Who really benefits from Nigeria’s ₦721 billion monthly spend on data?
Streaming, fintech, and daily life now depend on bandwidth, but soaring costs are leaving many behind.
It’s easy to forget how recent Nigeria’s shift to a data-first lifestyle really is. Not long ago, cable TV, in-person banking, and offline shopping dominated daily routines. But fast forward to July 2025, and Nigerians are spending ₦721 billion (~$472 million) every month on mobile data, more than four times what they spent just two years earlier.
That’s not just a spike. It’s a wholesale transformation of how the country lives, works, and entertains itself. From football matches on YouTube to WhatsApp-driven businesses and fintech apps replacing cash, data has quietly become Nigeria’s new utility, as essential as electricity or fuel. And if you’ve ever felt your monthly data bill creeping higher, you’re not imagining it.
The Shift to Data as Daily Life
The pace of change has been quite staggering. Monthly data consumption nearly doubled in just two years, up 84% to 1.13 billion gigabytes in July 2025, according to the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC). Average usage per subscriber has also jumped from 3.9GB in 2023 to over 8GB today, fueled by streaming, digital payments, and remote work.
But the story we're seeing here goes beyond more data usage. It’s about more expensive usage. The average cost of a gigabyte climbed from ₦288 in 2023 to ₦638 in 2025, that's a 122% increase. After a decade of relative price stability, January’s 50% tariff hike alone tripled some families’ monthly bills almost overnight.
If you run a small business, you probably feel this pinch firsthand. One Lagos-based entrepreneur told us his smart TV now runs entirely on streaming, his marketing depends on WhatsApp, and his bills top ₦30,000 a month, triple what he was paying at the start of the year. The convenience is undeniable, but the financial sting is just as real.
So who’s actually winning from Nigeria’s new data habit?
The short answer: not you, not me, but the telcos.
MTN Nigeria, for example, has seen its data revenues jump nearly 380% since 2020, hitting ₦1.23 trillion (~$801 million) in just the first half of 2025. Airtel, meanwhile, reported over $650 million in annual data revenue as of March 2025, with average customer usage more than doubling in four years.
Global platforms are riding the wave too. YouTube has quietly become Nigeria’s new TV, doubling watch time in the past year and drawing over two million households onto connected TVs. For Nollywood producers and religious leaders, the platform has opened a massive new audience and revenue stream. In 2024 alone, the number of Nigerian channels earning eight-figure revenues doubled.
For telcos and platforms, Nigeria’s data boom looks like a golden era. For households and small businesses, it’s becoming a high-stakes balancing act: stay connected, or get left behind.
Louis Eriakha
The losers in this data boom are households and small businesses
This is where the story turns. Subscribers have seen their bills balloon, with many reporting two to three times higher monthly costs since January. Digital marketers, for instance, now spend ₦20,000 or more per month just to keep campaigns running. Students often ration their data simply to attend online classes.
And for some, the squeeze has already pushed them offline. Since January, Nigeria has lost 3.4 million active internet users, slipping to 138.7 million. Rising prices, complaints of fast data depletion, and the broader economic crunch are forcing people to make tough choices: do you buy food, fuel, or data? As Adeolu Ogunbanjo of the National Association of Telecoms Subscribers put it, the hike has imposed “untold hardship” on many.
For millions of Nigerians, the data boom isn’t a story of inclusion, it’s another bill they can’t keep up with.
That tension reveals a bigger divide. Even as usage soars among the connected, broadband penetration remains below 50%, and more than 20 million Nigerians are still completely offline.
The irony couldn’t be sharper: while some of us are streaming more than ever, millions remain excluded from the very tools that could expand opportunity. The World Bank has long warned that limited internet use constrains growth, innovation, and jobs. Even Minister of Communications Bosun Tijani has admitted as much, pointing to the $2 billion rollout of 90,000km of fibre optic cables as a step toward closing the gap.
But we know access isn’t enough. If prices keep rising, connectivity risks becoming another half-solution: available in theory, unreachable in practice.
Louis Eriakha
When we take a step back, Nigeria’s ₦721 billion monthly data bill tells us two things at once. First, demand is unstoppable. As MTN Nigeria’s CEO Karl Toriola said earlier this year, “The demand for data in Nigeria is exceptional and will continue to grow.” Analysts also expect another 32 million unique mobile internet subscribers by 2030.
Second, affordability is the Achilles’ heel. If data is now as central to life as electricity, pricing it beyond the reach of millions risks slowing the country’s digital future. More streaming, fintech, and cloud-based work can boost productivity, but only if the population can actually stay online.
