Lagos Ranks 28th in Global Crime Index
Numbeo's 2026 Mid-Year Crime Index places Lagos among the world's most crime-prone cities, with five South African cities also ranking in the top 20.
Updated on Nov. 9, 2026 in Violence
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Numbeo ranked Lagos 28th most crime-prone city in the world in its 2026 Mid-Year Crime Index, with a score of 69.1 placing its crime rate in the 'high' category. The index also ranked five South African cities in the top 20, led by Cape Town in first place.
Why it matters
The rankings draw on crowd-sourced visitor surveys alongside scientific and government surveys, offering an international comparison of perceived city safety. Lagos State Police Command had claimed in February that major crimes in the state had reduced.
Numbeo's index classifies Lagos's 69.1 score as 'high' on a scale where scores above 80 are 'very high', drawing on five years of visitor, scientific and government surveys. Whether recent police claims of reduced major crime are reflected in the index remains unaddressed by the report.
The players
Numbeo
Numbeo is an online database of user-contributed data on cost of living, safety and quality of life across cities worldwide, which publishes annual and mid-year crime indices.
Lagos State Police Command
The Lagos State Police Command is the state-level law enforcement body responsible for policing Lagos State, Nigeria's most populous state.
The details
Numbeo measures each city's crime index against its safety index and excludes users exhibiting suspicious behaviour from its survey data. Separately, Lagos police fired tear gas at commemorators of the Lekki Tollgate protest on October 20, and an officer killed a young girl in Ajegunle after discharging a firearm on November 5.
Timeline
February 2026: Lagos State Police Command stated that major crimes in the state had reduced.
2026 Mid-Year: Numbeo published its Crime Index by City ranking Lagos 28th.
October 20: Police fired tear gas at Lekki Tollgate protest commemorators.
November 5: An officer discharged a firearm in Ajegunle, killing a young girl.
Legal Context
Numbeo's crime index ranks cities using a five-year survey window that blends user-submitted perceptions with official data, meaning rankings reflect both reported incidents and public perception of safety. The Lagos ranking therefore sits alongside state police claims of declining major crime without resolving the gap between the two.
Residents and visitors to Lagos and the ranked South African cities may weigh these rankings when assessing personal safety and travel plans. The index is based on perception and survey data, so individual neighborhood conditions may differ from city-wide scores.
The takeaway
City-level crime rankings combine survey perception with official data, so they are most useful as a comparative signal rather than a precise measure of street-level risk.
Further reading
Explore more reporting on Violence to see how crime rankings relate to broader patterns of violent incidents.
Source note: This article includes information reported by Pulse Nigeria.
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