DAILY POST
Two months into the administration of President Bola Tinubu, with its renewed hope mantra, Nigerians are groaning following the soaring high cost of living.
The hope of survival for many is dimming as the days go by. The situation has become so alarming that even the rich are beginning to feel the heat.
When the World Bank released a report towards the end of last month that about four million Nigerians have been thrown into the poverty class between January and June this year, and even warned that another 7.1 million were expected to join the league if the subsidy removal was not properly managed, many did not take it seriously. Many Nigerians, particularly those sympathetic to the fuel subsidy removal, dismissed the report with a wave of the hand.
Today, the reality of the World Bank’s warning has dawned on Nigerians as the effect of the subsidy removal on fuel is spreading agony and pain across all sectors of the country’s national life. In fact, the belief in some quarters is that the people’s lives do not matter as long as the elite and the political class are comfortable.
Only last week, hordes of women took to the streets in some parts of the north to protest what they called the unbearable high cost of living. The protesting women whose pictures trended on social media space on Sunday said they were protesting against the rising cost of living.
As they marched through the major roads, they chanted, “Komi yayi sadar,” meaning everything is expensive, especially grains. The women’s predicament in the north is worsened by the activities of the Boko Haram Islamist sect, bandits and kidnappers, who have prevented farmers from going to farm.
This precarious security situation has affected food production and thrown many subsistence farmers into acute shortage of food.
Their situation is also worsened by the fuel subsidy removal which has shot up the prices of most essential commodities, including food beyond the rooftop.
Again, some civil society groups under the aegis of the Edo Civil Society Organisations, on Monday, equally took to the streets of Benin City, the state capital, to protest against the hardship brought upon Nigerians by the recent hike in fuel prices following the subsidy removal.
The protesters, who marched through some major streets also condemned the fuel price increase and the high cost of governance in Nigeria.
They carried placards with such inscription as, “Say no to continuous hike in fuel price,” “FG, allow the poor to breathe,” and “Stop choking us,” among others, while they chorused the late Afro-beat legend, Fella Anikulapo Kuti’s song, “Nigerian government, animal talk be that.”
They lamented that the new National Assembly members were made to share huge sums of money running into billions of naira to improve their working conditions, while the downtrodden groaned under the new fuel regime with its attendant astronomical rise in prices of food and other essential commodities.
