What an older person in Nigeria actually lives on: pensions, stipends and the family

The pension system, in numbers

• The Contributory Pension Scheme had 11.18 million registered accounts at the end of March 2026, about 12% of an estimated 92 million labour force. Three quarters of new registrants are under 40; the scheme reaches almost nobody who is old today.
• About 552,000 retirees were on a regular monthly pension in October 2025, and total monthly payments were N14.8 billion after a 2025 uplift. Divided out, that is roughly N27,000 a month each, a figure derived here because the regulator publishes no official average.
• The regulator said in July 2026 that a Minimum Pension Guarantee, an income floor for scheme retirees, would launch within three months; the amount was not stated.
• Under the old defined-benefit scheme for pre-2004 public servants, the government set a minimum pension of N32,000 a month from September 2025 and has been paying arrears in tranches since. The national minimum wage has been N70,000 a month since July 2024.

State stipends for older people

• Ondo State pays N20,000 a month to at least 5,400 residents aged 70 and over who have no formal pension (disclosed October 2025).
• Ekiti State's social security scheme, the first in Nigeria, paid N5,000 a month to indigent residents aged 65 and over when it launched in 2011 and 2012; a current figure could not be confirmed.
• Osun State adds a N25,000 monthly stipend for its own retired civil servants and has enrolled over 20,000 of them in the state health insurance scheme (February 2026).
• Lagos publishes no stipend for older residents who were never public servants. The National Senior Citizens Centre in Abuja runs training, an engagement bureau and an identity card, but no cash programme with published numbers.

What life costs in Lagos, 2026

• Food prices were 19.6% higher in August 2026 than a year earlier, after a period above 25%. A pot of jollof rice for five cost N34,700 in Lagos in June 2026, up nearly 50% in a year; nationally the same pot has risen 624% in ten years.
• Electricity on a Band A tariff (20 hours a day or more) costs N209.50 per kilowatt-hour in Lagos and Abuja. Petrol for the generator was about N1,380 to N1,395 a litre in Lagos in mid-September 2026 after four rises in a month.
• A home caregiver costs N119,000 to N159,000 a month and a registered nurse N219,000 to N259,000 (May 2026). A single hospital admission can cost more than a year of any state stipend.

Where the money actually comes from

• In the national household survey for 2023 and 2024, almost four in ten households had received money from relatives inside Nigeria in the previous year, and 6.3% from abroad.
• A study of 18,937 Nigerians aged 45 and over found that about 45% received remittances, averaging N54,307 a year, an amount the authors judged far too small to change their circumstances.
• Over 75% of older Nigerians in cities are multidimensionally deprived and 27% severely so; women worse than men (36% against 20%). Nigeria had about 14.9 million people over 60 at the last living-standards survey, 70% of them rural.

What this means for a family abroad

• The monthly transfer is the pension. A fixed naira amount shrinks by about a fifth a year at current food inflation; the figures above are there so the amount can be checked against what it buys.
• Health is the cost that breaks the budget. A plan that pays for treatment in the member's name, and can be paid for by several relatives together, turns the biggest unpredictable cost into a predictable one. Kinship Well starts at £39 a month.
• Where a state stipend exists it is set against the same prices: N20,000 a month in Ondo, a N34,700 pot of rice in Lagos.

Questions people ask

Related

• Sending money to Nigeria for healthcare
• Remittance or a plan