Introduction: Several studies have attributed some social demographic variables to differentials in children mortality rates but there is paucity of information on modelling of children survival pattern in Nigeria. In this study we modelled children survival in Nigeria and predicted their survival in their first ten years of life.

Methods: We used the data from the 2013 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey to carry out a retrospective analysis of children survival. We computed the probability of survival and mortality rates for the first five years and predicted survivals for 6th to 10th years of life using life table techniques and compared our estimates with Brass indirect techniques.

Results: The probability of a child surviving up to exact age 1 and 5 were 0.9212 (95% CI: 0.919-0.923) and 0.8583 (95% CI: 0.855-0.861) respectively. About 142 of every 1000 children would not make their tenth birthday in Nigeria. We found higher survivorship trend among female children than the males. The estimates of probabilities of survival from age 1 to 5 from the fitted curves agreed very closely with those obtained from Brass indirect techniques as the variability was less than 2%.

Conclusion: Child mortality is high in Nigeria with fewer children deaths among females and also within first ten years of life in South West than within 1st year of life in North West zone. Efforts must be concentrated in reversing the worrisome survival trend in Nigeria especially in the Northern parts of the country.