Roofing in Nigeria

Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, spans the full West African climate gradient, from the semi-arid Sahel in the far north to humid rainforest and mangrove coast in the south. Its traditional roofs reflect that range: flat and domed earth roofs in the Hausa north, and steep thatch over earth walls among the Yoruba, Igbo and other peoples of the south. Today most new roofs are corrugated or profiled metal sheet, almost universally called "zinc" in Nigerian English, together with reinforced concrete slabs ("decking") on multi-storey buildings.

Climate and hazards

The north has a long dry season, intense sun and dusty harmattan winds, with a short, heavy rainy season; earth roofs there must survive a few months of downpours each year. The south receives far more rain over a longer season, which favours steep pitches, wide overhangs and materials that resist rot and termites. Heat gain through thin metal roofs is a concern everywhere.

Roofing history

Earth building in the region is ancient. Kano's city walls date from the 11th century and its Gidan Rumfa palace from the late 15th century. Yoruba architecture is traced back to roughly the 8th century; early buildings combined earth, timber, palm oil and straw, with roofs of thatched leaves over wood.

In the Hausa cities of Kano, Zaria and Katsina, guilds of master masons developed sophisticated earth roofs, arches and domes using short lengths of deleb-palm timber (see Hausa earth vaults and domes). The Friday mosque of Zaria, built in the late 1830s or early 1840s by the master builder Mallam Mikhaila, known as Babban Gwani, has a domed roof in six bays; the complex covers about 1,500 m² (16,000 sq ft). A dome in the Kano palace, Soron Inglia, was built as late as 1935.

From the 19th century, Lagos was reshaped by returnees from Brazil, Cuba and Trinidad. Their "Brazilian" houses introduced masonry, stucco, arched openings and two-storey sobrados, with ventilation gaps between the tops of walls and the roof and small garrets at roof level. A brick and tile factory in Lagos helped make brick storey houses affordable. Mission houses used prefabricated timber imported from England.

In Yoruba areas, roofs that were once leaf thatch over wood later came to be covered with corrugated iron and aluminium, and the same shift to metal sheet took place across the country.

Traditional and vernacular roofs

• Hausa (north): flat earth roofs on azara (deleb-palm) joists; cantilevered timber arches and vaults; and domes (tulluwa) built without formwork. Domes were sealed with laso, a traditional render that stays watertight for about five years, and drained by long eaves (indororo) and spouts.
• Yoruba (south-west): rectangular earth-walled rooms around courtyards ringed by verandas. Raffia-palm leaves were the usual thatch near the Atlantic coast; in the drier north, wood was used in place of palm fronds. Some compounds had impluvium courtyards that collected rainwater.
• Igbo (south-east): thatched buildings, some carried on large timber columns, with impluvium houses common in parts of Anambra. Thatch was treated against insects with cow dung and with the plant nchu anwu (literally "mosquito repellent").
• Sukur (Adamawa): on the hilltop cultural landscape of Sukur, near the Cameroon border, mud-walled houses with thatched roofs are grouped within dry-stone walls. UNESCO notes that the thatched roofs need frequent maintenance and are vulnerable to changes in materials.

Roofing today

Metal sheet is the default roof in most of the country. In the unweighted 2016-17 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) sample, run by the National Bureau of Statistics, about 34,000 households were recorded as follows:

Main roof material	Share of sampled households
Metal, tin, zinc or iron sheets	78.4%
Thatch, palm leaf or sod	12.5%
Cement	1.6%
Palm or bamboo	1.6%
Calamine or cement fibre	1.4%
Wood	1.0%
Roofing shingles	0.8%
Ceramic tiles	0.3%

Survey records show how the vocabulary works: in the 2018-19 Nigeria Living Standards Survey, households describing "other" roofs wrote answers such as "zinc", "zinc sheets" and "corrugated iron", and one described its roof as "decking (future storey building)", the common practice of casting a concrete slab that can later carry another floor. The national Demographic and Health Survey (2018) records roof material in categories including metal/zinc, calamine/cement fibre, ceramic tiles, cement and roofing shingles, alongside thatch/palm leaf and mud.

These are counts in the survey sample rather than official weighted estimates, but they show metal's dominance, with thatch still used by roughly one household in eight.

Codes, standards and regulation

Nigeria's National Building Code was approved by the federal cabinet on 2 August 2006, following a series of fatal building collapses; the housing minister of the time said it was intended to ensure safety, efficiency and quality in buildings.

Industry

Roofing sheet is sold and roll-formed widely in Nigeria.

Notable roofs

• Zaria Friday Mosque (late 1830s or early 1840s): domed earth roof on 16 piers.
• Kano palace (Gidan Rumfa): earth vaults and domes, including Soron Inglia (1935).
• Sukur Cultural Landscape: thatched houses in a stone-walled hill settlement, a World Heritage site since 1999.
• Afro-Brazilian houses of Lagos: 19th- and early 20th-century houses in districts such as Popo Aguda and Olowogbowo.

Local roofing terms

• zinc (Nigerian English): corrugated or profiled metal roof sheet, whatever the actual metal.
• decking (Nigerian English): a cast concrete roof slab.
• azara (Hausa): deleb-palm timber used for roof joists and arches.
• tulluwa (Hausa): dome.
• laso (Hausa): traditional waterproof render for roofs.
• indororo (Hausa): projecting roof eaves.
• zankwaye (Hausa): roof pinnacles.
• Sarkin Magina (Hausa): chief of the builders' guild.
• afin (Yoruba): palace.

Sources and gaps

Details of individual Nigerian roofing manufacturers and trade associations: published information is limited.

Roof-material shares are unweighted MICS sample counts; official weighted DHS or census tables are not well documented in published sources. As of 2026, the most recent full national census was that of 2006.