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Time in Nigeria
Time in Nigeria
Time zone	West Africa Time
Initials	WAT
UTC offset	UTC+01:00
Standard meridian	15th meridian east
Adopted	1 September 1919
Daylight saving time
	DST not observed
tz database
	Africa/Lagos

Nigeria observes West Africa Time (WAT), which is one hour ahead of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC+01:00), year-round as standard time. Nigeria has never observed daylight saving time. It shares WAT with fourteen other countries in Africa. Nigeria's local mean time was UTC+00:13:35.

Prior to 1 January 1914, Nigeria was not unified; the Southern Nigeria Protectorate and the Northern Nigeria Protectorate were separate entities. Lagos, the capital of the Southern Nigeria Protectorate, first adopted the standard time of Greenwich Mean Time (UTC+00:00) on 1 July 1905, but reverted to local mean time on 1 July 1908. After the protectorates were amalgamated, UTC+00:30 was adopted nationwide. On 1 September 1919, Nigeria adopted UTC+01:00 as it was seen as a more accurate offset from Greenwich Mean Time.

History

Nigeria's local mean time was UTC+00:13:35. Greenwich Mean Time (GMT; UTC+00:00) was adopted as the standard time of capital Lagos in the Southern Nigeria Protectorate—a protectorate of the British Empire—on 1 July 1905, however Lagos reverted to local mean time on 1 July 1908.^[1]^[2] The Southern and Northern Nigeria Protectorates were amalgamated to form the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria on 1 January 1914. Accordingly, UTC+00:30 was adopted as the universal standard time of the newly unified Nigeria.^[3]

On 28 August 1919, the first reading of the Ordinance to amend the Interpretation Ordinance, 1914 bill to switch Nigeria's time zone to UTC+01:00 took place. The acting legal adviser stated it was proposed that a common method of expressing time throughout the British Empire be adopted so that the "Military, Naval, and Air Services may use the same time," and that the proposal was "that the Globe should be divided into twelve zones East and West of Greenwich, of one hour each, Nigeria falling into the zone with a standard of one hour fast on Greenwich Mean Time."^[4] The bill passed on 1 September 1919, with Nigeria accordingly adopting UTC+01:00 as its new standard time.^[5]

Geography

Nigeria is located between both the meridians of UTC+01:00 and UTC+02:00, but chooses to observe the former.^[6] Nigeria's standard meridian—and thus the standard meridian of West Africa Time—is located at the 15th meridian east.^[7]

IANA time zone database

In the IANA time zone database, Nigeria is given one zone in the file zone.tab—Africa/Lagos. Lagos is Nigeria's capital city. "NG" refers to the country's ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code. Data for Nigeria directly from zone.tab of the IANA time zone database; columns marked with * are the columns from zone.tab itself:^[8]

c.c.*	coordinates*	TZ*	Comments	UTC offset	DST
NG	+0627+00324	Africa/Lagos	West Africa Time	+01:00	+01:00

Computers which do not support "Africa/Lagos" may use the older POSIX syntax: TZ="WAT-1".^[9]

References

^ "Epitome of News". Lagos Weekly Record. 24 June 1905. p. 3. Retrieved 7 August 2022 – via Center for Research Libraries.
^ "Lagosian on Dits". The Lagos Standard. 1 July 1908. p. 5. Retrieved 7 August 2022 – via Center for Research Libraries.
^ "Nigeria. Report for 1914" (PDF). Colonial Reports—Annual. 1 (878). His Majesty's Stationery Office: 27. April 1916. Retrieved 7 August 2022.
^ "Ordinances". Lagos Weekly Record. 20 September 1919. p. 3. Retrieved 7 August 2022 – via Center for Research Libraries.
^ "Ordinance 18 of 1919". The Nigeria Gazette. 6 (52). September 1919.
^ "Time Zones and "Z" Time (Universal Time)". Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences. U.S. Naval Observatory. n.d. Archived from the original on 9 March 2021. Retrieved 7 August 2022.
^ Gould, Ralph Edgar (1935). Standard Time Throughout the World (3 ed.). United States National Bureau of Standards. p. 19. Retrieved 7 August 2022.
^ "Africa". tz database. Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. Retrieved 7 August 2022.
^ Olson, Arthur David (22 April 2016). "[tz] Time zone selection" (Mailing list). ICANN. Archived from the original on 1 December 2021. Retrieved 7 August 2022.