Nigeria — where to go and when
1 destination covered
Lagos is the only Nigerian entry here, and it is a city people travel to for what is made in it rather than for what can be photographed. Afrobeats is recorded here, the film industry shoots here, the galleries and the nights that begin after midnight are here, and none of that shows up on a monument list. The geography has to be grasped first, because it governs every day: an old commercial core and its markets on one island, offices and restaurants on the next, a long strip running east between lagoon and ocean, and the mainland where most of the population actually lives, across the water. Between those pieces there are bridges, and bridges cost time. Costs fall about two-thirds below French levels, which buys a great deal on the street and almost nothing in the international hotel districts, where pricing follows the oil economy. The city suits confident travellers with a local contact and a loose schedule, and punishes anyone who arrives without arrangements.
When to go
Our comfort filter names no month at all, and the reasoning is not the usual one. July and August are the coolest weeks of the year on a coast where the remaining ten months sit between 30.3 °C and 35.1 °C by day, July itself holding 29.4 °C. The catch is that both fall inside the wet half of the calendar. If dry ground matters more to you than heat, December and January are the two driest months, 15.7 mm and 13.2 mm, and they coincide with the festival season. June is the month to refuse outright: 331 mm on its own, out of an annual 1424.2 mm.
No single month clears our comfort threshold everywhere in the country at once. The table below gives each place its own favourable months instead.
The places we cover, side by side
| Place | Favourable months | Warmest month, avg. high (°C) | Coldest month, avg. high (°C) | Rainy days a year (≥ 1 mm) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lagos | none | 35.1 | 29.4 | 203 |
Figures measured at the weather station nearest each place, then averaged over the warmest and the coldest months of the year — not over a fixed calendar season. Each destination page carries its own month-by-month table, its station and its sample size.
Getting around
The airport is 9 km from the middle of the city, and that distance can take an hour and a half in the wrong direction at the wrong time. Shared yellow minibuses run every route and are cheap, crowded and hard to use without local help; app-booked cars are the usual visitor answer and worth the wait. Passenger ferries now cross the lagoon between the mainland and the islands, taking the bridges out of the equation altogether and beating the road whenever the route fits.
Budget
Country price level compared with France : −68 %
Price index for restaurants and hotels, France = 1000, from European purchasing power parities. It is a country average: it says nothing about one hotel in particular.
Destinations in Nigeria
Frequently asked questions
Is Lagos a realistic first stop in West Africa?
Only with preparation. The city rewards visitors who arrive with contacts, a booked driver and a flexible plan, and it penalises improvisation more than most capitals. Traffic alone makes two appointments in one day ambitious. Travellers who want a gentler introduction to the region usually begin elsewhere and add Lagos once they know how the continent's big cities work.
What is there to do beyond the nightlife?
A great deal, though it tends to be indoors and privately run: art spaces, design studios, recording history, an enormous market district on the old island, and a former slave-trading port within reach by road. The beaches along the eastern strip fill at weekends. What the city lacks is a compact sightseeing centre you can simply walk through.
Updated on 21 September 2026