Abujaculture & etiquette

Your employer obtains an expatriate quota position from the Federal Ministry of Interior; you then obtain a permit before you travel and hold CERPAC as your residence permit. That middle step is in transition. The long-standing version was a Subject To Regularisation (STR) visa from a Nigerian mission abroad, regularised into CERPAC inside a 90-day window after landing. The Nigeria Visa Policy 2025, in force 8 May 2025, introduced a pre-arrival e-CERPAC — an entry permit valid 30 days — meant to remove that two-step, and the NIS's public visa listing no longer shows an STR class; but the NIS still publishes its STR/R2A page and existing STR holders are still being regularised. Confirm the sequence with the mission you will actually apply through. Abuja's advantage is that the Ministry of Interior and the Nigeria Immigration Service headquarters are both here, so escalating a stuck file is a taxi ride rather than a phone tree. A business visa still cannot be converted, and visa-on-arrival ended on 1 May 2025.

Nigeria's personal income tax follows the taxpayer's residence, and the Federal Capital Territory has its own revenue service. Living in Abuja means PAYE remitted to FCT-IRS and tax clearance certificates issued by it. This catches out people who move from Lagos and keep filing with LIRS, and people who assume that because Abuja is federal their tax must be federal. It is not — FIRS handles companies and VAT.

Land in the Federal Capital Territory is allocated federally, and the documentary chain — allocation papers, a Certificate of Occupancy, and the various interim instruments — is its own subject. Disputes over allocations and revocations are common enough that no one should transfer money on a property here without a lawyer looking at the title. This applies to renting as well as buying: verify that the person letting the property is entitled to.

Abuja was master-planned and its addresses reflect it: Wuse is divided into zones, Garki into numbered areas, and the whole city into phases radiating out from the Central Area. A 'Wuse 2' address and a 'Wuse Zone 4' address are different places with different characters. Satellite towns — Lugbe, Kubwa, Nyanya, Karu — are cheaper and outside the planned city, with a commute that behaves quite differently. Getting the geography straight is the first hour of work.

Nigerian electricity customers are banded by the hours their feeder actually delivers, with Band A promising twenty hours or more at the highest tariff. In the FCT the distributor is AEDC and regulation remains with the national regulator, NERC — unlike Lagos, which transferred oversight to a state commission in December 2024. That means the national compensation directives when supply falls short apply here directly. Ask which band the feeder is on and ask to see a recent bill.

Daily logistics here are genuinely straightforward by Nigerian standards: distances are short, roads are wide, the light rail runs, and a cross-town journey is twenty minutes rather than two hours. What you give up is depth of private-sector opportunity. Abuja's economy is government, diplomacy, development agencies, oil and gas regulation, and the professional services around them. If your work is commercial rather than institutional, the counterparties are mostly in Lagos.