Nigeria is facing its worst economic crisis in decades, with soaring inflation, a sharp devaluation of its currency and millions struggling to buy food. Two years ago, Nigeria was Africa’s largest economy but is expected to fall to fourth place this year.
The suffering is everywhere. Unions are striking to protest wages of about $20 a month. People are dying in stampedes as they desperately need free rice. Hospitals are filled with women suffering from convulsions from calcium deficiency.
It is widely believed that the root cause of this crisis is Elected president 15 months ago: this part of The removal of fuel subsidies and the floating of the currency, both measures, have together led to a sharp rise in prices.
Nigeria is a nation of entrepreneurs whose more than 200 million citizens are adept at managing themselves in difficult circumstances without the services normally provided by the state. produce Their own electricity and fetched their own water. They took up arms, defend When the armed forces are unable to do so, their communities are threatened. Kidnapper When a family member is kidnapped.
But at present, their wisdom has reached its limit.
No money to buy milk
On a recent morning, in one corner of northern Nigeria’s largest emergency room, three women convulsed in spasms of pain, unable to speak. The emergency room at Murtala Muhammad Specialist Hospital in Kano, Nigeria’s second-largest city, receives one or two patients a year with hypocalcemia caused by malnutrition, said Salisu Garba, a kindly medical worker who rushed from bed to bed and ward to ward.
Now, hospitals are seeing multiple cases every day as many people cannot afford food.
Mr. Garba is assessing the women’s husbands. Which source of nutrition he recommends depends on what he thinks they can afford. Baobab leaves or Cyperus oleifera The poor ate boiled bones, and the slightly better-off ate boiled bones. He laughed at the suggestion that milk was something that everyone could afford.
more than 87 million people Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, has 15 million people living below the poverty line, the world’s second-most impoverished country after India, which is seven times its size. High inflation means poverty is expected to rise further this year and next, the World Bank said.
Last week, unions shut down hospitals, courts, schools, airports and even parliament in an attempt to force the government to raise the minimum wage by $20 a month.
But the end 92% of Nigeria’s working-age population works in the informal sector, where there are no wages and no unions to fight for them.
For the Afolabi family in Ibadan, southwestern Nigeria, their descent into poverty began in January this year with the loss of an electric tuk-tuk.
After the difficult birth of their second child, Babatunde Afolabi was forced to sell his taxi to pay for his wife’s medical expenses, so he began to work sporadically. Although the income was low, the family managed to get by.
“We didn’t even think about going hungry,” he said.
But then, he said, the price of cassava – the cheapest staple food in many parts of Nigeria – tripled.
He said the only things they can afford now are a few cookies, a little bread and 20 peanuts a day for their 6-year-old child.
A country built on natural gas
Although Nigeria is a major oil producer, it is heavily dependent on imported petroleum products. Due to years of underinvestment and mismanagement, the country’s state-owned refineries produce almost no gasoline.
For decades, the nation’s pop was the hum of small generators that fired up every day when the power went out. Petroleum products moved goods and people across the country.
Until recently, the government subsidized oil by billions of dollars each year.
The subsidy, which many Nigerians say is the only useful contribution from a neglectful and predatory government, has been pledged by successive presidents to end, only to back off over fears of mass unrest.
Bola Tinubu Elected President of Nigeria Last year, preliminary follow-up was carried out.
“This is necessary to save my country from bankruptcy,” Mr Tinubu told a World Economic Forum meeting in Saudi Arabia in April.
Instead, many Nigerians are bankrupt or working multiple jobs to make ends meet.
Mr Garba, a hospital worker, used to belong to the middle class, although 17 members of his family, including 12 children, depended on him for their livelihood.
After his shifts at the hospital, where he established the first statewide ambulance service in addition to working in the emergency room, earning $150 a month, he went to the Red Cross, where he occasionally received a $3.30 volunteer stipend to help with Severe diphtheria outbreak.
At night, he works at the drugstore he runs with a colleague. But few people have money to buy medicine now. He sells about $7 worth of medicine every day.
Mr. Garba sold his car last year after gasoline subsidies were scrapped and now rides a tuk-tuk to work. Unable to power a generator, he uses a small solar-powered lantern to read medicine labels at the pharmacy. He can only afford small amounts of rice and cassava.
He said the cost of living was very high under the previous government, but not like today.
“It’s very, very bad,” he said.
The situation has become so dire that competition for free or discounted government rice has led to several deadly stampedes – including one at a university in the central state of Nasarawa in March that killed seven students.
Mr Tinubu promised Create one million jobs and quadrupled its size economy The International Monetary Fund said last month that the country had begun to subsidize fuel and electricity again – although the government has not yet acknowledged this.
“Right now, the economic direction and priorities remain somewhat unclear, if not entirely clear,” said Zainab Usman, a political economist and director of the Africa program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Percussion boom
A slew of new crypto-mining games that promise to earn more money the more you play have people across Nigeria tapping their smartphone screens all day, eager to earn a few dollars.
People knock on doors during prayers in mosques and churches. Children knock under their desks in schools. Mourners knock at funerals.
There’s no guarantee that any of them will benefit from the time they spend mindlessly banging away.
However, they cannot rely on the national currency, the Naira.
The government has devalued the naira twice in the past year in an attempt to make it float more freely and attract foreign investment. The result: a nearly 70 percent drop in the naira’s value against the dollar.
Nigeria cannot produce enough food to feed its growing population; food imports 11% annual growthCurrency depreciation causes these imports—which have Due to high tariffs — Prices have skyrocketed.
Nigerians could become poor almost overnight, so they look for anything that might hold its value — or, ideally, make them rich.
“People are looking for me everywhere,” said Rabiu Biyora, the undisputed king of tapping in Kano State, as he opened one of his five tapping shops. Foldable phones Add to his 2.7 billion hits on the TapSwap app. “Not to attack me, but to get something from me.”
Mr. Bijola, a 39-year-old with an elegant, serious demeanor who surrounds himself with a group of tech-savvy young people wherever he goes, said only that he had made “over $10,000” from his previous wiretapping spree.
He profits from other people’s taps, so he posts on social media to encourage them and offers free internet to anyone willing to sit outside his house. Nigerians don’t need much encouragement – despite the risks and unrest, Nigeria has Second highest Global cryptocurrency adoption rate.
So, every evening, struggling young people would gather near Mr. Biyora’s house and drink beer.
Request Help
In most parts of Nigeria, sharing with neighbors and giving alms to the poor is normal.
Every day people arrive at the doorstep of Radio Freedom in Kano State, dropping off papers with heartfelt appeals for help with medical bills or school fees, or to help people recover from disasters.
A radio host selects three prayers to read each day, and often a sympathetic listener calls in to pay the supplicant’s bill.
But lately, the calls for help have grown louder, while the calls for help have become quieter.
Good Samaritans once came to the emergency room, Pay a stranger’s bill Mr. Garba said that for them, this situation is now rare.
However, Mr. Garba said the number of patients at his hospital had almost halved in recent months.
Many patients simply cannot get to the hospital. They cannot afford the 20 cent bus fare.
Pius Adeleye contributed reporting from Ibadan, Nigeria.
