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Lafia, 
Nigeria
267,580 people lived in Lafia in 2025. It is the 2178th largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the 79th largest in Nigeria.
That figure counts the whole built-up area, not the area Lafia governs, so it may be far from the number the city publishes about itself. How the UN measures a city.
Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries
People · every five years · 1975 to 2050
How Lafia grew
Where Lafia had 10 people in 1975, it had 30.3 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 362,494 people in 2050. It passed 250,000 people between 2015 and 2020.
projected (after 2025) · how sure the UN is: high moderate low
How to read this: read it left to right, 1975 to 2050, one column every five years, the height being people. Hatching marks the projected years. Below, a strip of the UN's confidence: strong colour where the census maps are recent and detailed, pale where they are not, blank where the place was not counted as a city.
People · your family's years · 1975 to 2050
Lafia through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Lafia in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
Nigeria · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: Nigeria and its 457 cities in 2025, each a dot whose area is its number of people (the largest is Lagos). Lafia is ringed, in colour; the other cities are grey. Neighbouring countries are outlines.
Area and built-up land · km²
How much land it covers
In 2025, Lafia covered 44 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 13 km² of it. That is 49 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 7 by 7 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown to 3 times its size, and its people are 3 times as many.
How to read this: pale is the whole of the city's land; the stronger square inside it is what is actually built on. The three are drawn to the same scale, so a larger square really is more land, and hatching means the year is the UN's projection rather than a count.
Of every 100 people in Nigeria
Its share of Nigeria
Of every 1,000 people in Nigeria in 2025, 1 lived in Lafia, which is 267,580 people.
How to read this: 1,000 squares stand for everyone in Nigeria, one square for every 1,000th person. Count the coloured ones and you have Lafia's share; the grey remainder live somewhere else in the country.
Ranked by people · 2025
Cities of a similar size
In the world, 2025
- 2171 Muzaffarabad Pakistan268,448
- 2174 Ternate Indonesia267,842
- 2176 Bellevue United States267,696
- 2177 Kabwe Zambia267,618
- 2178 Lafia267,580
- 2180 Agbor267,341
- 2185 Bule Hora Ethiopia267,051
- 2186 Bydgoszcz Poland266,908
- 2187 Yaguang China266,899
In Nigeria, 2025
- 2095 Iwo277,101
- 2121 Magboro273,818
- 2151 Eket270,603
- 2160 Ijebu-Igbo269,742
- 2178 Lafia267,580
- 2180 Agbor267,341
- 2218 Jalingo262,796
- 2219 Mubi262,651
- 2233 Agbara261,298
How to read this: the figure in front of a name is where that city stands among the 12,138 cities the UN counted in 2025, and each bar is its people, on one scale per list. Numbers are missing where a city has fewer than 300,000 people and so has no page of its own.
Apparatus
Sources and method
The figures for Lafia are the UN's own, at five-year steps: an estimate for each of 1975 to 2025, then projection to 2050. Projected years are drawn hatched, and the UN publishes no range of uncertainty for a city. What a city means here, how the UN measures one, and why that number can differ from the one Lafia publishes about itself: how the figures here are put together.
Sources: UN WUP 2025 · Natural Earth · flag-icons. Every source, its licence and how to cite it →
Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries