I know that after the COVID pandemic crisis, the world has never been the same, but I am sure many other countries have started to recover, but it hasn’t been the same in my country. Nigeria is a beautiful country with many opportunities, but these opportunities have been blocked by different government policies.
Life has been hard enough under the previous government administration; it is so hard to put food on the table when the price of food keeps increasing every day. Before, there were three classes of citizens in the country, which included the rich class, the middle class, and the poor class, but with the new change in government, it can only be classified into two: you are either rich or poor.
Just for survival, I eat just twice a day, or once, because you don’t know how expensive the next thing you want to buy will be. You can never use the budget of the previous month for the new month because there is always a change in price.
Before the new government, the fuel price was at 165 naira ($0.22) per liter, and we do buy it like that, but after the change of government and removal of subsidies, the fuel price skyrocketed to 570 naira per liter ($0.76). After the fuel went up, two weeks later it went up to 670 naira ($0.90) per liter, and the painful part is that we can't do anything about it.
They give the price, and the citizen has no choice but to buy it; currently, most people don’t use their cars, and transportation fees have inflated. I spend 400 naira going to and coming from work, but now I spend 800 naira, which is double the price. The reason behind this is that the value of the Naira keeps decreasing. As of last month, a dollar to a naira was $1 = 750 naira, but as I am writing this blog, $1 = 860 naira, and this has affected the price of all commodities in the country.
Salaries do not increase, but goods and service prices do. It's a miracle to just get by daily, and you just have to hope for survival the next day and the next one to come. We are still hoping for the best as we accept whatever sh*t the government throws at us. We’re stuck in the cycle of hoping for the best but expecting the worst.