The garri grade that usually carries a premium in Lagos is now the cheapest one on the shelf, and it is also the hardest to find. The Ministry of Agriculture and Food Systems market survey for the week of 17 July 2026 records Garri (Ijebu) at a Lagos average of ₦1,260 per paint, against ₦1,267 for Garri (White) and ₦1,505 for Garri (Yellow).
Five Markets, Four Price Levels
Only five markets in the survey reported an Ijebu price this week, against ten for the yellow grade. Mile 12 Market is cheapest at ₦1,100, 12.7% below the average. Ile-Epo Market and Oyingbo Market both quote ₦1,200, Epe Main Market ₦1,300 and Ajah Market ₦1,500, which is 19.0% above the average and 36% above Mile 12. Thin coverage is itself a finding for shoppers, since a household committed to this grade has fewer places to compare and less room to walk away from a price.
A Premium Grade That Stopped Charging a Premium
Ijebu garri has historically sold above the standard grades, and reporting from earlier this year reflects that. The Nation reported in January that white and yellow garri were holding around ₦1,200 per paint bucket in Lagos while Ijebu traded near ₦1,500, a premium of about 25%. The current survey shows that relationship gone. Ijebu now sits 0.6% below white and 16.3% below yellow. The same report also puts January Ijebu at ₦1,500 against the survey's January average of ₦2,000 for the grade, so the two sources differ on the level while agreeing that Ijebu stood above the other grades at the start of the year.
The Steepest Annual Fall of Any Garri Grade
The Lagos average has dropped from ₦2,000 on 9 January to ₦1,260, a decline of 37.0%. White garri fell 22.1% and yellow 23.8% over the same period, so the Ijebu grade has given up its premium by falling further than either. National data points the same way. Legit.ng reported National Bureau of Statistics figures showing white garri down 39.10% and yellow garri down 39.52% year on year in January, and a market survey published by P.M. News found garri falling 31% from ₦35,000 to ₦24,000 per 50kg bag between the last quarter of 2025 and June 2026.
The Recent Direction Has Turned
Against that annual collapse, the short-term picture is flat to firming. The average rose 0.8% this week from ₦1,250 and remains 6.2% below the ₦1,343 of four weeks ago, making Ijebu the only garri grade in the survey still cheaper than it was a month ago. The Lagos State Ministry of Agriculture and Food Systems Lagos Food Price Tracker lists Ijebu at ₦1,100 in its July 2026 entry, matching the cheapest quote in the survey rather than the average.
What Sits Under a Cassava Price
Whether the decline holds depends on the cassava harvest. AgroNigeria reported cassava and vegetable farms in Ikorodu, Ojo, Imota and Epe submerged after continuous rainfall, and Vanguard reported the Nigeria Hydrological Services Agency expecting flooding across about 17 states between 21 and 27 July. The National Bureau of Statistics named garri and cassava flour among the items lifting food inflation to 17.52% in June, as Nairametrics reported, which sits against the local Ijebu figure rather than with it.
What Thin Coverage Means for a Shopper
Five reporting markets is enough to establish a price but not enough to guarantee availability, and a household that finds Ijebu garri absent at one of them has few alternatives before defaulting to white or yellow. That substitution now costs almost nothing against white, at 0.6%, but 19.4% against yellow, so the fallback grade a shopper reaches for matters more than the switch itself.
Nigeria's minimum wage is ₦70,000 a month, so the ₦400 gap between Mile 12 and Ajah is 0.6% of a monthly wage per paint. FoodPrices Nigeria will keep tracking whether Ijebu garri holds its new position as the cheapest grade in Lagos. Live prices: foodprices.ng/real-time-prices