It is no longer news that cost of living have
gone high to the extent that salaries of worker that constituted 2/3 of the population of Nigeria cannot meet basic needs of an average worker. Nigeria has become a state of hungry people with little or no realistic intervention from the government. Since independence we have never had it too rough as we are seeing it now. Not that food is not available but the price of each item is unbelievable. Gari which should be the cheapest food item in the market is now #3000 a rubber of measurement which hitherto was #1200. Similarly bean become a big man food.
The high cost of thing has affected every citizen in no small ways. Under the transport sector the PMS has been inflated from #200 to #1500 per liter. Of recent government drop the cost per liter to be #1003. Where are we heading to with the increase in the cost of things. Tinubu’s administration should not watch the calamity silently killing our people but stand up to the occasion by buying sufficient food to feed the people. There is no need to shut down warehouse but flood the market with food items at a subsided prices. Many country that were caught in this mysterious man’s made calamity apply this approach and prices of items dropped drastically. Setting up price control agency is a waste of synergy but the government suspend other things like infrastructures and focus on buying food items which is supplied to the market for citizens to buy. If we continue this way where the earnings of the people cannot meet their basic needs, we should expect high castophy. The nation has not added to our populations as to warrant this increase of cost of things but rather we have wicked and unorganized leadership that close it eyes on human development. The present policy of providing palliative cannot save us as the suffering masses will not be able to access this effort. For instance here in Kogi state the food items purchased by government were shared and a lot of these food items find their ways to ware houses of those assigned to manage the distribution. What then is the way forward that will bring succour to the people. The unfortunate thing is our population is presently over two hundred million. We need to borrow the methodology of Jerry Rawlins in Ghana where he applied government power to drop prices of commodity. In the years past Ghana flooded Nigeria when they experience this kind of inhuman treatment but which country around west Africa sub region will accept to accommodate 200million people. In sum government of Tinubu should come out with polices that will check this high inflation rate. Secondly the government should stop all infrastructural development projects and focus on procurement and production of food. Let each state embark on agricultural food production through the provision of needed farm tools. There is nothing wrong if local and state governments acquire vast land acres and cultivate it which will be shared to farmers to manage and take over the yield. Let’s go back to operation feed the nation and modernize it for effective result. In the interim government should set up mechanism to control prices of items especially locally produced items in Nigeria
SAMUEL SHIAKA Atumiye