Visual acuity loss and colour defects among young adults often times occur without notice. The aim of this study was to determine the visual acuity status and colour defects amongst secondary school subjects in Ogoja urban of Cross River state, Nigeria. A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted using the multi- stage sampling technique amongst 500 secondary school students in Ogoja urban. The standard Snellen’s chart was used to assess visual acuity. The Ishihara chart Plates 1-15 of the 2008 edition of the Ishihara’s colour album were used to detect colour defects. The mean age of the subjects was 13.33 ±0.12 years for the male subjects while that for the females was 12.83 ±0.16 years. The heights of the male subject was 165.01 ±1.22cm while that for the females was 153.53 ±1.24cm, with the males being taller than the females (p<0.001); but the body weights did not differ. The visual acuity did not differ between the male and female subjects. However, when the visual acuity was categorised, only 80 subjects (16.1%) for the right eye and 77 subject (15.5%) for the left eye had normal visual acuity (6/6 to 6/8). The bulk of the other subjects belonged to the categories of mild (6/9 to 6/18), moderate (6/19 to 6/48) to severe (6/49 to 6/60) impairment in visual acuity: 235(47.2%) and 238(47.8%) for the right and left respectively having mild visual impairment; 78(15.7%) and 78(15.7%) for right and left respectively having moderate visual impairment; severe visual impairment was seen in 105(21.1%) and 105(21.1%) for the right and left eyes respectively. The frequency of distribution of colour defects amongst the secondary school subject showed that 0.75% of the subjects studies were red colour blind while 2.46% of the subjects were red-green colour blind. Therefore, in this population with a perceived normal visual acuity, the percentage of subject with visual impairment seemed higher than those with normal visual acuity. It is not clear what could be responsible for this