_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ *Corresponding author: Email: gerrieamaka@yahoo.com; International Journal of TROPICAL DISEASE & Health 42(19): 6-16, 2021; Article no.IJTDH.74044 ISSN: 2278–1005, NLM ID: 101632866 Modelling Neonatal Mortality Rate in Nigeria Using a Continuous Poisson-Lindley Distribution Gerald Ikechukwu Onwuka a* , Abraham Iorkaa Asongo b , Ishako Ara Bako c , Collins Aondona Ortese d and Hassan Allahde e a Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Faculty of Physical Sciences, Kebbi State University of Science and Technology, P.M.B. 1144, Aliero, Nigeria . b Department of Statistics & Operations Research, MAUTech, P. M. B. 2076, Yola, Nigeria. c Department of Epidemiology and Community Medicine, College of Medicine, Federal University Lafia,Nasarawa State, Nigeria. d Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Benue State University, Makurdi, Nigeria. e Department of Statistics, Shehu Idris College of Science and Technology, Makarfi, Nigeria. Authors’ contributions This work was carried out in collaboration among all authors. All authors read and approved the final manuscript. Article Information DOI: 10.9734/IJTDH/2021/v42i1930538 Open Peer Review History: This journal follows the Advanced Open Peer Review policy. Identity of the Reviewers, Editor(s) and additional Reviewers, peer review comments, different versions of the manuscript, comments of the editors, etc are available here: https://www.sdiarticle5.com/review-history/74044 Received 18 July 2021 Accepted 25 September 2021 Published 14 December 2021 ABSTRACT Nigeria’s effort to reduce under-five mortality has been biased in favour of childhood mortality to the neglect of neonates and as such the literature is short of adequate information on the determinants of neonatal mortality, whereas studies have shown that about half of infant deaths occur in the neonatal period. Knowledge of the determinants of neonatal mortality is essential for the design of intervention programmes that will enhance neonatal survival. Therefore, this study was conducted to investigate the trends in neonatal mortality in Nigeria. It also proposed a Poisson based continuous probability distribution called Poisson-Lindley distribution to neonatal mortality rate in Nigeria. Some properties of the new model and other relevant measures were obtained. The unknown parameters of the model were also estimated using the method of maximum likelihood. The fitness of the proposed model to the neonatal mortality rate was considered using a dataset on neonatal mortality rate from 1967 to 2019. Original Research Article