rather than a mean height. Nationally, only 1.4% of the 14,726 women measured fell below that line. That is very low by global standards. India's NFHS-5 found 11.5% of women under 145 cm, and Bangladesh's 2017–18 DHS 13.7%.

Short stature is uncommon everywhere in Nigeria, but it follows the usual gradients. It is more common in rural areas, in the northern zones and in poorer households. The survey report notes that short stature becomes less common as education and wealth rise. At state level, Benue had the highest share (5.4%), while Lagos and Imo were at 0.1%.

Weight is rising faster than height

The same survey shows a shift in adult body size. The share of Nigerian women who are overweight or obese rose from 22% in 2008 to 28% in 2018, while the share who are thin stayed at 12%, and mean BMI was 23.3. Overweight was far more common among educated and wealthier women. In the highest wealth quintile, 46% were overweight or obese, compared with 9% in the lowest.

Child stunting across Nigeria's regions

Child growth shows Nigeria's regional inequality much more sharply than adult height does. The 2018 NDHS found 37% of children under five stunted (too short for their age), including 17% severely stunted.

• Stunting rose with age to a peak of 47% among children aged 24–35 months, which the report attributes to undernutrition in the first 1,000 days of life.
• It was highest in the North West (57%) and lowest in the South East (18%).
• By state, it ranged from 66% in Kebbi to 14% in Anambra.
• Rural children were much more likely to be stunted than urban children (45% versus 27%).
• 54% of children of mothers with no education were stunted, compared with 14% of children of mothers with more than secondary education.

WHO and UNICEF survey estimates compiled by Our World in Data show national stunting at 48.7% in 1990, 36.8% in 2018 and 33.8% in 2021. Our World in Data explains that stunting typically happens in the first two years of life, which is why the stunting rate among today's small children is a guide to the adult height of Nigerians who will turn 18 in the 2030s.

A north–south contrast

Taken together, the NDHS numbers describe two very different childhoods. In the northern zones, more than half of young children in the North West are stunted, and the North East and North West also have about twice the wasting rate of other zones. In the south, stunting is far lower. Adult women's short stature is rare everywhere, so most Nigerian women clear 145 cm regardless of region, but the averages for the next generation could diverge by region if these childhood gaps persist.

Nigeria next to the world's other giants

Nigeria is one of the world's most populous countries, so it is natural to compare it with the others.

Two things stand out. Nigerian men are near the bottom of this group, but Nigerian women are the fourth tallest, ahead of women in Pakistan, India, Indonesia and Bangladesh. The male–female gap of 9.6 cm is the smallest in the table. It has been narrow throughout the century: 7.9 cm for the 1896 cohort, 8.8 cm for 1956 and 9.6 cm for both 1976 and 1996. Men and women lost the same 2.5 cm between the 1976 and 1996 cohorts, so the recent decline did not change the gap.

The stunting record also shows how far Nigeria has come and how far it has to go. Survey estimates compiled by Our World in Data put Nigerian stunting at 48.7% in 1990, 42.5% in 2003, 35.8% in 2011, 36.8% in 2018 and 33.8% in 2021. That is a slow, uneven decline, with some surveys giving higher figures than others in nearby years.

Nigeria among its West African neighbors

All of Nigeria's immediate neighbors are slightly taller on average. Cameroonian and Nigerien men are about 2 cm taller, and Chadian men 4.5 cm taller. Every country in this table shows the same rise-then-fall shape in the NCD-RisC data. Niger, for example, peaked at 171.4 cm for men born in 1956 before falling to 167.7 cm. Compared with other very populous countries, Nigerian men are slightly taller than Indian or Indonesian men but well behind Chinese or Brazilian men. Nigerian women are clearly taller than women in South Asia. The average height by country hub has the full list.

Tall Nigerians and the everyday average

Nigerian-American basketball player Hakeem Olajuwon is listed on this site at 213 cm (7′0″), about 47 cm above the average for Nigerian men born in 1996. Athletes like him come from the far tail of the distribution and say little about typical height.

In everyday terms, the average Nigerian man stands about 166 cm (5′5″) and the average woman about 156 cm (5′2″). A woman of 165 cm or a man of 175 cm would stand out as tall in most of the country. To see how any height compares with reference data, try the height percentile calculator.

The trend matters more than the snapshot. Nigeria's adults born in the 1990s are shorter than their parents' generation. If child stunting keeps falling from its 1990 level, that decline may stop in later cohorts. Measured data for people born after 1996 is not yet in the NCD-RisC series.