Sports Played in Nigeria

Nigerians play a very wide range of sports. Football is the most popular, followed by athletics, basketball, boxing, wrestling, table tennis and para powerlifting. There are also organised federations and competitions for archery, badminton, baseball, bobsled, bodybuilding, bowling, cricket, cycling, fencing, golf, gymnastics, handball, hockey, horse racing, judo, karate, kickboxing, lawn tennis, martial arts, motorsports, paintball, polo, rowing, rugby, scuba diving, squash, swimming, taekwondo, watersports and more. SitesNG.com documents 38 of them.

Football (soccer) is by far the most popular sport in Nigeria. The Super Eagles have won 3 Africa Cup of Nations titles (1980, 1994 and 2013) and played at 6 FIFA World Cups (1994, 1998, 2002, 2010, 2014 and 2018), reaching the round of 16 three times. The Super Falcons have won the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations a record 10 times.

Nigeria has won 27 Summer Olympic medals: 3 gold, 11 silver and 13 bronze, from its first Games at Helsinki 1952 up to Paris 2024. The first medal was a boxing bronze for Nojim Maiyegun at Tokyo 1964. The three golds are Chioma Ajunwa in the women’s long jump and the men’s football team, both at Atlanta 1996, and the men’s 4x400m relay from Sydney 2000 (awarded in 2008).

Nigeria has won 87 Paralympic medals up to Paris 2024: 42 gold, 22 silver and 23 bronze. Powerlifting has produced 58 of them, including 26 golds, followed by athletics with 22 medals.

The Super Falcons have won 10 titles: 1998, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2010, 2014, 2016, 2018 and 2024. The 2024 final was played in Rabat on 26 July 2025, when Nigeria came from 2-0 down to beat Morocco 3-2. They have also played at all 9 FIFA Women’s World Cups.

Nigeria has won the FIFA U-17 World Cup a record 5 times: 1985, 1993, 2007, 2013 and 2015. They were also runners-up in 1987, 2001 and 2009.

Nigeria’s women’s basketball team, D’Tigress, has won 7 Women’s AfroBasket titles, including a record five in a row from 2017 to 2025. At Paris 2024 they became the first African basketball team, men or women, to reach an Olympic quarter-final. The men’s team, D’Tigers, won AfroBasket in 2015.

Enyimba and Enugu Rangers are the most successful clubs in the Nigeria Premier Football League, with 9 titles each. Rangers won their ninth in 2025/26. The NPFL has 20 clubs, with the Nigeria National League (NNL) as the second division.

The National Sports Festival is Nigeria’s biggest multi-sport competition, where all the states compete against each other. It was first held in Lagos in 1973, and 22 editions have been held so far. The 23rd, the Coal City Games, takes place in Enugu from 27 November to 11 December 2026.

Among the best known are basketball Hall of Famer Hakeem Olajuwon, sprint hurdler Tobi Amusan (the 2022 world champion and African record holder at 12.12 seconds), Olympic long jump champion Chioma Ajunwa, footballers such as Jay-Jay Okocha, Nwankwo Kanu and Asisat Oshoala, boxer Dick Tiger, wrestler Blessing Oborududu and table tennis star Quadri Aruna.

No. SitesNG.com is an independent portal. We bring together information and statistics about every sport played in Nigeria, and link to the official federations, leagues and sources wherever possible.