Background Neck injuries are common problems among trauma victims. There is paucity of data on neck injury in Nigeria.

Objective To present the characteristics of neck injuries in Ilorin.

Methods A prospective study of all patients with neck injury seen at the accident and emergency department of University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital, north-central Nigeria. Questionnaires were used to retrieve information on demographic data and clinical details of patients. All information was entered into an SPSS computer soft ware V.17.0 and result analysed descriptively.

Results A total of 22 patients were recruited for the study age range 22–70 years, median age 31.0 years. There were 16 males and 6 females with M : F ratio of 2.7 : 1. The marital status indicated that 17(77.3%) were married and 5(22.7%) were single. The modal age were those in the 2nd and 3rd decade of life (40.9% each). The commonest source of neck injury was road traffic injury in 90.9%. Blunt injury to the neck was the commonest injury encountered in 15 (68.2%), spinal cord was the commonest tissue affected in 15 (68.2%) and majority of the patient presented within 1–6 h (50%) of injury time, Zone II of the neck was commonly affected in 90.9%. about 50% of the patients had non-surgical treatment.

Significant/Contribution to the Field Acute neck injury is still a challenge among the road traffic injured patients in Nigeria with economically productive male being mostly affected.