“Ebi npa wa,” or, we are starving, is the emblem of want, deprivation, probably famine. It is an expression of the desperation and fear that Nigerians confront in these days of 31.70 percent headline inflation and 35.92 percent food inflation.
During the last Easter celebrations, the spoons in many homes went on holiday and their cooking pots dried up, to use a phrase from one of the hit songs of Chief Composer Adeolu “Baba Eto” Akinsanya.
Navy Commodore Bode George (retd.), a former military governor and former Chairman of the Nigerian Ports Authority, a member of the elite class, has complained, “There is no job, food and people have been coming to my office to do something for them.”
In everyday English, what George is saying is that his unemployed compatriots are coming to his office to beg him for financial assistance and the matter is getting to a head. The Yoruba will say, “O ti wo’mu.”
A Muslim cleric advised that sponsors should rather use the N4.5m to N5m to support needy umma rather than spend it to sponsor faithful to the 2024 Holy Pilgrimage, which he described as a needless jamboree. He added that, in any case, Allah only demanded pilgrimage from those who could afford it.
A young man, who got married on a N50, 000 shoestring budget, confessed, “We had our traditional wedding yesterday and decided to do something little, but impactful. Economy hard, you wan come do pass yourself join? Do your power and we all go dey alright.”
An exasperated customs officer disclosed that he eventually bought a 50 kg bag of rice for N82, 000 after he had earlier walked away from the vendor who wanted to sell it at N72, 000 the previous week.
The Monetary Policy Committee of the Central Bank of Nigeria avers that “Key drivers of inflationary pressure remain the strong exchange rate passed through to domestic prices; rising cost of transportation; high cost of energy and other production inputs; lingering insecurity, especially in food-producing areas; and legacy infrastructure deficits.”
The National Bureau of Statistics announced that in February 2024, the average cost of a healthy diet was N938, which exhausts Nigeria’s N30, 000 monthly minimum wage. In January 2024, it was lower, at N858. It was even lower than that, at N786, in December 2023.
The cost of a healthy diet is an estimate of the amount and the combination of local foods needed to provide sufficient energy to a typical family. These are intakes of protein, fat and micronutrients, described by dieticians as boron, zinc, manganese, iron, copper, molybdenum and chlorine.
But these statistics cannot truly reflect what is happening on the streets. Economic indices are impersonal, sterile, unfeeling and plastic and cannot adequately demonstrate the real condition of the state of human welfare.
To get an idea of the inflation that is eating up the value of the naira you must go into the market. There, you will pay more than double for the same quality and quantity of the commodity that you bought the last time you were in the same market.
The naira in your bank account is depreciating so fast that it is probably in your best interest to buy all your food supplies for at least one year, so you can beat the debilitating scourge called inflation.
But the irregular supply of electricity will cut such ambition short. And, in any case, how many people can muster the money to buy even imperishable foodstuffs for a long time? Not too many.
So, when you hear that the street is not smiling, you should about get the size of it. Those boys, who used to tell former President Muhammadu Buhari that the street is not smiling, may have disappeared because they could not survive the spell of hunger.
“Palliatives, like “Ounje Eko,” have become some kind of fad, and opportunity for unscrupulous bureaucrats to steal public funds.”
The fire in their bellies has gone out and they are now gentle, as they say on the streets of Lagos. You see, the existential realities of poverty eventually overwhelm the fire of every hope or ambition.
President Bola Tinubu must quickly find a way to make real his quip that, “There’s a very good bright light at the end of the tunnel… and somewhere at the end of the storm is some corner of calmness and joy.”
When Nigerians go to the market these days, they go, holding their hearts in their hands. They approach the markets with fear and trepidation because they do not know what they will meet there.
Many resort to patronising herbal potions whenever they fall sick these days. Someone says you must not fall sick and go to an orthodox medicine doctor, even in a public hospital. You cannot afford to be sick these days.
The President must urgently engage his ministers of Agriculture and Food Security (who appears to be too aloof and laid back); Trade, Industries and Investments; Finance; Budget and National Planning; Power; Petroleum Resources; and Gas, with the National Security Adviser and the Inspector-General of Police, to speedily address some urgent matters.
These urgent matters are: Safeguard the farms, to enable farmers to return to the bush; provide inputs, like seedlings, machinery and extension services to the farmers; and enable industries to be able to convert farm crops into processed foods, ready for the dinner table.
Palliatives, like “Ounje Eko,” have become some kind of fad, and opportunity for unscrupulous bureaucrats to steal public funds, the way President Buhari’s Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development claimed to have fed schoolchildren who were at home during the COVID-19 lockdown.
But there is a silver lining. Hakama Ali, Acting Director of Corporate Communications of the CBN, recently disclosed that Nigeria’s capital market experienced an inflow of $1.5bn, through foreign portfolio investments.
And the naira rallied from N1611 to $1, to N1309 to $1 on the Autonomous Foreign Exchange market.
The credit for that is given to the CBN that gave strict orders to bureaux de change not to add more than 1.5 per cent profit margin to the forex allocated to them. If this is true, then the fear of Governor Yemi Cardoso has become the beginning of wisdom for the BDCs.
Yet, despite the improvement in the value of the naira, prices of foodstuffs continue to rise almost beyond the reach of the poor, harried and challenged citizens of Nigeria. The food inflation is simply unbearable.
Nigerian Tribune columnist, Farooq Kperogi, is of the opinion that the monster called “greedflation” is partly responsible for the high cost of foodstuffs. It may also be that the market is not sure for how long the appreciation of the naira will last.
Bismarck Rewane, Managing Director of Financial Derivatives Company Limited, and member of the presidential economic think tank, thinks CBN’s policies will soon cause a fall in the prices of staples rice, bread and other foodstuffs. That’s if the greedy lots cooperate.
Maybe the quick fix for the immediate term is for Tinubu to motivate the ministers of State for Petroleum and Gas Resources to ramp up production in order to raise forex inflow that should strengthen the naira.
A stronger naira will enhance the ability of Nigerians to buy more from the greedy market-mammies who are responsible for the “greedflation” that Dr. Kperogi is talking about.
