IN the build-up to the Eid-el-Kabir celebrations, I decided to create time for shopping, both at retail stores and in the open market. I decided after many years of relying strictly on others to take care of my annual Eid needs because I suddenly began to feel that my long-time support structure had begun to fleece me by inflating the prices of food items, including rams.
I started doubting every spending breakdown, even when there were receipts to back the claims, when the prices of individual items on the list became too unreasonable to believe, considering past budgets.
The first port of call was a busy supermarket in my Lagos neighbourhood. I usually don’t miss the annual routine of visiting my foster mother in Lekki with a lot of goodies that can atone for my distance from her throughout the year. And, for her, if you bought the whole world and left out sardines, you’ve not bought anything, so that was the first shelf I went to. What I saw as the price was, however, confusing, so I called one of the attendants and told him that the items had been mixed up in terms of prices.
“Oh, sorry about that,” he said, thinking I was actually right until he moved closer. Then, he asked, “Which one, ma?” I pointed at the sardines’ shelf, and he confirmed that there was no mix-up. I looked at the face of my domestic staff, who was standing by me and saw that she had been laughing all along. What? The last time I bought a 125g tin of Titus Sardines by myself, it was between N200 and N250, and there I was standing before a shelf that said I had to pay N1,830 for the same item. By the time I paid N21,960 for a dozen of them, the budget for my foster mother was almost half depleted.
I immediately saw the need to apologise for my months of nagging over what I described as my domestic staff’s careless spending. Even when she kept on complaining about increased prices to justify her increasing demands, I had thought, for instance, that, at worst, the standard tin of sardines should not be more than N500, double its previous average price. Nothing prepared me for the 632 per cent increase shocker.
Now, to eggs. This was more than a shocker! A crate of eggs, on that day, sold for N7,000 as against N500 a few years ago. By the time we finished shopping for Mama, all I could do, in place of my usual cartons of gifts, was to put my “condition-induced” widow’s mite in a small basket, adorned with beautiful ribbons to enhance its presentability.
I cannot even begin to recount my experience at the ram market a week before Sallah. But I did not regret going to feel the pulse firsthand. That allowed me to clear the doubts around my long-time support structure. Even with the large quantity being sought on behalf of clients as Eid gifts, a big ram, not a cow, was ridiculously priced, at between N500,000 and N1m. The interesting thing was that what I met on the ground at the market was higher than the quoted price, which infuriated me into personal shopping.
After my exploration, I found out from colleagues and friends, particularly those who hardly have time for physical grocery shopping, that they were also almost concluding, like me, that everyone around them was a thief, until they checked personally.
What was supposed to be a season for merrymaking instantly turned to one of deep reflection as I began to wonder how workers or even those who barely earn anything had been surviving with these harsh realities. How on earth have workers, who have to spend substantial sums on increased transport fares to work daily and at the same time contend with these ridiculously higher prices of goods and services, been coping? Just how?
I am an employer of labour, but the operating environment, particularly in my line of business, does not support more than what we offer as salary, even though the lowest earning staff member earns well above the current minimum wage of N70,000. Yet, this take-home, from my first-hand information on the field, cannot take anyone home in the true sense, much less leave any room for unforeseen contingencies. Sadly, however, there is very little struggling entrepreneurs can do to ease this burden that they also carry with veiled pain.
Nigeria’s headline inflation rose from 15.38 per cent in March to 15.69 per cent in April 2026, while food inflation climbed to 16.06 per cent. This was after easing to 15.15 per cent in December 2025. But these official inflation figures still do not reflect the day-to-day experience of the average citizen, as inflation remains structurally high when viewed over a long period.
It does not take an economist to know that as the general prices of goods and services increase, the purchasing power of money held by individuals also decreases. Therefore, the earlier policymakers stopped assuming an “all is well” position on the back of official statistics that cannot be translated into appropriate standards of living for the masses, the closer Nigeria would get to its ideal economy. From what I have seen during the holiday period, it is fair to say that, in Nigeria currently, purchasing power is depressingly low and “the street is not smiling” at all.
At N70,000, the daily equivalent of Nigeria’s minimum wage is about $1.69, below the World Bank’s extreme poverty threshold of $2.15. Even at the N100,000 being proposed by state governors, currently, amid earnings that have more than tripled, the Nigerian worker would still not be earning a living minimum wage. Yet, citizens cannot still sleep with their eyes closed in many parts of the country, owing to widespread insecurity that has taken a scary turn, while those who had resorted to small-scale farming to eliminate hunger and, perhaps, earn money through produce sale, can no longer go to their farms for fear of being kidnapped for ransom or eventually killed.
Saying that the nation is currently sitting on a keg of gunpowder would be repeating the obvious, but this is not just about the government in power. Things were also far from normal under past administrations. To effect a change in economic direction, it is the responsibility of citizens to force a change in the acceptable governance standard at all levels. The way to start is to render vote-buying cloaked under cyclical election handouts useless.
Less influential countries with lower poverty figures and higher purchasing power did not overtake Nigeria with snoring citizens or arrogantly greedy leaders. The citizens made their votes count, not through violence, but through the determination to create a system where they would not have to queue under the sun for what they could provide for themselves under the right system created by the right leaders.
Now that candidates have emerged for the 2027 general elections from the major political parties on the field, citizens whose thinking has not been completely distorted by poverty can still educate others on how to speak overwhelmingly with their votes in a way that will make results manipulation almost impossible.
When citizens stand by their conscience even when they accept their share of “the national cake” from desperate politicians, the tradition of weaponising poverty to keep them in perpetual economic slavery will give way to standard governance based on tangible, life-changing achievements. The time to act is now.
- Dr Kolapo is publisher of The Point and her column, Compass, runs on the back page of the Punch newspaper on Monday. The column appears on News Point Nigeria newspaper on Tuesday.