Opaindex
What does Nigeria's ₦70,000 minimum wage actually buy?
Nigeria's national minimum wage is ₦70,000 a month — about $51 at the official rate — set by the National Minimum Wage (Amendment) Act 2024 and unchanged in 2026. At current tracked prices that does not cover a household's monthly staple food basket, which costs about ₦214,442 — roughly 3.1× a full minimum wage; a single 50kg bag of local rice alone (₦82,000) already costs about 117% of a month's pay.
- Minimum wage
- ₦70,000
- per month
- In US dollars
- $51
- official rate
- Monthly food basket
- ₦214,442
- 3.1× the wage
- Per day
- ₦2,301
- wage ÷ days
See the full food basket → · Naira exchange rates → · How we source these figures →
Key takeaways
- Nigeria's national minimum wage is ₦70,000 a month (about $51) — set by the National Minimum Wage (Amendment) Act 2024 and unchanged in 2026.
- That is roughly ₦16,154 a week, or ₦2,301 a day.
- A household's monthly staple food basket costs about ₦214,442 — roughly 3.1× a full minimum wage.
- A single 50kg bag of local rice (₦82,000) costs about 117% of a month's minimum wage.
- Figures are pure arithmetic over tracked prices; only the ₦70,000 wage is an external sourced figure.
What ₦70,000 buys at current prices
Each row is one tracked Nigerian price expressed against a full month's minimum wage. Item names link to their commodity page, where the source, “as of” date and confidence rating are shown.
| Item | Unit price | Share of one wage | ₦70,000 buys |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rice (local) 50kg bag · Wholesale market survey | ₦82,000 | 117% | 0.9 × 50kg bag |
| Rice (imported) 50kg bag · NBS Selected Food Price Watch (May 2026) | ₦112,285 | 160% | 0.6 × 50kg bag |
| Garri (white) 50kg bag · NBS Selected Food Price Watch (May 2026) | ₦40,662 | 58.1% | 1.7 × 50kg bag |
| Brown Beans (cowpea) per kg · NBS Selected Food Price Watch (May 2026) | ₦1,345 | 1.9% | 52 kgs |
| Petrol (PMS) per litre · Dangote ex-gantry dollar template (13 Jul 2026, $0.779/L ≈ ₦1,075.61) + station price survey (GlobalPetrolPrices/NMDPRA) | ₦1,075 | 1.5% | 65 litres |
| Cooking Gas (LPG) per kg · LPG marketer survey — Punch/NALPGAM national range ₦1,100–₦1,650/kg (30 Jun 2026) + Pulse city survey ₦1,100–₦1,500 (1 Jul 2026) + Businessday retailers ₦1,400/kg | ₦1,400 | 2.0% | 50 kgs |
| Cement 50kg bag · Dealer survey (Lagos, Abuja, Kano) | ₦9,500 | 13.6% | 7.4 × 50kg bag |
“Share of one wage” is the item's unit price as a percentage of the ₦70,000 monthly minimum wage; a value above 100% means one unit costs more than a full month's pay. “₦70,000 buys” is the wage divided by the unit price.
How we calculate this
The minimum wage figure (₦70,000 a month) is the statutory federal floor set by the National Minimum Wage (Amendment) Act 2024, raised from ₦30,000 and unchanged in 2026; state governments may pay above it (Lagos State pays ₦85,000). Everything else on this page is pure arithmetic over numbers we already publish — the staple food basket total, the naira/US-dollar rate and individual tracked commodity prices, each carrying its own source, “as of” date and confidence rating.
The food basket is sized for a typical Nigerian household of about five while the minimum wage is per worker, so households frequently rely on more than one income. The comparison is an illustrative cost-of-living signal, not an official poverty or expenditure statistic. Dollar values are derived from our own sourced naira/USD rate so the figures stay internally consistent. See the methodology for how each price is sourced and verified.
Minimum wage ₦70,000/month — National Minimum Wage (Amendment) Act 2024 (unchanged in 2026). Food basket and commodity prices are tracked figures (freshest reading 9 August 2026); naira/USD rate from the Central Bank of Nigeria (NFEM official window) with a parallel-market reference and an optional live overlay. Derived figures fall back to our sourced seed when the live price API is unavailable.