Google released its Year in Search for Nigeria on December 4. Senator Natasha Akpoti topped the personality list, but further down the trends, a different pattern emerges. 2025 wasn’t dominated by scandals like 2024: no Bobrisky legal circus, no Yahaya Bello corruption saga. Instead, searches centred on those who passed away—former President Muhammadu Buhari, Super Eagles legend Peter Rufai, Pope Francis—and questions like what “Labubu” means.
Where 2024 focused on corruption and celebrity feuds, 2025 had people revisiting legacies, processing loss, and following viral moments.
Deaths dominated Search in 2025
When former president Muhammadu Buhari died in July, it triggered what Google later called “a massive wave of searches.” Nigerians went digging through old interviews and archived speeches, half out of nostalgia, half to see if anything he said still fit the country we live in now.
That same month, football legend Peter Rufai passed, and the mood shifted from politics to memory. For a moment, search looked like a digital shrine — fans reliving Super Eagles glory days on YouTube, replaying penalty saves that made childhoods feel golden.
Then came the global headline: Pope Francis’s death. Nigeria’s Catholic community joined the rest of the world in mourning, while a separate kind of curiosity spiked when American conservative commentator Charlie Kirk was assassinated. Most Nigerians had to ask the obvious first: “Who is Charlie Kirk?”
It’s a clear shift from 2024, when searches were powered by scandal — Bobrisky’s court battles, Yahaya Bello’s ₦110 billion laundering case, and Betta Edu’s corruption probe. Last year, we googled people as they fell. This year, we searched for them as they left.
“What is Labubu?” beat everything else
The most-Googled question in Nigeria this year wasn’t about politics or inflation. It was simply, “What is Labubu?”
Labubu, for context, are those odd-looking blind-box collectible toys from Chinese brand Pop Mart that went viral on TikTok: all big eyes, sharp teeth, and a strange kind of cuteness that somehow sells out in seconds. The wave hit Nigeria too, and search traffic spiked as people tried to figure out what exactly the internet was obsessing over. One minute it was a global meme, the next, someone was asking where to find one in Lagos.
Other top searches leaned into cultural decoding:
- “What is the meaning of Kelebu?”
- “Achalugo meaning?”
- “Who is Seyi Vodi?”
Nigerians weren’t just scrolling anymore; they were decoding. It’s a different kind of curiosity from last year’s survival-mode searches: “How much is dollar to naira?”, “Who won the U.S. election?” This time, people weren’t looking for answers that fix anything, just the ones that help them keep up.
iPhone 17 topped device searches (Even though no one’s buying it)
The iPhone 17 led device searches despite most Nigerians having zero intention of actually buying one. It’s aspirational browsing—people want to know what Apple’s doing, even if their wallets are pointed at Tecno Pop 10, Redmi 14C, or Infinix Note 50 Pro.
That split between what people search for and what they actually purchase has been consistent throughout the year. Premium devices drive curiosity; budget phones with decent specs drive sales. The gap between search interest and buying behavior is widening as manufacturers push AI features into mid-range devices, making budget phones feel less like compromises and more like smart choices.
Gospel music topped Afrobeats
The most searched song of 2025 wasn’t by Davido or Burna Boy. It was a gospel track: “Oluwatosin (Jesus Is Enough)” by Tkeyz featuring Steve Hills. Davido and Omah Lay’s “With You” came in third, and Shallipopi’s “Laho” made the list, so Afrobeats still showed up. But the mood was different. Nigerians seemed to be searching for calm, not just rhythm.
In entertainment, Kemi Adetiba topped local search charts thanks to “To Kill a Monkey,” which held its own against international titles like Wednesday: Season 2 and Squid Game. And tucked inside the year’s movie trends was a small but telling spike—“Achalugo meaning.” The term blew up after the YouTube film Love in Every Word went viral, eventually becoming both the most searched movie and slang of the year.
YouTube, it seems, is where a lot of Nigeria’s film and language moments are now happening.
Natasha Akpoti and the political search data
Senator Natasha Akpoti was the most searched public figure of 2025, proof that politics still drives curiosity even without the scandal-heavy energy of 2024. Rivers State Governor Siminalayi Fubara’s ongoing power tussle with Nyesom Wike kept searches high too, sharing space with global flashpoints like the Israel–Iran war and the U.S. elections.
But politics didn’t dominate like it used to. The searches felt calmer this time—less “who’s stealing what?” and more “what’s actually happening with governance?” Nigerians were still paying attention, just without the full-blown doomscrolling that once defined the news cycle.
In the coming year
Nigeria’s 2025 search behaviour suggests people had more mental bandwidth this year to engage with culture, honour legacies, and decode internet trends instead of just tracking crises. Whether that continues into 2026 depends on what the year throws at us—but if 2025 taught us anything, it’s that search became a record of curiosity: what comforts, inspires, or just sparks conversation.
As Taiwo Kola-Ogunlade, Google’s Communications and Public Affairs Manager for West Africa, noted, “The 2025 Year in Search is more than just data; it’s a vibrant, unfiltered mirror of our collective attention.”
This year, that mirror reflected a nation processing loss, seeking grounding, and keeping an eye on the trends everyone couldn’t stop talking about, from music to movies to Labubu.
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