Onions sold at a mean ₦1,000 per kilogramme across all ten Lagos markets in the week to 14 August 2026, unchanged from the previous week. The survey source is the Lagos State Ministry of Agriculture and Food Systems, and the figure is a mean across markets.
The Most Stable Item in Lagos
Onions are the outlier of the vegetable basket, and the reason is what did not happen. Across twelve weekly captures from 1 May to 14 August, the Lagos mean has moved only between ₦930 and ₦1,010, a total range of 8.6%. Over the same period Pepper (Rodo) climbed 54.7% to its peak and Tatashe climbed 67.6%. Onions finished the period 5.3% above where they started, which for a fresh vegetable through a full seasonal turn is close to flat. The peak, at ₦1,010 in the week of 31 July, sits just 1.0% above today's mean.
That stability held while every pepper variety climbed steeply through June and fell back through July and August. Onions store for months rather than days, so a single harvest arriving does not reset the price the way it does for tomatoes or pepper.
Wholesale Told a Different Story Earlier in the Year
The retail kilogramme has been steadier than the bag. Vanguard reported that a 100kg bag of onions at Mile 12 Market rose to ₦84,000 from ₦71,000 in the fortnight before Easter, with the market's spokesperson attributing the increase to fuel driven logistics costs. New Telegraph reported the same figures. Wholesale movement of that size has not translated into the Lagos retail mean since the weekly series began in May.
The National Picture Says Otherwise
Leadership reported that the National Bureau of Statistics named onions among the items driving food inflation to 20.31% year on year in July 2026, and The Digger News reported the same attribution. The Lagos weekly series shows neither that pressure nor any reversal of it, a reminder that a national annual comparison and a Lagos weekly one can describe the same commodity very differently.
The Tightest Spread in the Basket
Epe Main Market records the cheapest mean at ₦900 per kilogramme and Agbalata Market the dearest at ₦1,100, a spread of 22.2%. Every other vegetable in Lagos ranges by a factor of two or more between its cheapest and dearest market. For onions, where a shopper buys makes very little difference to what they pay.
FoodPrices Nigeria tracks onions across all ten Lagos markets weekly. Live prices: foodprices.ng/real-time-prices/?brand_name=Onions