In Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, the pangs of fluctuating price of petrol are not only changing how people move. It is changing how they live.
Morning still breaks early in the Federal Capital Territory, but it no longer arrives with the same rhythm.
On roads that once choked with traffic, there are now strange pockets of silence. The Kubwa Expressway and other major routes into Abuja, once defined by long queues of vehicles and impatient horns, are seeing fewer cars as more owners quietly leave their vehicles at home, unable to keep up with the cost of petrol. Recent reports say many filling stations in Abuja moved from about N1,261–N1,295 per litre to around N1,364 and above, with some outlets selling even higher.
For many workers, the private car parked outside the gate has become a symbol of something they can no longer afford. Sholape Kolawole, a public servant in Dutse Alhaji, said she had stopped using her vehicle for months because her salary could no longer carry the daily burden of fuelling it. What replaced the comfort of her own car is the stress of public transport: the waiting, the uncertainty, the extra cost that still somehow feels cheaper than driving herself.
That is the contradiction shaping life in the FCT today: even public transport, once the cheaper alternative, is now a source of anxiety. At bus stops across the city, commuters stand longer and leave later. Civil servants report arriving late to work not because they woke up late, but because there are fewer vehicles on the road and the fares keep rising. Some people now ration movement the way they ration food — choosing which trip is necessary, which errand can wait, and which obligation must simply be abandoned.
Those who cannot afford the fares walk.
Across parts of Abuja, low-income workers now trek distances they once covered by bus or taxi. It is not a lifestyle decision or a health choice. It is economic survival. The city’s geography makes the hardship especially sharp: wide roads, scattered districts, long commutes between affordable housing on the outskirts and jobs in the centre. Every extra naira spent on transport is a deduction from food, rent, medicine or school fees.
In homes already stretched thin, petrol prices do not stay at the filling station. They travel into kitchens, classrooms and market stalls. Zainab Idris, a civil servant, described the hardship as too much to bear, saying there are days she does not go to work because there is no money for transportation, while feeding remains an even bigger problem. Her frustration reflects a wider truth in Abuja: when fuel rises, everything else seems to rise with it, and when prices later ease, ordinary people rarely feel the relief.
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At the markets, traders are living with the same chain reaction. Transporters charge more to move goods. Sellers pay more to restock. Buyers step back because they can no longer afford the new prices. Ibrahim Usman, a vegetable seller in Wuse market, said one recent supply came with more than N100,000 added to the cost, even as customers were buying less. For traders dealing in perishables, there is a special kind of fear: not just that business is slow, but that the goods may rot before the money returns.
Drivers, too, are caught in a trap with no good exit.
Private car owners who once enjoyed the convenience of driving now squeeze into buses with everyone else. Some have reportedly turned their vehicles into informal commercial cars — “kabu kabu” — trying to offset the cost of petrol and salvage family income. Commercial drivers say they are running at a loss: if they raise fares too much, passengers disappear; if they do not, the day’s work no longer covers fuel, maintenance and food at home.
Ride-hailing drivers are seeing the same squeeze from another angle. One Uber driver quoted in reports said he had stopped driving because the economics no longer made sense. Another said customers were no longer requesting rides the way they used to, preferring bus stops and shared transport instead. In a city long marketed as modern and mobile, even convenience is becoming a luxury product.
What makes the story in the FCT especially human is not only the hardship itself, but the quiet adaptations people are making. Workers are cutting office days. Families are combining trips. Traders are borrowing to restock. Retirees are asking for help with transport, health insurance and food. Widows are calculating which bill can be postponed. Beneath the abstract language of deregulation and market forces is a city full of people renegotiating daily life, one painful compromise at a time.
Experts and operators have pointed to possible relief — better mass transit, wider access to compressed natural gas, support for local refining and price-stabilising measures. But for residents of the FCT, policy debate is distant; what is immediate is the trek to the bus stop, the decision to leave the car parked, the market purchase cut in half, the extra hour spent waiting, the child whose school fees still have to be paid.
In Abuja today, hardship can be measured in litres and naira. But it is perhaps better understood in smaller scenes: a worker staring at a parked car she cannot fuel; a driver counting cash that is not enough; a trader watching vegetables soften in the afternoon heat; a commuter choosing to walk because the fare home would take too much from dinner.
The roads are quieter now. But the silence is not relief. It is the sound of a city under strain.
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