Ranked DataTransport fares · May 2026
What moving around Nigeria costs, by the official numbers.
Every month the National Bureau of Statistics surveys what Nigerians pay for bus rides, okada drops, waterway crossings and flights, and publishes the Transport Fare Watch. Ranked republishes the NBS figures verbatim — the fares below, and every percentage beside them, are the NBS’s own numbers from the May 2026 release. We add nothing and estimate nothing.
Source: the NBS Transport Fare Watch (May 2026) (released late June 2026 on the NBS National Data Archive) · every figure verified against the official NBS tables on 3 August 2026
The short answer
Per the NBS Transport Fare Watch for May 2026, the national average bus fare within the city (per drop) was ₦1,431.25 — up 38.63% on a year earlier by the NBS’s own count. An intercity bus journey averaged ₦9,699.55 per passenger, and the average air fare on the NBS’s specified routes was ₦157,552.19 for a single journey.
Bus, intra-city (per drop)
₦1,431.25
+2.43% vs April
Bus, intercity (per passenger)
₦9,699.55
+0.96% vs April
Air fare (single journey)
₦157,552.19
+0.12% vs April
City bus fare vs May 2025
+38.63%
year-on-year
National average fares · May 2026
Exactly as published in the NBS tables. “MoM” and “YoY” are the NBS’s own month-on-month (vs April 2026) and year-on-year (vs May 2025) percentage changes — not our arithmetic. A dash means we have not verified that cell against the official file, so we do not print it.
| Fare category | Avg fare (May 2026) | MoM | YoY |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bus journey within the city (per drop) | ₦1,431.25 | +2.43% | +38.63% |
| Bus journey intercity (state route, per passenger) | ₦9,699.55 | +0.96% | +21.89% |
| Air fare (specified routes, single journey) | ₦157,552.19 | +0.12% | +20.86% |
| Motorcycle (okada, per drop) | ₦1,072.51 | — | +52.45% |
| Water transport (waterway passenger) | ₦2,276.48 | — | +30.88% |
Rising fares are shown red. In naira terms the NBS series reads: intra-city bus ₦1,397.27 in April 2026 and ₦1,032.46 in May 2025; intercity bus ₦9,607.41 and ₦7,957.41; air fare ₦157,355.87 and ₦130,361.85 — all as published by the NBS.
Methodology
The numbers, defined
- National average fare
- The NBS surveys transport fares across Nigerian states each month and publishes national averages per fare category, with breakdowns for the six geopolitical zones and a state-level sheet. The figures on this page are those published national averages, transcribed from the official XLSX tables in the May 2026 release ZIP.
- “Air fare (specified routes, single journey)”
- The NBS’s label, kept deliberately: it is the national average across the specified routes the bureau tracks — not the price of any particular route or airline. A Lagos–Abuja ticket on a given day can sit well above or below it.
- Why your route may differ
- A national average flattens wide state and route spread — fares differ by distance, road condition, fuel price and demand. Use these figures as a benchmark, not a price list. For actual operators and terminals near you, see Ranked’s directory of bus stations and transport companies.
- What Ranked does not do
- Ranked republishes NBS figures verbatim and links the primary release — we do not survey fares ourselves, and where we have not verified a cell against the official file (the month-on-month change for okada and water transport above), we print a dash rather than compute one.
Cadence: the NBS publishes the Transport Fare Watch monthly, roughly four weeks after the reference month ends, always on the same day as its food-price sister report (the May 2026 edition was released late June 2026); this page is refreshed each NBS release. The June 2026 edition, scheduled for 29 July 2026 on the NBS advance release calendar, had not yet been posted to the archive when we last checked on 3 August 2026 — occasional multi-month combined releases follow such slips. Fuel is the biggest input to these fares — track it on the petrol price tracker — and see what the food on the other end of the journey costs in food prices.