Nigeria, Stacked
Net personal wealth per adult · 2024 estimates
Picture each adult's net wealth counted out in ₦1,000 notes and piled up. A million naira is 1,000 notes, a stack about 10 cm tall. So every metre of stack is ₦10 million. Here is how high the piles go for Nigeria's 111 million adults.
Median adult₦3.2 million32 cm of notes
Average of the top 1%₦261 million26 m of notes
Average of the top 0.1%₦1.35 billion135 m of notes
Everyone, side by side
100 bars, one for each 1% of adults
Poorest on the left, richest on the right. Each bar is the average wealth of about 1.1 million adults. The last bar is so tall that most of the others barely leave the baseline. The grey bars below zero are adults whose debts are larger than what they own.
Median ₦3.2M
Top 1% average ₦261M →
Poorest 1%MedianRichest 1%
Share of all personal wealth
Bottom 50%4.5%about 56 million adults
Next 40%34.8%about 44 million adults
Top 10%60.7%about 11 million adults
See all 100 values as a table
| Percentile | Average wealth | Stack height |
|---|
The tape · drawn to scale
Now scroll the stack
This tape is to scale: every 200 pixels is ₦10 million, or one metre of notes. The striped stack beside the ruler grows as you scroll, and the bar at the bottom of your screen tells you what the line across the middle is reading. Keep going. The tape runs to ₦1.4 billion.
End of the tape · ₦1.4 billion · 140 m
On the line₦0
Stack height0 cm
Adults with less0%
Past the end of the tape
The biggest stacks don't fit on any page
To draw the next groups to the same scale, this page would need to be kilometres long. So here they are on a log scale, where each step to the right is ten times taller than the last.
Top 0.01% · about 11,000 adults₦8.75 billion875 m of notesTaller than Zuma Rock, which rises about 725 m above the land around it. About 10,400 years of minimum-wage pay.
Top 0.001% · about 1,100 adults₦67.4 billion6.7 km of notesHigher than the summit of Kilimanjaro, 5,895 m. About 80,000 years of minimum-wage pay.
Africa's richest person · Forbes 2026₦38 trillionAbout 3,800 km of notes$28.5 billion at about ₦1,332 to the dollar. The stack would reach more than nine times higher than the International Space Station orbits. About 45 million years of minimum-wage pay.
Where would you be?
Find your place on the stack
Sources and method
- Wealth by percentile: World Inequality Database, net personal wealth, 2024, adults aged 20 and over, with wealth split equally between spouses. Values are in 2025 naira. Nigeria has no national household wealth survey, so WID builds these numbers from national accounts and models (method note). Read them as the best available estimates, not exact counts.
- Adults: 111.2 million aged 20 and over in 2024 (WID population series). Each 1% is about 1.1 million people.
- Richest person: Forbes 2026 World's Billionaires list (March 2026), $28.5 billion. Converted at about ₦1,332 per dollar, the CBN official rate in mid-October 2026.
- Minimum wage: ₦70,000 a month (₦840,000 a year), National Minimum Wage (Amendment) Act 2024.
- The notes: the ₦1,000 note is Nigeria's largest, printed on paper (CBN). The CBN does not publish its thickness. This page assumes 0.1 mm, typical for banknote paper, so 1,000 notes make 10 cm.
- Heights: Olympic diving platform 10 m; Statue of Liberty 93 m from ground to torch; London Eye 135 m; Zuma Rock about 725 m above its surroundings; Kilimanjaro 5,895 m; the International Space Station orbits about 400 km up. Building heights are rough, at about 3 m a floor.