Loading
Nigeria's network of population-based and hospital-based cancer registries, now run by the national cancer institute. A handful of regional registries aim to count every cancer in their area; there is no single national count yet.
Nigeria's first cancer registry was set up in 1960 in the Pathology Department of University College Hospital, Ibadan, and its data appeared in the first three volumes of Cancer Incidence in Five Continents. The Nigerian National System of Cancer Registries was conceived in 2009 by the Federal Ministry of Health, the Society of Oncology and Cancer Research of Nigeria and the Institute of Human Virology Nigeria to coordinate and strengthen registries and establish new ones; its 2015 report lists population-based registries in Abuja (founded 2009), Calabar (2004) and Ibadan (1960).
The 2024 National Cancer Registry Regulations made cancer a notifiable disease and established the National Cancer Registry of Nigeria, which the 2025 imPACT Review describes as comprising 26 population-based and hospital-based registries; five population-based registries (Abuja, Calabar, Ekiti, Enugu and Ibadan) contribute data to Nigeria's GLOBOCAN estimates and none has contributed to Cancer Incidence in Five Continents. The review notes that most registries have no dedicated budget and that the last national census was in 2006, which limits incidence rates. NICRAT's 2023 to 2027 plan gave a different count, 34 registries with 13 population-based and 24 hospital-based. NICRAT now runs the registry from Abuja; the coordinates on this record are an approximate Wuse district point.
The latest published population-based figures found for this record are for 2009 to 2014 (Ibadan and Abuja 2009 to 2010, Calabar 2009 to 2013, Abuja and Enugu 2012 to 2014). NICRAT reports producing a first national Cancer Burden Report for 2024 and validating national registry standard operating procedures on 29 June 2026; its national cancer statistics page was under construction on 4 November 2026.
A third measured population rate for Nigeria, from the south-east, with prostate, breast and cervical cancer again leading.
Explains why Nigeria's cancer figures rest on a few city registries and IARC models, and what it took to start building more.
These are among the few measured, not modelled, cancer rates for Nigeria, and they show cancer recorded about twice as often in women as in men, driven by breast and cervical cancer.
Shares University College Hospital, Ibadan, National Institute for Cancer Research and Treatment (NICRAT), Cervical cancer, Prostate cancer.
Shares Cancer registries and population surveillance, International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC / WHO), Cervical cancer.
Shares Cancer registries and population surveillance, International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC / WHO), Cervical cancer.
Shares Cancer registries and population surveillance, Cervical cancer, Prostate cancer.
Shares Cancer registries and population surveillance, International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC / WHO).
Shares Cancer registries and population surveillance, International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC / WHO).
Shares Cancer registries and population surveillance, International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC / WHO).
Shares Cancer registries and population surveillance, International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC / WHO), Cervical cancer.
Every source this page cites, grouped by who published it. Grouping is read from the web address, not assigned by hand.
A source that has moved or gone is reported by the weekly link check. /audit/