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Sapele, 
Nigeria
315,614 people lived in Sapele in 2025. It is the 1818th largest of the world's 12,138 cities, and the 66th largest in Nigeria.
The UN measures every city in the world the same way, by where the buildings are rather than where the boundary runs, so this figure and Sapele's own can differ widely. What counts as a city here.
Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries
People · every five years · 1975 to 2050
How Sapele grew
Count 10 people in Sapele in 1975 and the same count gives 30.5 in 2025.
On the UN's projection it will have 448,773 people in 2050. It passed 250,000 people between 2010 and 2015.
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
Sapele through your family’s years
Put in the years your family were born. You’ll see how many people lived in Sapele in each of those years, and when each of them turned 30.
Nigeria · every city · 2025
Where it is
How to read this: every dot is one of the 457 cities in Nigeria in 2025, and a dot's area is how many people live there, the biggest being Lagos. The ringed dot in colour is Sapele; the grey dots are the rest. The outlines around them are neighbouring countries.
Area and built-up land · km²
How much land it covers
In 2025, Sapele covered 50 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 12 km² of it. That is 37 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 6 by 6 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown to 2.1 times its size, and its people are 3.1 times as many.
How to read this: each pale square is the city's whole area, the strong square inside it the part that is built on; one scale for all three, so a bigger square is more land. Hatched is the UN's projection.
Of every 100 people in Nigeria
Its share of Nigeria
Of every 1,000 people in Nigeria in 2025, 1 lived in Sapele, which is 315,614 people.
How to read this: 1,000 squares, one for every 1,000th person in Nigeria; the coloured squares live in Sapele. The grey rest live in other cities, in towns or in the countryside.
Ranked by people · 2025
Cities of a similar size
In the world, 2025
- 1814 Buôn Ma Thuột Vietnam316,052
- 1815 Guiping China315,905
- 1816 Iquique Chile315,904
- 1817 Udupi India315,743
- 1818 Sapele315,614
- 1819 Pathankot India315,476
- 1820 Miluo China315,273
- 1821 Tongzhou China315,167
- 1822 Safadasht Iran315,054
In Nigeria, 2025
- 1708 Bonny335,542
- 1721 Gwagwalada333,464
- 1736 Ikare330,941
- 1737 Erin-osun330,484
- 1818 Sapele315,614
- 1874 Ughelli307,005
- 1900 Owo301,931
- 1907 Ado300,622
- 1923 Bugama299,022
How to read this: names are in order of size, the leading number being each city's rank among all 12,138 in 2025; the bars share a scale within a list. A jump in the ranks means a city under 300,000 people, which is not given a page here.
Apparatus
Sources and method
The figures for Sapele 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 Sapele 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