I have installed nginx on Debian 7 with the following steps
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install nginx
sudo service nginx start
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My guess is it's not in your path.
in bash, try:
echo $PATH
and
sudo which nginx
And see if the folder containing nginx is also in your $PATH variable.
If not, either add the folder to your path environment variable, or create an alias (and put it in your .bashrc) ooor your could create a link i guess.
or sudo nginx -v if you just want that...