Cost of Living in Nigeria 2026: Full Breakdown by City

Our research team at MOHAC AFRICA spends a lot of time talking to Nigerians about money. Not through surveys, but in real conversations. A few months ago, one of our researchers sat with a 29-year-old graphic designer in Lagos who said something we have not been able to forget: “My salary doubled in two years, but I feel poorer than I did before.” That single sentence captures the cost of living in Nigeria 2026, better than any chart can.

Here is why he feels that way. According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Nigeria’s headline inflation rate stood at 15.93% in May 2026, the third straight monthly rise this year. Food inflation alone hit 16.96% year on year. At the same time, the World Bank reported in its April 2026 Nigeria Development Update that the national poverty rate climbed to 63% in 2025, meaning roughly 140 million Nigerians now live below the poverty line, up from 56% just two years earlier. Prices are not rising as fast as they were in 2024, but incomes have not caught up either. That gap is the real story behind the cost of living in Nigeria today.

This guide breaks down exactly what it costs to live in Nigeria right now, city by city and expense by expense. We look at rent, food, transport, electricity, and the minimum wage, and we explain why the numbers look the way they do, not just what they are. If you want the wider picture across the continent, our team also published a full report on the cost of living in Africa, which puts Nigeria’s situation in context against other African economies.

Whether you are budgeting for your family, relocating for work, running a small business, or simply trying to make sense of why your salary does not stretch the way it used to, this is the most current and complete picture available, built entirely from official data and verified 2026 market prices.

What Does the Cost of Living in Nigeria Look Like in 2026?

There is no single number that captures the cost of living in Nigeria, because it depends heavily on where you live and how you earn. A factory worker in Kano and a software developer earning in dollars from Lagos are, in effect, living in two different economies under one currency.

For most Nigerians earning and spending in naira, a modest household budget falls between ₦200,000 and ₦400,000 a month. That figure covers a single room or modest flat, basic food, transport to work, and electricity, but leaves very little room for savings or emergencies. For someone earning in foreign currency, whether through remote work, freelancing, or a diaspora income, a comfortable monthly lifestyle costs closer to $1,000, which covers private housing, regular meals out, and a reasonable amount of leisure spending.

The gap between these two realities is the clearest sign of how unevenly the cost of living in Nigeria is felt. With the naira trading between roughly ₦1,400 and ₦1,500 to the US dollar through most of 2026, even a small amount of foreign currency goes a long way locally, while local salaries are losing value to inflation faster than most households can adjust.

A quick snapshot for context: the average monthly cost of living for a single person across Nigerian cities sits at roughly $500 to $700 including rent, while a family of four typically needs $1,100 to $1,400 a month to maintain a reasonable standard of living. Budget conscious households, particularly outside Lagos and Abuja, can manage on considerably less, sometimes under $300 a month including rent.

To make this less abstract, picture a young civil servant in Abuja earning the new minimum wage of ₦70,000 a month. Rent for a single room on the outskirts of the city might take ₦40,000 of that, leaving roughly ₦30,000 for food, transport, electricity, and everything else for the rest of the month. Now compare that to a freelance writer in the same city earning $500 a month from international clients, which converts to roughly ₦700,000 to ₦750,000 at current exchange rates. Both people live in Abuja. Both technically experience the same cost of living in Nigeria. Yet their financial reality could not be more different. This is the pattern that shows up again and again in our research: the headline numbers matter less than where your income sits relative to them.

Rural areas complicate the picture further. Prices for locally grown food are often lower in farming communities than in cities, but wages are lower too, and access to electricity, healthcare, and formal banking is far more limited. So while the raw cost of living in Nigeria might look cheaper on a village by village basis, the quality of life that money buys is not necessarily better.

Nigeria’s Inflation Rate in 2026: Why Everything Costs More

To understand the cost of living in Nigeria, you have to understand inflation first, because nearly every other number in this article is downstream of it.

The NBS Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose to 140.7 points in May 2026, up from 138.3 in April. That translated to a headline inflation rate of 15.93% year on year, up from 15.69% in April and 15.38% in March. It was the third consecutive monthly increase in 2026, following a brief dip to 15.06% in February. On a month on month basis, however, prices actually grew more slowly in May (1.75%) than in April (2.13%), which tells us something important: prices are still rising, just not as quickly as before.

Food remains the biggest driver. Food inflation reached 16.96% year on year in May 2026, and the NBS specifically named onions, tomatoes, maize, water yam, cassava, crayfish, fresh pepper, and plantain as the items pushing grocery bills upward. Core inflation, which strips out food and energy, stood at 16.82%, showing that price pressure is not limited to the kitchen table. It is touching rent, transport, and manufactured goods as well.

Zoom out and the trend looks better than it feels day to day. Inflation peaked at 34.80% in December 2024 and had fallen to 15.15% by December 2025, according to the World Bank, a drop of nearly 20 percentage points in a single year. Food inflation fell even more sharply over the same period, from 39.84% to 10.84%. So the cost of living in Nigeria is genuinely improving on paper. The problem is that wages simply have not grown fast enough to recover what households lost during the worst of the inflation spike, which is why the World Bank described this as a “disconnect between moderating prices and real income growth.”

Three forces are mainly responsible for where prices stand today: the removal of the fuel subsidy in 2023, which pushed transport and production costs up across the board; the depreciation of the naira against the dollar, which makes imported goods and equipment more expensive; and rising global crude oil prices in 2026, driven partly by conflict in the Middle East, which has kept fuel and energy costs elevated even with local refining capacity from the Dangote Refinery.

How Much Is Rent in Nigeria?

Housing is usually the single largest line item in any Nigerian household budget, and it is also the expense that varies most dramatically by location. Two families earning the same salary can have completely different living standards depending on whether they rent in Lagos or in Enugu.

Lagos carries the highest cost of living in Nigeria by a wide margin. In premium areas like Victoria Island, Ikoyi, and Lekki Phase 1, a one bedroom flat rented by local tenants typically costs between ₦150,000 and ₦300,000 a month, while serviced apartments aimed at expatriates in the same neighbourhoods can run from $1,200 to $3,000 or more, because they are often priced and paid for in dollars. Mid range areas such as Surulere and Yaba are noticeably cheaper, and budget areas like Ikorodu and Agege offer one bedroom flats from ₦80,000 to ₦120,000 a month.

Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, follows a similar pattern. Central districts like Maitama and Asokoro command rents from ₦120,000 to ₦250,000 monthly for a decent flat, while areas further from the city centre are considerably more affordable.

Port Harcourt, as an oil industry hub, sits in the middle of the range, with rents typically between ₦100,000 and ₦220,000 depending on the neighbourhood.

Smaller cities like Ibadan, Enugu, Kano, and Zaria offer the most affordable housing in the country. Decent flats can be found for as low as ₦50,000 a month, and a self contained single room, common among students and entry level workers, ranges from ₦40,000 to ₦100,000 nationwide.

One detail that often surprises newcomers is the advance payment culture. Most Nigerian landlords require one to two years of rent paid upfront, not month to month. This single requirement is often the biggest barrier to housing access for young workers and new entrepreneurs, because it demands a lump sum that few salaries can produce in one go, regardless of how affordable the monthly rent appears on paper.

On top of the rent itself, tenants almost always pay agency fees and a caution deposit, each typically calculated as 10% of the annual rent, sometimes more in Lagos. That means a flat advertised at ₦300,000 a year can easily cost ₦360,000 to ₦390,000 once these fees are added, before a single piece of furniture is bought. Legal fees for drawing up a tenancy agreement add a further small charge in most cases. We mention this because it is one of the most overlooked parts of the rent prices in Nigeria conversation. The advertised figure is rarely the full amount a tenant actually pays to move in.

Kaduna and other northern cities tend to sit closer to the affordable end of the spectrum alongside Kano, with one bedroom flats often available for ₦40,000 to ₦80,000 a month outside the city centre, though security considerations in some areas can influence both pricing and availability.

Food Prices in Nigeria

After rent, food is the expense that has changed the most in recent years, and it is the one ordinary Nigerians feel most directly, because they buy groceries every week, not once a year like rent.

For a household relying mainly on local staples, monthly grocery spending typically runs between $80 and $150. At local markets, rice costs roughly $0.50 to $0.80 per pound, beans $0.40 to $0.60 per pound, and tomatoes between $0.20 and $0.40 each, with prices fluctuating by season and region. A full meal of jollof rice, stew, and protein at a local restaurant costs $1 to $3, while street food such as suya, plantain chips, and boiled eggs sells for under a dollar each from established vendors.

Households that mix local staples with some imported items, such as cereal, cheese, or packaged snacks, should expect to spend $150 to $250 a month, since imported goods at international supermarkets often cost three to five times more than their local equivalents. Families that eat out regularly at restaurants catering to professionals or expatriates, where a meal runs $15 to $40, can see their food budget climb to $400 or $600 a month.

The NBS data helps explain why grocery bills keep climbing. The May 2026 report pointed to specific staples driving the increase: onions, maize, melon, water yam, cassava flour, crayfish, fresh pepper, tomatoes, wheat, yam, sweet potatoes, ginger, plantain, and cowpea. Several of these are seasonal crops affected by planting cycles, transport costs from farm to market, and insecurity in some farming regions, all of which feed directly into the price a shopper pays in Lagos or Kaduna.

Protein is where many households feel the squeeze most. A kilogram of chicken or beef has climbed steadily over the past two years, often outpacing general food inflation, which has pushed many families toward cheaper protein sources like eggs, dried fish, and beans rather than fresh meat on a daily basis. Cooking gas and kerosene, both needed to prepare food at home, are also priced in line with global energy costs, so a rise in crude oil prices does not just affect transport fares, it raises the cost of cooking dinner as well.

Part of the reason food prices remain stubborn even as headline inflation eases is structural rather than seasonal. Farming regions in states like Benue, Plateau, and parts of the northeast have faced ongoing insecurity that disrupts planting and harvesting, while poor rural road networks mean produce can spend days in transit, losing freshness and adding fuel costs that get passed straight to the consumer. Until these supply chain issues improve, food is likely to remain one of the more volatile parts of the cost of living in Nigeria, even in months when the overall inflation rate looks encouraging.

Transport Costs: Fuel Prices, Bus Fares and Ride Hailing

Transport in Nigeria is tied closely to the price of petrol, and petrol prices have been unusually volatile since the government removed the fuel subsidy in May 2023. Of all the expenses that make up the cost of living in Nigeria, transport is often the one that changes most suddenly, sometimes within the same week.

As of 2026, the Dangote Refinery’s gantry price for petrol sits around ₦1,175 per litre, with pump prices at filling stations ranging from roughly ₦1,200 to ₦1,470 per litre depending on the state and the station. Three things move this number: global crude oil prices, which spiked in 2026 due to conflict in the Middle East affecting Strait of Hormuz shipping; the naira to dollar exchange rate, since crude is still priced internationally in dollars even with local refining; and Nigeria’s own crude output, which has consistently fallen short of its OPEC quota of 1.5 million barrels a day.

For everyday commuters, this translates into bus and shared taxi fares that rise whenever fuel prices climb, since transport operators pass costs directly to passengers. A short local trip typically costs the naira equivalent of about $0.40 to $0.60. Ride hailing services like Bolt and Uber operate in major cities, but at a noticeably higher price point than public transport, making them a convenience reserved mostly for higher income earners or one off trips rather than daily commuting.

For households watching their budget closely, transport often becomes the first expense to get creative about, whether that means carpooling with coworkers, switching to motorcycle taxis for shorter distances, or simply walking where possible to avoid daily fare increases that can happen with little warning.

Lagos has invested in cheaper mass transit options like the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system and the Blue Line rail, both of which cost noticeably less per trip than danfo minibuses or ride hailing apps, though they only cover specific routes across the city. In smaller cities and towns, motorcycle taxis known as okada and tricycles called keke napep remain the cheapest and most flexible way to get around short distances, even though both have faced periodic bans or restrictions in cities like Lagos over safety concerns.

Travelling between cities adds another layer of cost. Long distance bus services run by operators like GUO Transport and God is Good Motors typically charge anywhere from ₦8,000 to ₦25,000 depending on the route and distance, while domestic flights between major cities like Lagos and Abuja can run from ₦80,000 to ₦150,000 return, making air travel a cost most Nigerians reserve for work trips or emergencies rather than routine movement.

Electricity, Water and Internet: The Cost of Utilities

Utility bills in Nigeria look deceptively low on paper but often cost much more in practice once you account for unreliable power supply. This is one part of the cost of living in Nigeria that rarely shows up clearly in official statistics, because it depends so heavily on how often the grid actually works in a given neighbourhood.

Basic utilities for a standard 85 square metre apartment, including electricity, water, and waste collection, average between $25 and $50 a month under Nigeria’s band based electricity tariff system, where customers on bands with more reliable supply pay higher rates. The catch is that grid electricity is rarely available around the clock in most parts of the country. Many households and small businesses rely on a generator as a backup, and the fuel needed to run one regularly can easily double or triple the household’s effective monthly utility spending, especially with petrol prices where they currently stand.

Internet access has become considerably more affordable through mobile data, with most Nigerians relying on smartphone data bundles rather than fixed home broadband. Data plans are generally inexpensive by global standards, but home fibre or broadband connections, more common among businesses and higher income households in Lagos and Abuja, add a noticeable line item to a monthly budget.

The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) groups customers into bands, from Band A, which promises at least 20 hours of supply a day at the highest tariff, down to Band E, which offers far less reliable supply at a lower rate. In practice, many households find their actual supply does not match the band they are billed under, which has been a long running source of frustration and a major reason generator dependence remains so widespread despite the existence of grid electricity almost everywhere on paper.

Water tells a similar story. Public water supply reaches only a fraction of urban households reliably, so many families pay separately for borehole water, sachet water for drinking, or water delivered by truck, none of which shows up in official utility statistics but all of which adds real cost to daily life.

Put together, the true cost of staying powered, watered, and connected in Nigeria is shaped less by the official tariff and more by how often the public grid actually delivers electricity, which varies enormously between neighbourhoods and even between buildings on the same street.

Cost of Living by City: Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt and Smaller Cities Compared

Where you choose to live in Nigeria changes your monthly budget more than almost any other decision you can make. Here is how the major cities compare.

Lagos and Abuja consistently carry the highest cost of living in Nigeria, largely because they concentrate the country’s formal jobs, foreign businesses, and government institutions, which pushes up demand for housing and services. Port Harcourt sits in the middle, propped up by oil sector salaries that allow landlords and traders to charge more than the national average. Smaller cities and towns remain the most budget friendly option, though often with fewer formal job opportunities, which is part of why so many young Nigerians migrate toward Lagos and Abuja despite the higher cost of living, in search of better paying work.

It is worth noting that cost of living comparison tools, including several international sites, often disagree with each other on exact figures for Nigerian cities. This usually comes down to differences in what they measure, whether that is expat focused serviced housing, local market rent, or a blended average. The ranges above are built from a mix of local rental listings and verified market pricing rather than a single index, which is why they are presented as ranges rather than fixed figures. Within Lagos itself, the gap between the cheapest and most expensive neighbourhoods is often wider than the gap between Lagos as a whole and a smaller city like Enugu, so the city you choose matters less than the specific neighbourhood within it.

Nigeria’s Minimum Wage Versus the Real Cost of Living

This is where the numbers stop being abstract and start explaining why so many Nigerian households feel squeezed.

The national minimum wage has stood at ₦70,000 a month, around $42 to $44 depending on the exchange rate, since the National Minimum Wage Act was signed into law in July 2024. Lagos State pays a higher local rate of ₦85,000, recognising that its cost of living is well above the national average, though even that figure falls short of the roughly ₦180,000 a month that some labour researchers estimate is needed for a single adult to live with dignity in the city. Labour unions have been pushing for a new national floor of ₦154,000, more than double the current rate, arguing that inflation has already eaten away much of the value of the 2024 increase.

The picture beyond minimum wage is not much better. The average gross monthly salary across the formal sector sits around ₦339,000, roughly $220, but the median monthly income, a figure less skewed by high earners, is closer to ₦100,000, or about $65. That gap between average and median tells its own story: a relatively small number of higher paid professionals are pulling the average upward, while most workers earn far less. It is also worth noting that over 60% of Nigeria’s workforce operates in the informal economy, where there is no guaranteed minimum wage at all, and income depends entirely on what a trader, artisan, or driver can earn day to day.

Set against the housing, food, and transport costs covered earlier in this guide, it becomes clear why the cost of living in Nigeria has become such a pressing topic. A worker earning the minimum wage in Lagos cannot realistically cover rent, food, and transport from that income alone, which is part of why side businesses and informal income streams have become less of a choice and more of a necessity for millions of households, a pattern we explore further in our report on the unemployment rate in Africa.

Why Poverty Is Rising

This is the part of the story that confuses a lot of people, including policymakers. Inflation is cooling, yet poverty keeps climbing. How can both be true at once?

The World Bank’s answer, laid out in its April 2026 Nigeria Development Update, is that household incomes simply have not grown fast enough to make up for the ground lost during the worst inflation years. The poverty rate rose from 56% in 2023 to 61% in 2024, and then to 63% in 2025, equivalent to about 140 million people. That happened during the exact period when headline inflation was falling from its 2024 peak. The damage from years of rapid price increases does not disappear just because the rate of increase slows down. Prices are still higher than they were, even if they are rising more slowly now.

PwC’s Nigeria Economic Outlook 2026 offers a similar warning from a different angle, projecting that the poverty rate will peak at around 62% this year, affecting roughly 141 million people, before easing slightly to 61% in 2027. The report points to weak real income growth as the main culprit, noting that most Nigerian households are unlikely to see their earnings rise quickly enough to offset the cost of living in Nigeria in any meaningful way over the next two years.

The World Bank also flagged structural issues beyond inflation itself: economic growth has been driven mostly by services and industry, while agriculture, which employs a large share of the rural population, has lagged behind. Add to that global shocks like the Middle East conflict, which pushed up energy, food, and transport costs worldwide, and you get a fuller picture of why rural and northern households in particular have seen the least relief.

This is also where the cost of living in Nigeria intersects with health and education, two areas our organisation works in directly. When a household’s income is fully absorbed by rent, food, and transport, healthcare and school fees are often the first things to be delayed or skipped entirely. A child’s school fees or a routine medical checkup become optional expenses in a way that rent and lunch simply cannot be, which is part of why rising poverty tends to show up later as falling school attendance and delayed healthcare visits, even when those numbers are not the headline story.

How Nigerians Are Coping: Side Hustles, Savings and Smart Spending

What stands out most in our conversations with Nigerian workers and small business owners is not despair. It is an adaptation. Faced with a cost of living that has outpaced wages for years, millions of Nigerians have simply built second and third income streams rather than waiting for salaries to catch up.

The informal economy, which absorbs more than 60% of the national workforce, is the clearest evidence of this. Tailoring, food vending, phone repair, ride hailing, and small scale trading have become common side activities even for people who hold full time formal jobs. Traditional savings groups known as ajo or esusu, where a group of people contribute fixed amounts regularly and take turns receiving the full pool, remain a popular way to fund larger purchases or business inventory without relying on banks, which many Nigerians find slow or inaccessible for small loans.

Mobile money and savings apps have started to digitise some of this behaviour, letting people automate small daily or weekly savings toward specific goals, from school fees to business stock, without needing to physically hand cash to a group coordinator. A fabric seller our team spoke to in Kano described running her stall during the day and taking custom tailoring orders by night, splitting her income between household expenses and a savings app she uses specifically to restock inventory each quarter, an approach that has let her business grow steadily even as her costs for fabric and transport have risen.

Entrepreneurship has also become a more deliberate strategy rather than a fallback option. Young people in Lagos, Abuja, and beyond are starting small businesses, from online retail to logistics services, specifically because formal employment opportunities have not kept pace with the number of graduates entering the job market each year. Our team has documented this shift in detail in our guide to startup funding opportunities for Africans, which covers where early stage entrepreneurs can find capital despite a tough lending environment, and in our broader look at the state of entrepreneurship in Africa.

For many families, the most effective coping strategy has simply been spending differently: buying staples in bulk when prices dip, shopping at local markets instead of supermarkets, and cutting non essential outings. None of this solves the underlying wage gap, but it is how a large share of the population is managing to stretch a budget that, on paper, should not be enough.

10 Practical Tips to Manage the Cost of Living in Nigeria

If you are trying to make a Nigerian salary go further in 2026, these are the strategies that genuinely move the needle, based on what we have seen work across different income levels.

1. Buy staples in bulk when prices are favourable, particularly rice, beans, and garri, since these store well and protect you from short term price spikes.
2. Shop at local markets rather than supermarkets for fresh produce. The price difference for the same items is often significant.
3. Negotiate rent terms where possible, even asking landlords for a payment plan instead of the standard one year lump sum, since some are open to it for reliable tenants.
4. Share housing or transport costs with coworkers or family members to reduce your individual share of rent and fuel expenses.
5. Track your electricity usage by band and shift heavy appliance use to off peak hours if your tariff structure rewards it.
6. Build a small emergency fund, even a modest one, through a savings group or a simple bank account, so unexpected costs do not force you into debt.
7. Explore a second income stream that matches your existing skills, whether that is freelance work, tutoring, or small scale trading.
8. Cook at home more often. A home cooked meal in Nigeria typically costs a fraction of what the same meal costs at a restaurant.
9. Compare fuel prices across stations before filling up, since prices can vary noticeably even within the same city, particularly between NNPC outlets and independent marketers.
10. Review your subscriptions and recurring payments regularly, including data plans, since providers frequently introduce cheaper bundles that customers do not automatically get switched to.
11. Join or start a savings group with people you trust if you do not already use one. The discipline of regular contributions often builds savings faster than trying to save alone.
12. Time large purchases around harvest seasons for food items and around naira stability periods for anything imported, since both food and import prices tend to ease at predictable points in the year.

These tips will not eliminate the pressure of a rising cost of living in Nigeria, but they consistently make the difference between a household that is constantly stretched thin and one that has a small buffer to fall back on.

Nigeria’s Cost of Living Compared to Other African Countries

Comparing the cost of living in Nigeria to its neighbours is useful, but it needs context, because the comparison sites that produce these rankings often disagree with each other depending on their methodology. What we can say with confidence, based on consistent wage data, is how Nigeria’s minimum wage stacks up regionally.

Nigeria’s ₦70,000 minimum wage, around $42 to $44, sits in the middle of the pack among major African economies. Ghana’s minimum wage is considerably lower, at roughly $22 a month, less than half of Nigeria’s. Kenya’s base wage is notably higher, at approximately $117 a month, while Côte d’Ivoire sits around $127. South Africa’s national minimum wage is the highest of this group, exceeding $280 a month. In other words, Nigerian workers earn more at the wage floor than their counterparts in Ghana, but considerably less than workers in Kenya, Côte d’Ivoire, or South Africa.

What this tells us is that the cost of living in Nigeria cannot be judged in isolation. A wage that looks low in dollar terms can still go further locally than a higher wage in a country with steeper prices, and the reverse is also true. This is why economists often talk about purchasing power rather than raw dollar figures when comparing countries. A Nigerian earning the minimum wage and a Kenyan earning Kenya’s higher minimum wage are not necessarily experiencing the same standard of living, because rent, food, and transport prices in each country move independently of the exchange rate.

Currency stability is another factor that sets Nigeria apart from some of its neighbours. The naira has gone through significant depreciation over the past few years, which means the dollar value of any naira denominated wage or savings account can shrink quickly even if the naira figure itself stays the same. Workers and small business owners who can price part of their income or savings in a more stable currency, where that option exists, have generally weathered the cost of living in Nigeria better than those entirely dependent on naira income.

For a fuller continent wide comparison, including how Nigeria stacks up against Ghana, Kenya, and other major economies on rent, food, and overall affordability, our complete report on the cost of living in Africa goes into more depth than we can cover here.

Conclusion

The cost of living in Nigeria in 2026 tells a story of two speeds. Inflation is slowing down on paper, but the damage from years of rapid price increases has not been undone, and wages have simply not caught up. For ordinary households, that means rent, food, and transport still take up a larger share of income than they did a few years ago, regardless of what the headline inflation number says month to month.

What we have seen, both in the data and in conversations with the people living through this, is that resilience has become a survival skill in Nigeria, not a buzzword. From savings groups to small businesses to careful budgeting, millions of Nigerians are finding ways to make a stretched income work. Understanding the real numbers behind the cost of living in Nigeria, city by city and expense by expense, is the first step to planning around it, whether you are a worker, a small business owner, or someone supporting family back home.

If you found this breakdown useful, we publish updated research on the economic realities facing Africans every month, covering everything from entrepreneurship funding to education access across the continent. Sign up to the MOHAC Africa newsletter to get our research delivered straight to your inbox as soon as it is published.

We are a non-governmental organisation focused on Education, Health, Digital Inclusion, and Entrepreneurship initiatives across Africa. You can read more of our research on the MOHAC Africa blog, including our reports on the unemployment rate in Africa and funding opportunities for African entrepreneurs.

Frequently Asked Questions About the Cost of Living in Nigeria

What is the average cost of living in Nigeria per month?

It depends on where you live and how you earn. For most Nigerians earning in naira, a modest household budget falls between ₦200,000 and ₦400,000 a month, covering rent, food, and transport. For someone earning in dollars, a comfortable lifestyle costs closer to $1,000 a month, including private housing, regular meals, and some leisure spending.

Is $1,000 a good monthly budget in Nigeria?

Yes, and in most cities it goes quite far. $1,000 covers a comfortable lifestyle in nearly every Nigerian city outside Lagos’s most expensive neighbourhoods. For comparison, the average gross monthly salary in Nigeria is around ₦339,000, roughly $220, so $1,000 puts you well above what most working Nigerians earn in a typical month.

Why is the cost of living so high in Nigeria right now?

Three main factors are responsible: the removal of the fuel subsidy in 2023, which raised transport and production costs across the economy; the depreciation of the naira against the dollar, which makes imports more expensive; and persistent food inflation, driven by rising costs for staples like tomatoes, onions, and yam. Together, these have pushed the cost of living in Nigeria higher even as the overall inflation rate has started to ease.

What is Nigeria’s minimum wage in 2026?

The national minimum wage is ₦70,000 a month, about $42 to $44, set by the National Minimum Wage Act of 2024 and unchanged since. Lagos State pays a higher local rate of ₦85,000, reflecting its higher cost of living, though labour unions argue both figures still fall short of a true living wage.

Which city is the cheapest to live in Nigeria?

Smaller cities like Enugu, Ibadan, and Kano offer the most affordable cost of living, with rent and food noticeably cheaper than in Lagos or Abuja. Lagos remains the most expensive city in the country by a wide margin, followed closely by Abuja.

How much does food cost in Nigeria each month?

A household eating mainly local staples typically spends $80 to $150 a month on groceries. Mixing in imported items raises that to $150 to $250, and regularly eating at restaurants that cater to professionals or expatriates can push food costs as high as $400 to $600 a month.

Is Nigeria’s inflation rate going down?

Broadly, yes, but not in a straight line. Headline inflation fell from a peak of 34.80% in December 2024 to 15.15% by December 2025. It has since ticked back up slightly, reaching 15.93% in May 2026, the third consecutive monthly rise this year, though it remains far below the levels recorded in 2024 and early 2025.

How many Nigerians currently live in poverty?

According to the World Bank’s April 2026 Nigeria Development Update, the poverty rate climbed to 63% in 2025, meaning about 140 million Nigerians live below the poverty line, up from 56% in 2023. This rise occurred even as inflation began to ease, highlighting how slow wage growth has been compared to the cost of living in Nigeria.

References

• National Bureau of Statistics, Nigeria – nigerianstat.gov.ng
• World Bank, Nigeria Development Update, April 2026 – worldbank.org/en/country/nigeria
• Nairametrics, “Nigeria’s Inflation Rises to 15.93% in May 2026” – nairametrics.com
• Punch Newspapers, “Nigeria’s Inflation Rose to 15.93% in May – NBS” – punchng.com
• The Guardian Nigeria, “What is Nigeria’s Minimum Wage?” – guardian.ng
• Trading Economics, Nigeria Minimum Wages – tradingeconomics.com/nigeria/minimum-wages
• GhanaWeb / Graphic Online, regional minimum wage comparison – ghanaweb.com