Welcome to Ibadan!
Ibadan is a city of 3.6 million people (2021) in Oyo State, Southwest Nigeria. Its historic significance in the affairs of the declining Oyo Empire has endowed it with a lot of places to see and its location at the edge of the Yoruba heartland makes it an ideal base to explore the major Yoruba cities which might not always have as many developed facilities for the foreigner as Ibadan does.
Ibadan (Yoruba: Ìbàdàn) is the capital and most populous city of Oyo State, in Nigeria. It is the third-largest city by population in Nigeria after Lagos and Kano, with a total population of 3,649,000 as of 2021, and over 6 million people within its metropolitan area. It is the country's largest city by geographical area. At the time of Nigeria's independence in 1960, Ibadan was the largest and most populous city in the country, and the second most populous in Africa behind Cairo.
Ibadan is located in south-western Nigeria, 128 kilometers (80 mi) inland northeast of Lagos and 530 kilometers (330 mi) southwest of Abuja, the federal capital. It is a prominent transit point between the coastal region and areas in the hinterland of the country. Ibadan had been the administrative center of the old Western Region since the early days of British colonial rule, and parts of the city's ancient protective walls still stand to this day. The principal inhabitants of the city are the Yoruba people, as well as various communities (notably Igbo, Hausa, and Efik) from other parts of the country.