Every Eid-el-Kabir, the same ritual. You calculate what you can afford. This year, millions of families discovered the answer was less than last year.

A ram that cost under ₦100,000 last Sallah now starts at ₦200,000. Medium to large ones go for between ₦450,000 and ₦900,000. A healthy bull or cow runs from ₦1.5 million to over ₦3 million depending on where you're buying.

This isn't a livestock story. It's a household story.

Across Nigeria this week, families held what one trader in a Vanguard survey called an "emergency financial meeting" before the celebration. Groups of relatives pooled money to buy one animal between them. Some dropped the ram entirely and bought rice and vegetable oil. Others calculated that the cassava flour they bought last Sallah for ₦700 now costs ₦1,200. The rice that made poundo yam cost between ₦3,000 and ₦3,500 last year. It's ₦5,000 now.

In Kano, a basket of tomatoes that sold for ₦13,000 last month now goes for ₦22,000. Bell peppers have doubled to ₦80,000 per bag. Hot pepper is ₦100,000. These aren't festival premium prices. The festival is arriving into conditions that already existed.

Here's what's underneath it. Food inflation crossed 20% in at least 11 Nigerian states in April 2026. Enugu State leads at 32.7 percent year-on-year. Kwara at 30.8 percent. Adamawa at 30.1 percent. The NBS data came out last week, the week before Eid. The timing was accidental. The information wasn't.

Nigeria removed the fuel subsidy in 2023 and watched transport costs rise inside every supply chain in the country. A bag of tomatoes doesn't get from Kano to Lagos on goodwill. The cost of moving it arrives in the price you pay at the market gate. Higher diesel costs. Longer routes around insecurity-hit roads. A naira that's stabilised but hasn't recovered what ordinary earners lost during its worst years.

The historical echo is simple. Nigerians have celebrated Sallah through harder times than this. They'll do it again. But "harder times than this" keeps being a moving standard.

There's a version of Nigeria where the government removes a corrupt subsidy, absorbs the short-term pain, and ensures the recovery is felt in people's kitchens before the next major holiday. That version is still a forecast. What's real is the family dividing a ram four ways and calling it fellowship.

What are you eating this Sallah? For a lot of Nigerian families, the honest answer this year is less.

Let's dig deeper.