By 1989 the Structural Adjustment Programme adopted under Babangida in 1986 had collapsed the naira, gutted real public-sector salaries and removed long-standing subsidies on petrol, fertiliser and tertiary feeding. In May and June 1989, university students — initially at the University of Benin — launched anti-SAP demonstrations that spread rapidly across Lagos, Ibadan, Port Harcourt, Onitsha and Benin City, drawing in transport workers, traders and the urban unemployed. The federal government deployed soldiers; the death toll, never officially confirmed, was estimated by Civil Liberties Organisation and other contemporary monitors at between 50 and several hundred. The Babangida administration responded with limited "SAP relief" packages and a partial restoration of student bursaries, but the underlying programme continued. The 1989 riots are one of the earliest large-scale documented uprisings against IMF-prescribed adjustment in Africa.
Figure 1
Structural Adjustment in numbers, 1985–1995
The Babangida SAP devalued the naira from 0.89 to 78 against the dollar in a decade. Inflation never came back below 10% during the programme.
The money itself
Archival illustrations commissioned for this archive — format, palette and motif of each issue, not a photograph or facsimile.
11 February 1977 series; ₦20 issued 1981
₦20
The first Nigerian note to carry a Nigerian face — Murtala Muhammed — and the highest denomination for a decade.
What it bought
₦20 in 1981 was about a week's wage for a junior clerk.
Worth today
₦20 of 1981 ≈ ₦38,000 in 2026 money.