It is just after 4 a.m and Tinu Adebayor is still at her post. She runs a small informal shop selling snacks and drinks on Adeola Odeku Street, Victoria Island, Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital. While much of the city is winding down after a long night, Adebayor is doing brisk business. Young men wander up for bottled water. A couple, still dressed for a party, argue briefly over a meat pie before buying two.
“Quiet?” she asks, laughing, when the question comes up. “There is nothing quiet about December.”
For Adebayor, December is the busiest time of the year. She sleeps less, stocks more, and keeps her business, which she carries on a wheelbarrow, open long after midnight. Her late-night sales are being driven by the annual surge of visitors into Lagos, and Nigeria more broadly, every December, when the country morphs into a month-long stretch of parties, concerts, weddings, club nights, and family gatherings. The phenomenon, popularly known as Detty December, has grown from a loose street phrase into a full-blown season, fueled by returning members of the diaspora and young urban revelers with money to spend.
In cities like Lagos, Abuja, Calabar, Owerri, and Port Harcourt, December is predictable: Flights are full, hotels raise their prices, traffic worsens, and event flyers flood social media. International music stars touch down. Local artists book multiple shows in a single night. Beach clubs, lounges, and pop-up venues spring up almost overnight. For many businesses, event planners, caterers, fashion designers, makeup artists, and short-let operators, December is when the year finally makes sense financially.
“It’s our harvest season,” said Elizabeth Obalola, an event vendor. “If you don’t make money in December, the rest of the year will be hard.”
The numbers support that view. Airlines add extra routes, ride-hailing services record spikes, and landlords convert flats into short-term rentals. The Lagos State Government said it generated about $71 million dollars from tourism related activism from the 2024 Detty December season. In practical terms, Detty Decemberhas turned Nigeria into a temporary entertainment hub, drawing visitors from Europe, North America, and across Africa.
But behind the glossy Instagram videos and sold-out concerts is a less comfortable story. Analysts say the same seasonal economy that enriches some is steadily pricing out many locals and creating room for abuse.
“Ordinary Nigerians are confronting inflated prices for everything, from accommodation to food,” said Aigbehi Thomas, an independent travel consultant. “Vendors know that people are coming in with foreign currency or higher spending power, and prices adjust accordingly. The problem is that locals are left to pay the same prices.”
The result, some economists argue, is a “race to the bottom”: a festive rush that delivers short-term cash but weakens trust, worsens inequality, and strains already fragile urban systems. Power outages, waste management problems, traffic congestion, and overstretched security agencies all become more visible in December, when the population of major cities swells.
Still, the season shows no sign of slowing down.
Ghana beginnings
There is no clear agreement on where the term Detty December came from. Some trace its popularity to Ghana’s “Year of Return” campaign, launched in 2019 to mark 400 years since the first recorded arrival of enslaved Africans in the Americas. The campaign drew thousands of visitors from the diaspora to West Africa and turned December into a major tourism window for Ghana.
As Accra filled up with concerts, festivals, and heritage tours, Nigerians, already known for traveling home in December, found a language that matched what they had long been doing.
Oluwatosin Oluwole Ajibade, the Nigerian musician and entrepreneur popularly known as Mr Eazi, has also claimed responsibility for the phrase. Speaking at an event in Ghana, he said the term came up while planning a party with friends in 2016.
“While working as a show promoter with my friends, I suggested that we call our December event ‘Detty December,’” he said. “Hashtag Detty December. So in 2016, my guys invented Detty December.”
Whether the phrase was invented or simply popularized, it stuck. And once it did, Nigerians ran with it.
However, it was coined, Nigerians have taken ownership of it, and usually turn the whole country into one big party every December. The timing is not accidental. December is when offices slow down, schools close, and many people finally have the time and permission to travel. The weather is more forgiving, especially at night, and there is a shared understanding that this is the month to rest, attend weddings, see old friends, and spend what is left of the year’s earnings.
For Nigerians in the diaspora, December matters even more. It is the one period when travel feels justified and rewarding. Families plan around it. Old friendships revive around it. Entire social calendars are built to fit those few weeks.
“If it wasn’t December, I probably wouldn’t come,” said Ifeanyi Uzor, a UK-based returnee who visited Lagos after three years. “December is when everyone is around. Your friends are home, there’s always something happening, and you don’t feel like you’re missing out. That’s why the parties work.”
The Disconnect
While Detty December has pulled in millions of visitors and injected fresh money into Nigeria’s urban economies, it has also come with a quieter but costly downside for local businesses: chargebacks.
A chargeback is a payment reversal initiated by a customer through their bank after a transaction has been completed. Originally, the system was designed as a consumer protection measure, allowing cardholders to recover funds in cases of fraud, unauthorized transactions, or failure to receive goods or services. In reality, however, the process often tilts heavily in favour of the cardholder—especially when the transaction involves foreign-issued cards and cross-border payments.
During Detty December, these disputes typically surface only after diaspora visitors have left the country. A customer who paid for accommodation, events, or services with an international debit or credit card contacts their bank weeks later, claiming the transaction was unauthorized or that the service was not delivered as agreed. Once a dispute is filed, the bank reverses the payment while it investigates, immediately placing the financial burden on the Nigerian merchant.
For local businesses, the process is stacked against them. Merchants are required to submit extensive documentation—proof of service, identification, signed receipts- within tight deadlines, often to foreign banks with which they have no direct relationship. Even when evidence is provided, the final ruling frequently favours the cardholder. The business loses not only the original payment but also pays additional chargeback and processing fees.
The impact can be severe. Eche Enziga, a hospitality operator in Lagos, recalled an incident involving a visiting “IJGB” who filed a $2,000 chargeback after leaving Nigeria. “It was only when immigration held her at the airport on a later trip that she sent the money back to us through Zelle,” he said.
The problem has grown common enough that some businesses are taking drastic precautions. Days before last year’s Detty December, Chef Imotada, who runs Fire and Ice, an outdoor restaurant in Lekki, announced publicly that his establishments would no longer accept international cards or transfers. “Please feel free to pay in dollars with cash or use the POS person outside the restaurant,” he wrote—an attempt to protect his business from losses that, by then, had become all too familiar.
There are also growing complaints that the influx of foreign money has made everyday life more expensive for locals. Nigeria’s weak currency—while devastating for many households—has paradoxically helped power the Detty December boom. Travel and leisure in the country have become comparatively cheap for foreigners and diaspora Nigerians earning in dollars, pounds, or euros, driving higher spending on hotels, food, transportation, and events. As one travel industry expert put it bluntly, “It’s the currency devaluation, plain and simple.”
For high-earning visitors, December in Nigeria offers luxury experiences at a fraction of what they would cost in other global cities. For domestic consumers paid in naira, however, the same season brings price hikes, scarcity, and rising costs for basic services.
“I used to go out during December,” said Amaka Nwosu, a Lagos-based marketing professional. “Now I can’t afford it. The clubs, restaurants, even Uber rides—everything is priced for people with dollars. I feel like a stranger in my own city.”
Government Complicity or a Missed Opportunity
Rather than soften the distortions created by Detty December, government responses have so far swung between celebration and policy uncertainty. When a proposal emerged to impose a $500 tourism tax on returning diaspora visitors, the Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM) publicly rejected it, describing the idea as exploitative and warning that it could scare off the very inflows the season depends on. At the same time, however, federal and state authorities have doubled down on Detty December’s revenue appeal—tightening tax enforcement on hotels, restaurants, and entertainment venues, and introducing new levies that are ultimately borne by consumers. The federal government, for instance, introduced an $11.50 Advance Passenger Information System (APIS) security levy on international flights, effective December 1, 2025, further adding to the cost of travel during the peak season.
Economists argue that this focus on headline earnings, visitor numbers, hotel occupancy rates, and gross spending misses a more fundamental question about sustainability and fairness. “The government sees dollars and stops thinking,” said economist Dr. Folake Adebayo. “There’s little attention to who benefits, who is excluded, or what happens in January when the visitors are gone, and businesses are left dealing with chargebacks, debt, and empty rooms.”
There is no denying the scale of Detty December’s economic footprint. Tourism and travel receipts surge, airlines fly at near capacity, and hospitality, short-let rentals, car hires, and nightlife generate multiples of their usual monthly revenue. Industry projections suggest that, with better infrastructure and coordination, Detty December could become a $2 billion foreign-exchange opportunity within a few years.
As policymakers’ debate, economists warn, and businesses count profits and losses, Detty December continues to mean different things to different Nigerians. For some, it is a season of return, excess, and opportunity. For others, it is a month of exclusion, inflated prices, and quiet losses that surface only after the visitors have gone.
Back in Victoria Island, Tinu Adebayor is still less concerned with policy gaps or macroeconomic trade-offs. By the time January arrives, the crowds will thin, the late-night traffic will ease, and sales will slow. She knows this rhythm well. December gives, and January takes back.
As dawn breaks, she begins to pack away and pick up the litter some of her customers have left behind, preparing to close for a few hours before the day begins again. “December is good,” she says, “But it doesn’t last.”
