By the end of most weeks in Nigeria, the question of what to eat on Sunday used to require no thought. It was rice. That much was fixed. The details might vary — jollof rice, white rice with pepper stew, fried rice if there was time — but the baseline remained. Sunday was a rice day; it has long been the one day where food routines are not improvised. The meal has functioned as a quiet fixture in households across class and region, dependable even when the week has not been. It is not a holiday dish or a marker of wealth. After church or rest, people eat. “It’s the only day we know exactly what we’re going to cook,” said Esther Ajayi, a mother of four in Lagos.

The idea of Sunday rice is not ceremonial. It is routine: clear-cut, socially understood, and widely practiced. The menu is often simple but elaborate: parboiled rice served with tomato-based stew, often accompanied by beef, chicken, or fried fish. Sometimes, if there’s a bit more money, plantain, salad or moi moi on the side and, of course, soft drinks like Coca-Cola, malted beverages or fruit juices to round out the plate. For many, it is not just about the food but the experience; children helping in the kitchen, mothers instructing daughters on seasoning, uncles, aunties, friends, neighbours arriving unannounced, but always welcome at the table. “Growing up, it wasn’t something we thought about. We just knew we’d eat rice on Sundays,” said 35-year-old Lagos-based IT worker Kelechi Nwafor. “It wasn’t luxury. It was regular.” Now, it is no longer regular. A combination of currency devaluation, continued supply chain disruptions, fuel price hikes and persistent inflation has pushed many staple food items out of reach for middle and low income households. The effects are visible in how Nigerians eat, and when.

Food prices in Nigeria increased by 21.79% in March 2025 compared to the same month in 2024, according to official inflation data. Over the long term, food inflation in Nigeria has averaged 14.02% from 1996 to 2025. However, recent years have seen significant volatility, with the rate reaching an all-time high of 40.87% in June 2024, reflecting persistent supply chain disruptions, currency devaluation, and escalating production costs across key agricultural zones. While Sunday rice may not have totally disappeared, it has certainly changed. Its preparation, frequency, and ingredients have all been adjusted in response to inflation. Across class lines, a common theme is recalibration. For lower-income households, protein is often the first to go. Some substitute with dried fish, eggs, canned sardines, or, simply, crayfish. Others, like university student Ifeanyi Obi, have turned to soy-based meat alternatives. “I used to look forward to fried chicken on Sunday,” he said. “Now it’s rice and stew, no meat.”

Nigeria’s national minimum wage was recently increased to NGN70,000 ($49.66) per month, up from NGN30,000 ($18.70) , but the raise has done little to offset the impact of surging inflation and rising food costs, which continue to outpace earnings for most households. The naira has depreciated by over 250% since mid-2023, after the central bank’s currency reforms removed longstanding exchange rate controls. Imported food, which includes much of the country’s rice and processed condiments, became significantly more expensive. Local agriculture, meant to buffer demand, remains vulnerable to flooding, insecurity, and high fertiliser costs. The World Bank in its February 2025 Nigeria Development Update reported that over 104 million Nigerians are now living below the national poverty line. The same report warned that rising food insecurity, driven by inflation and currency volatility, has reduced both the quantity and quality of household diets.

“I can’t afford to cook Sunday rice like before,” said Felicia Bada, a single mother of six children. “A bag of rice used to be NGN33,000 in 2022. Then it went from that to NGN75,000 and now NGN120,000. I can’t afford it. So we don’t eat rice as often and when we do, meat is out of the question.” You can leave meat out of the pot, but not pepper and tomatoes and even those are becoming too costly to afford. According to Nairametrics, staple food items in Nigeria recorded sharp price increases in recent months, particularly between February and March 2025. The price of frozen fish rose significantly, with Titus (mackerel) jumping by 115% to sell for an average of NGN12,900, up from NGN6,000, while Horse Mackerel (Kote) increased by 47.37% to NGN7,000 from NGN4,750. A big basket of round tomatoes surged by 86.47% to NGN44,750, and the price of pepper nearly doubled, rising by 85.43% to NGN140,000. In Osun state, Rahi Ojo, a primary school teacher, now cooks rice with oil, seasoning cubes and pepper only. “We just make it look red,” she said. “If you ask my children, they’ll still say it’s jollof.”

Among higher-income Nigerians, the tradition continues, albeit in modified form. Households that previously bought whole chickens may now buy parts. Some are switching to local rice, which is cheaper but less processed. Others are buying food in bulk, storing blended stew bases in freezers. “We stock our fridge now like people used to prepare for Christmas,” said one person in Abuja, who asked not to be named. “You spend NGN150,000 in one market trip and still feel like you’ve bought nothing.”

Soft drinks, too, have become a casualty of the crisis. A 50cl bottle of Coca-Cola now sells for between NGN400 and NGN500 in major cities, double its price in early 2023. For families that once rounded out Sunday lunch with a cold drink, the cost has become difficult to justify. “It’s a small thing, but it mattered,” said Bukola Alabi, a social media manager in Ibadan. “When you serve rice and everyone has Coke or malt, it feels like Sunday. Now we just drink ‘pure water’.”

 Market vendors in Lagos, Enugu, and Kaduna report lower weekend demand for fresh peppers and tomatoes, ingredients that once drove predictable spikes in sales tied to Sunday meal preparation. Just as noted earlier, as costs rise, the components of the meal are being scaled back or replaced altogether. In many households, the ritual hasn’t disappeared, but it no longer looks the same. “You’ll still see pots in people’s kitchens on Sunday,” said Wura in Lagos. “But what’s inside is different. You cook what you can afford and in Nigeria now, very soon, it’ll be nothing.“