Prayer Times in Nigeria — All Cities

Where the audience for a prayer timetable actually is

Nigeria has no single religious profile, and a prayer times page is more useful if it says so. Islam predominates across the north, where Kano, Kaduna, Zaria and Maiduguri are majority Muslim cities and salah times are part of the ordinary structure of the day. The south west, including Lagos, Ibadan and Ilorin, has a very large Muslim population alongside a very large Christian one. Jos and Abuja sit in the middle belt, mixed in both directions. The south east and the Niger Delta, including Enugu, Benin City and Port Harcourt, are predominantly Christian, though each has established Muslim communities.

Demand for these pages is therefore concentrated but not confined. We publish all twelve cities to the same standard rather than covering only the north, because a Muslim in Port Harcourt needs an accurate Fajr as much as a Muslim in Kano does, and is less likely to have a mosque within earshot to take it from.

Muslim World League angles

Nigerian cities on this site are calculated with the Muslim World League convention: Fajr when the centre of the sun reaches 18 degrees below the horizon, Isha when it reaches 17 degrees below it after sunset. Both are twilight angles rather than fixed counts of minutes, which is the usual arrangement outside the Arabian Peninsula.

The Muslim World League standard is the most widely used international convention, applied here where a country does not maintain a distinct national one of its own. In practice it ties Nigerian Fajr and Isha to the actual progress of twilight rather than to a fixed interval from sunrise and sunset. Near the equator that progress is quick, because the sun drops almost straight down rather than sliding along the horizon, so the interval between Maghrib and Isha stays short and varies little through the year.

Nearly ten degrees between Lagos and Maiduguri

Nigeria runs a long way east to west on one clock. Lagos sits near 3.4 degrees east; Maiduguri lies past 13 degrees, with Kano, Kaduna, Zaria and Jos between them. That is close to ten degrees of longitude, and at four minutes to the degree it puts around forty minutes of solar time between the two ends of the country.

The sun therefore reaches Maiduguri first and Lagos last. Maghrib in the north east arrives roughly forty minutes before Maghrib on the coast, and the same offset applies to every other prayer in the day. Nigeria also lies entirely west of the meridian on which UTC+1 is centred, which pushes solar noon later than twelve everywhere, and later still in Lagos than in Maiduguri. A timetable made for Abuja is several minutes out at either end, which is why each city here is computed from its own coordinates.

A year with very little movement

Nigeria spans from Port Harcourt at under 5 degrees north to Kano at around 12. That is far enough from the equator for the seasons to register, but not far enough for them to dominate. The difference between the longest and the shortest day of the year is modest everywhere in the country, and smaller in the coastal south than in the far north.

So Nigerian salah times are stable. Fajr and Maghrib shift gradually rather than swinging, and a fasting day in Ramadan is much the same length whichever season the month falls in, which is not true for Muslims further from the equator. One local factor is worth noting: during the harmattan, roughly from December to February, dust carried south on the wind can leave the horizon indistinct for weeks in the northern cities. That does not change the calculated times, since the sun is where it is regardless of what is in front of it, but the sky often looks darker before Maghrib and lighter after Fajr than the figures suggest. Take the mosque, not the sky, as the guide in those weeks.

The Maliki school and the afternoon shadow

The Maliki school predominates among Nigerian Muslims, as it does across much of West Africa. On the timing of Asr the Maliki position agrees with the Shafi'i and Hanbali ones: the window opens when a vertical object throws a shadow equal to its own length, added to whatever shadow it was already casting at solar noon. That is exactly the measure used for every Nigerian city here, so our Asr should agree with the salah announced in Nigerian mosques.

The Hanafi school takes the other position, waiting until the shadow has reached twice the object's length, which falls roughly forty minutes to an hour later. It is not the Nigerian norm, so unlike in Pakistan or Bangladesh you will not generally find two Asr times in circulation. If you follow the Hanafi school, the figure on this page will be earlier than the one you are used to, and a mosque serving your own community is the right reference.

Ramadan and the twelve cities we publish

Through Ramadan the two figures that matter are Fajr, which closes suhoor, and Maghrib, which opens iftar, and both appear on every city page with a full monthly calendar underneath. Many Nigerian mosques announce a precautionary time a few minutes before the calculated Fajr; we publish the astronomical figure itself, so treat it as the outer limit and stop earlier if your mosque asks you to.

The cities covered are Lagos, Kano, Abuja, Ibadan, Port Harcourt, Kaduna, Maiduguri, Benin City, Jos, Ilorin, Zaria and Enugu. Kaduna and Zaria run within a couple of minutes of each other; Lagos and Maiduguri are forty minutes apart and should never share a timetable. Each page carries today's five salah times and sunrise, a live countdown to the next prayer, and the method in force named beneath the table.