Salary - How Much Is Enough To Sustain An Average Nigerian

Paid employment is not it at all,

Every one who wants to survive in nigeria should think self reliance

Africans are culturally catering for their dependants. thus most salary earners have numerous dependants that rely on him for survival. Also the taste and location matters a lot. But 100k upward wld be ok for degree holders.

Atleast 200,000 Naira. is ok

I beg to disagree with your salary scale for US jobs ,     B Sc - Biomedical Engineering (Medical/Pharmaceutical),  then to MS in Public Health, mostly directed towards policy making and administrations,  while it affords you more time than other bio-medical practices,   the take home pay is as good as B Sc - Engineering.

2 million naira a year.

The least paid worker in naija should nt receive less than 50k a month.
As some posters said,everytin depends on d number of dependents your catering for and hw u control your expenditures.

Believe me, no amount is too small and no amount is too big.

let this be at the back of your mind: No company can pay you what you really worth.

Go figure!

This is kind of a funny comment, made me laugh. And it got me thinking.
I have this theory about salary. It goes like this:
If you're earning 10k, that is probably what you're worth at that point in time. If you want to earn more, you have to make sure you are worth more. How do you do that? You have to raise your game somehow. Don't ask me how.
In a nutshell, you are sustained by the fruit of your labour. If you're a 15k earner, so you need to live in the realm of 15k. If you're a 150k earner, so you live within those means. Simple. There's no benchmark for individual sustenance worldwide.


In the same Nigeria where some people earn 15k a month, some people earn 150k a month. Same level of experience. Now that is not really different from the US, where some people earn $8 an hour, and some people earn $80 an hour. That is just the way things are.

Even though there is always an official minimum wage, no private employer anywhere in the world can be forced by the government to pay that minimum. The only thing that can ensure that is job competition, i.e. there are enough jobs to go round to a certain extent. In Nigeria where government does not audit SMEs, and have no way of knowing their books, well. . . if you are banking on minimum wage and you're not working for government, you are so on your own!

In the real world, there is always some kind of differentiator that separates the 15k guy from the 150k guy. It may be a better degree /set of qualifications, or better ability to pass tests or interviews, it could be possession of a unique skill or trait, it may be that they know someone that provides the leverage (nepotism), or they have some sort of business they're doing, or are stealing, whatever it is, there is always a differentiator.

We have this thing in Nigeria, where we want things, we want a good life, but we seem to not realise that we have to work for it. It is really pathetic. Our thinking is really lazy, and methinks the real poverty in Africa/Nigeria is poverty of the mind. We are simply too lazy to figure out how to get more. Which is why we easily turn to stealing, crimes, corruption, etc, cos that's a no-brainer. But I tell you, there is always a way to earn more. Whichever applies to you, you have to do the research yourself.

I remember my first job was about 5k a day, in a software company. I started the job then and worked hard nonetheless. I worked only there for 9 months, but by the 9th month, my pay had risen to about 17k5. I left for another job, for 20k a month. Not much difference, you would say, but I took the job because I wanted to work on the island, and be close to all the big companies. By the end of that year (another 9 months in fact), my salary had risen to just over N1m a year gross, and about 60k a month net, after taxes. Another 6 months and the next job I got was exactly twice my salary.

What's my point exactly? There is no such thing as an average Nigerian, talk less of how much is needed to sustain him/her. I don't expect someone earning 15k to be dreaming of a nice flat or a car at that point. I also don't expect that all employers would be compelled to pay 15k. If the world's most powerful nations are unable to do it 100%, I don't expect that Nigeria can do.

Just my thoughts.

It all depend on your daily income or monthly whatever.