Across Nigeria today, a weary chorus of frustration and disillusionment echoes from markets to offices, as citizens struggle to survive under a relentless barrage of levies and surging living costs that make each new day feel like an unending punishment, Festus Akanbi writes

In the crowded streets of Lagos, Abuja, and Kano, the mood is unmistakable: Nigerians are tired, frustrated, and bewildered at how quickly the cost of living has spiralled beyond their reach.

Once celebrated as a resilient people able to endure hardship with jokes, music, and grit, Nigerians are now groaning under what many see as the heaviest barrage of government-induced costs since the country’s return to democracy in 1999.

From fuel subsidy removal to electricity tariff hikes, skyrocketing school fees, new telecommunication charges, and even the introduction of a tinted glass permit fee, citizens are asking one haunting question: Is the Nigerian government in collusion with institutions and regulators to squeeze every last naira out of its people?

Telecoms

The despair deepened early in 2025 when the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) approved a 50 per cent hike in tariffs for calls, SMS, and data. The regulator justified it as a necessary response to naira depreciation, soaring inflation, and the rising costs of running telecom infrastructure. For operators, it was about sustainability; for Nigerians, it was yet another slap in the face. Call rates that once cost about N11 per minute shot up to N16.50. Data bundles shrank before consumers’ eyes, making the simple act of calling a loved one or attending an online class an expensive affair.

International Passport

If the telecom hikes were painful, the announcement by the Nigeria Immigration Service in August 2025 felt like daylight robbery. Barely a year after raising passport fees, the Service again increased the cost of a standard 32-page passport to N100,000, while the 64-page, 10-year booklet climbed to N200,000. Only applications within Nigeria were affected, with diaspora fees left untouched. For families already battling school fees and daily survival, the hike made international travel, and even basic documentation, a luxury. Many ordinary Nigerians, including students seeking scholarships abroad, traders hoping to import goods, and young professionals applying for foreign work, saw their dreams stall.

In 2024, when fees were raised from N35,000 to N50,000, there was an outcry. By doubling it again in 2025, the Immigration Service effectively priced the Nigerian passport beyond the reach of the working poor. Officials said the increase was necessary to “maintain integrity and quality,” but the people asked whether integrity was truly measured in naira.

Building Insurance

In another controversial move, President Bola Tinubu signed into law the Nigerian Insurance Industry Reform Act (NIIRA) 2025, making insurance on buildings compulsory. On paper, the reform was meant to strengthen the financial sector and protect homeowners. In reality, critics saw it as another disguised tax. For landlords, the policy meant higher costs of compliance, which would almost certainly be transferred to tenants. In cities where housing is already unaffordable, renters are bracing for steeper rents. “They want to insure poverty itself,” quipped a civil servant in Ibadan, reflecting the widespread cynicism that compulsory insurance is just another way of milking citizens without delivering tangible benefits.

Petrol Prices

Yet, the greatest symbol of Nigeria’s economic trauma remains the removal of the fuel subsidy in May 2023. Overnight, petrol prices soared by more than 200 per cent, unleashing a chain reaction of inflation across every sector. Food prices tripled, transport fares doubled, and small businesses that relied on generators to survive crumbled under the weight of diesel and petrol costs. The government defended the decision as essential for fiscal stability, claiming subsidies were unsustainable and often corrupted by elites.

The IMF applauded the move as a “bold reform.” But for the average Nigerian, bold reform meant hunger, empty wallets, and daily hardship.

Rising Cost of Education

Education, once seen as the ladder out of poverty, is also slipping out of reach. In March 2025, the Federal Ministry of Education announced a steep hike in the Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) levy in Federal Unity Colleges, raising it from N5,700 to N12,000 per term. This followed the July 2023 increase in school fees from N45,000 to N100,000 per term, a jump of more than 120 per cent.

Lagos State has since pegged boarding fees for its secondary schools at N100,000 per term, up from N35,000.

For a worker earning the N70,000 minimum wage, the arithmetic is cruel: after four months of toil, their entire salary is still insufficient to cover one child’s school fees. Education, once promised as a right, is fast becoming a privilege reserved for the wealthy.

 Port Charges

The list of charges at the Nigerian ports is endless. Thes ports stack costs at every step: core customs taxes (import duty, 7.5% VAT, 0.5% ECOWAS ETLS) plus a new 4% FOB levy that has (controversially) replaced the 1% CISS and, in some accounts, the 7% surcharge, policy flux that has lifted payable amounts for many imports; NPA tariffs (harbour/berth/cargo dues) that were adjusted in 2025; terminal handling, storage and demurrage; and hefty shipping-line “local charges” (documentation, THC, amendments, container cleaning, etc.), often alongside container deposits and road/haulage fees. Add mandatory compliance like SONCAP (registration and per-shipment certification), and any delay compounds demurrage/detention. The result is a clearance bill per TEU that’s far higher than regional peers, costs that importers simply price into goods, making everything from consumer products to vehicles markedly more expensive.

Electricity Tariffs

Electricity tariffs have followed the same punishing trajectory. In 2024, Band A customers saw a 300 per cent hike in tariffs. By early 2025, households reported an almost 98 per cent increase in monthly grid expenses, according to a Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research (NISER) survey. Despite these exorbitant charges, most households receive only 10 hours of electricity per day, far short of the promised 20 hours.

Businesses, unable to rely on erratic power supply, are spending over 80 per cent of their monthly turnover on production costs driven by electricity bills.

 The government’s justification, that higher tariffs will attract private investment and improve supply, rings hollow when families are plunged into darkness despite paying more. For Nigerians, the experience is summed up in one phrase: higher bills, lower service.

Banking Charges

If school fees and electricity tariffs were not enough, the banking sector has found ways to deepen the wounds. In March 2025, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) implemented higher charges for ATM withdrawals, fund transfers, and account maintenance. While each deduction seems small, the cumulative effect on struggling households has been devastating.

Customers complain of double-charging, hidden fees, and banks that report record profits even as their customers sink deeper into debt. For petty traders and low-income earners, the charges eat into already thin margins. “I sell tomatoes worth N5,000 and the bank takes N200 here, N100 there, it adds up,” lamented a trader in Kaduna. In a country where inflation has eroded savings, bank charges have become yet another tax on survival.

Perhaps the most bizarre of all is the tinted glass permit reintroduced in 2025, requiring motorists to pay N16,000 annually to register vehicles with tinted windows. Ostensibly a security measure, the policy has been widely mocked as a cash grab. Worse still, touts and agents have hijacked the process, demanding between N45,000 and N60,000 from desperate car owners.

For many, this was the final straw. “Has the police become a revenue agency?” Nigerians asked as the force announced enforcement beginning in October 2025. The outcry reflected deeper distrust: at a time when insecurity rages unchecked across the country, citizens feel the government is more interested in revenue than in safety.

Taken together, these policies paint a grim picture of life in Nigeria today: a country where the cost of living is dictated by endless levies and hikes that seem to arrive every other month. Government officials describe them as “necessary reforms,” yet the ordinary citizen experiences them as relentless punishments. The result is a collapse in public trust. Nigerians feel abandoned, left to navigate an economy where survival requires sacrifices that no human should be forced to make daily.

What is most painful, critics argue, is the absence of empathy in policymaking. While ministers and lawmakers enjoy salaries and allowances among the highest in the world, ordinary families are told to “tighten their belts.” The gap between rulers and the ruled has never felt wider. In a land blessed with oil, fertile soil, and abundant human capital, poverty is not inevitable; it is manufactured by the choices of those in power. Each new levy, each tariff hike, each compulsory fee, is another nail in the coffin of hope. Nigerians are asking: how much more can we endure?

As the calendar turns deeper into 2025, one thing is clear: the crisis of rising costs is not just about economics. It is about justice, governance, and the social contract between a people and their state. For millions of Nigerians, the message from government policies feels unmistakable: survival is an individual battle, and the state is not here to help. In the end, the people’s anger may not just remain in whispers or social media rants. History shows that when governments push their citizens to the wall, the wall eventually goes back.

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