Over the years, municipal solid waste management is a major problem in Nigeria. This problem is glaring in most cities where several municipal solid wastes of various dimensions are dump illegally without treatment. Beside the wide spread, illegal disposal and open dumping which has been the practice, landfills in Nigeria are in a dilapidated condition and suffer neglect due to the absence of authority support, and therefore need to be close. Solving these issues alongside the upgrading or the establishment of new landfills remain a problem. A review was performed from previously published studies, and keywords municipal solid waste management, policy implementation, plan strategy was applied from the database of Science Direct, Sage, Public Health, resulting to the selection of 138 scientific papers. A careful examination of the abstract led to the selection of 109 original papers. Only peer reviewed scientific papers published in English over the last 21 years (1998-2019) were considered for the review. Onsite visit to some selected landfills were also carried out for a period of two years (2017- 2019) to ascertain the condition of the landfills. It has been observed that most of the landfills are not in operational. The results show that population increased more rapidly, which aggravated waste problem. Approximately, 45% of the population live in cities and produce about 41,000 tonnes of MSW on daily basis, which is roughly 0.56kg/capita/per/day. Moreover, the study revealed that changes in municipal solid waste management policies have taken place over the past decades, and with the subsequent establishment of the Federal Environmental Protection Agency to supervise the regulations of the Environmental Act. These policies also brought about the implementation of privatization to reduce the problem of solid waste, recognizing the effects of MSW as a key challenge in Nigeria, the policy and plan strategy outline goals to be achieve, and this involve general waste collection, waste management, recycling, waste minimization, capacity building, education and awareness campaign as the major intervention. However, the major challenges hindering the effective MSW management is lack of policy implementation, poor funding, lack of trained waste workers and absence of efficient working tools among others. The study recommends the implementation of a well-equipped and control landfill under special supervision of waste management personnel to regulate the illegal activities in the sites. This review will help policy makers and decision makers involved in municipal solid waste management to understand the present issues, challenges and obstacles for efficient municipal solid waste management.