- Frustration deepens as prices soar on all fronts
To say the times are hard for the man on the street today would be gross understatement, if not calculated injustice to this anonymous fellow. Indeed, it can be said that he has been so beaten into the dust that he is incapable of nary a whimper anymore. That is where he is today: roiling in the muck, well, in a manner of speaking.
First, prices of various staple food and commodities are on a wild and uncontrolled upward spiral. Obeying the rule of the dollar, prices of all imported foods have jumped by over 50 percent in the last one year and still soaring.
Rice, Nigeria’s number one staple and almost 100 percent imported is probably the most affected. The price of one 50 kg bag has increased by between 50 to 100 percent depending on the part of the country you are buying from. It has risen from about N10,000 per 50 kg bag to between N15,000 and N19,000.
And the price of locally produced rice where available, had always been more expensive. Nearly all other food items like garri, beans, maize and tomatoes have all gone beyond the reach of the generality of Nigerians.
The refrain among some market women recently is: even salt? As the story goes, it is said that most of the women say that they had never known the price of salt to go up. Therefore, for it to rise now may signify something ominous.
Apart from food items, kerosene price has soared uncontrollably in recent times with no coherent explanation from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC. A litre which sold for about N100.00 per litre has doubled to over N200.00 per litre. Kerosene is the major cooking fuel for majority of the people, so this situation would lead many to seek alternative sources of fuel like wood and charcoal, with their attendant hazard to the environment.
Before now, cooking gas price had gone up early June by about 45 percent. Price of the common 12.5 kg cylinder rose from less than N2,500 to about N3,500. Nigerians are paying more for electricity now too, notwithstanding that there is less supply now.
In like manner, petrol price had been hiked over a month ago by the Federal Government by more than 50 percent from N85.6 per litre to N145.000. This singular action triggered an upward spiral of nearly all prices across board. The price of diesel too which had remained stable for many years after it was deregulated rose sharply recently as if in cahoots with all other commodities.
But the reasons for the hike in nearly all prices are well known. While the country sells less crude oil, it earns less foreign exchange, making the naira to depreciate and fall freely. Yet nearly everything we need – from consumer goods to industrial machinery and raw materials – is imported. This scenario naturally distorts the country’s foreign exchange dynamics forcing prices to shoot up.
But for the man on the streets, the economics of exchange rate and oil prices are as vague and distant as a distant foreign land. How they affect the prices of garri and rice are what matters to him.
In other words, the times are dire and quite trying; the Federal Government must hasten with a series of policies that bear palliatives to the lowest rungs of the people. If we bear in mind that thousands of jobs have been lost and are being lost; that salaries and pensions are hardly regular anymore, then government must see the need to act quick and lift the people from their pit of privation.
Some of what government can do is to begin to pay some of the huge debts owed contractors and work should resume on numerous construction projects across the country. Government must also intervene and catalyse massive model agriculture projects across the country. Small holder farmers would then tap into these pilot projects creating and extending profitable value chains.
Government has no luxury of time; speed is of the essence
