By Dada Ahmed
Anthony Nwabueze, an applicant but a Bsc holder in Political Science from Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma in Edo was a Benin-Abuja bound passenger whose commercial vehicle stopped at the popular Nataco junction,Lokoja for passengers to for him and his co-passengers to eat in one of the restaurants in the area.
He said he was on his way to look for any meaningful job that would bring food to his table and care for his other needs,having looked for white-collar job for the past four years without success.
As he alerted from Sienna bus, he headed straight to one of the restaurants with a request to be served with a plate of food (eba).
Immediately he was served the menu requested, Nwabueze looked at the food with disdain and shouted” Ehwo,what quantity of food is this, how can I pay N500 for this very small quantity of eba and one meat. Please take it back and add to it, if you want me to pay for this.”
The girl, who served the food looked at Nwabueze and hissed, and this attitude sparked off further anger in Nwabueze who retorted. ” You are stupid, how dare you hiss at me for telling you that the food you served is too small for me because it is nit commensurate with the money I will pay for it.
With the rising voice of Nwabueze, the owner of the restaurant, simply identified as Mama Ngozi, surfaced and began shooting trouble.
She did not only ensure the restoration of peace between her customer and the girl, mama Ngozi sat Nwabueze down and tutored him on what operators of restaurants are passing through concerning inflation in Lokoja.
Moving close to Nwabueze, she said, “Sir, you are welcome to my restaurant. I am sorry for the unruly behaviour of my daughter to you few minutes ago. I promise you that such will not repeat itself when next you come to eat.
“While I appeal to you to pardon her, I regret to say that the whole problem is caused by the inflationary situation in Nigeria, particularly in Lokoja where every consumable and none consumable item carries frightening price tag. Take for instance, a measure of yellow garri, popularly known as the comman’s food that we used to buy at N600 or N800 about a year ago, has skyrocketed to N1,800.
“Starting from magge, rice, beans, yam, cassava, red oil, salt, pepper, tomato, onion, think of other food items, the prices have hit the roof, making us and consumers reel in the wheel of inflationary pains.
“The shylock being displayed by market men and women in Lokoja is beyond reasonable explanation.
“Every market day has become nightmare for most buyers in such away that when you buy one food stuff today from one market day, you can be rest assured that stuff will carry at least, 10 or more percentage increase in price the next market day. This is the predicament that is shaking restaurant business to its foundation. Government really need to come to save us from these greedy sellers. May God help us.
” So, for us in restaurant business to break even,not to talk of profit, we have to adjust the quantity of food we serve our esteemed customers without compromising the quality of our food.”
At the end of mediation, Nwabueze left the restaurant well fed and on a happy note.
The mild drama is an eloquent indication that Nigerians, most especially the masses, are passing through the pangs of hyper information with the attendant friction in human relationship and that the development is negatively permeating the way we interaction with others in the society.
Economic experts, such as Hassana Baba, Musa Nuhu, Alli Mohammed and Miss Agnes Alabi, described the nature of inflation in Lokoja as no child’s play in all ramifications.
“The effect of hyper inflation, especially in Lokoja, a purely civil service environment,is not funny.
” It takes the probabial nine lives which cat must have for a person to live in Lokoja, the import of this worrisome development is beginning to affect people’s social and economic life negatively.
“Statistics emanating from released by the his National Bureau of Nigeria (NBS),speaks volumes on the need for government to turn the search light toward finding lasting solution that will manifest in stemming the high rate of inflation in the country,” Agnes, a civil servant said.
Agnes’ remarks is a reflection of the prevailing inflationary trend in Lokoja and Nigeria at large, bedeviled with worrisome statistics of hard times in the country.
According to NBS, Nigeria’s annual inflation rate climbed for a 17th straight month to 16.47% in January of 2021, describing the development as the highest inflation rate since April of 2017, adding that food inflation hit an over 12-year high of 20.57%.
It linked the trend to pandemic disruptions and dollar shortages as well as lingering restrictions on imports of certain food items,despite the reopening of the country’s borders.
“At the same time, the incessant attacks on farmers and farmlands have prevented farmers from operating at optimal capacity.
The Bureau, however, observed that “President Muhammadu Buhari is already under pressure to curb a decade-long jihadist insurgency in the northeast and growing criminal gang violence in the northwest, “NBS said.
According to establishment, on a monthly basis, consumer prices increases by 1.49%, the least in four months, slowing from a 1.61% rise in the previous month.
No doubt the current unfavourable economic climate, caused by inflation in the country, has put many concerned citizen to task in finding lasting solution to it.
According to some financial experts, inflation is the decline of purchasing power of a given currency over time. To them,it is also a quantitative estimate of the rate at which the decline in purchasing power occurs, can be reflected in the increase of an average price level of a basket of selected goods and services in an economy over some period of time.
The academics at the ivory towers , globally, agree that l Inflation is an economic phenomenon used to describe the rising prices of goods and services year on year. This, they added has caused the purchasing power of the consumer to decrease because the rate of increase of wages and income cannot keep up with the rate of inflation.
They are, however, of the opinion that controlling inflation has never been a simple task. They nonetheless believe that the rise in prices is a result of many factors such as the aggregate demand, increasing supply of money, among others. They further argued that to control inflation, government needed many measures working in tandem, citing three main measures: monetary, fiscal and price control mechanisms to check inflation.
Stakeholders in economic sector are of the opinion that the Nigerian inflation can be effectively managed with the three mechanisms, addressed to the letter in line with global standard.
They urged government to evolve more aggressive monetary measures, through implementation of many policies and formulas to check the current inflation in Nigeria generally.
They argued that with an effective monetary policies and formulas in conjunction with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), government would be able to control the supply of money and credit in the economy.
They advised government to intensify efforts in Increasing the bank rate, to make loans and advances more expensive for th common public.
This, if implemented, they assured, would make members of the public spend less money on goods and commodities.
According to them, employing open market operations to reduce the level of liquidity in the economy would be another viable means of stemming the rate of inflation in the country.
Besides monetary measures, some financial experts also called on government to embark on increased fiscal measures to control inflation.
This, they argued, could be done through a reduction in private spending, adding that it would increase government revenue as well as reduction in government spending.
At the level of the cut in private expenditure, they called for increase taxes and tax liabilities of private companies and businesses to force companies spend less money thereby lowering the rate or controlling inflation.
The experts also advised government to give thought to the concept of price control as another viable means of checkmating the rising information.
According to them, during the time of rapidly increasing inflation, government may simply prevent any further increase in the prices of commodities through such monetary mechanism.
They argued that the measure would be, for the time being, suppress inflation and bring about reasonable level of price stability, adding however that this has a long term solution.
Above all, the consensus opinion among various experts has been that Nigerians, most especially the rich, really need to eschew the culture of craze for foreign goods and services.
“A situation where most Nigerians, especially the rich consume imported items makes Nigeria a mere consuming and not a producing nation.
“Our traders must also eschew shyluckness in dealing with buyers. A situation where a trader buys an article say N10.000 and sells at N100.000, claiming high cost of transportation among others, is not justifiable, even in the eye of God.
“This is what I notice among most Lokoja traders and is not good for the growth of the economy.”Nuhu said.
Ahmed is a blogger and a journalist and can be reached on ahmeddada008@gmail.com.
