Nigerian leaders warned of ‘imminent revolt’ as prices soar for medicine, fuel, and food
(GIN) – In the country’s worst economic crisis in decades, an imminent revolt could be inevitable in Nigeria should government officials continue to increase prices while holding down wages.
The federal government insists on capping wages at $42 a month while organized labor advocates are demanding nearly four times that amount.
“More than 60 years after independence, we are still running an apartheid society,” Father George Ehusani of Lokoja Parish in Abuja said in a June 9 homily. “This time, it’s not racial apartheid, it’s economic apartheid.
“We are running an apartheid society of people of conspicuous consumption, flying around in private jets at government expense; people who are riding four, five, six, seven SUVs with pilot vehicles chasing the poor out of the road; and the same people are debating and discussing what the poor should earn.”
Nigeria today is facing skyrocketing inflation, a national currency in free-fall, and millions of people struggling to buy food. Only two years ago, it was Africa’s biggest economy, but it is projected to drop to fourth place this year.
The pain is widespread, according to various media reports. Unions strike to protest salaries of around $20 a month. People die in stampedes, desperate for free sacks of rice. Hospitals are overrun with women racked by spasms from calcium deficiencies.
The crisis is largely believed to be rooted in two major changes implemented by President Bola Tinubu, who was elected 15 months ago: the partial removal of fuel subsidies and the floating of the currency. Together, these have caused major price increases.
In previous years, the Emergency Room at Murtala Muhammed Specialist Hospital in Kano, Nigeria’s second-largest city, would receive one or two cases of hypocalcemia caused by malnutrition, said Salisu Garba, a health worker as he hurried from bed to bed, ward to ward.
Now, with many unable to afford food, the hospital sees multiple cases every day.
More than 87 million people in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, live below the poverty line—the world’s second-largest poor population after India, a country seven times the size of Nigeria. Punishing inflation means poverty rates are expected to rise still further this year and next, according to the World Bank.
Last week, unions shut down hospitals, courts, schools, airports, and even the country’s Parliament, striking in an attempt to force the government to increase the monthly salary of $20 it pays its lowest workers.
Over 92% of working-age Nigerians are in the informal sector, where there are no official wages and no unions to fight for them.
The two major unions—the Trade Union Congress and the Nigeria Labor Congress—called off the strike for a week, to the frustration and disappointment of many union members. While union leaders sang “Solidarity Forever,” union members interviewed on the street wanted a return to the negotiating table.
Many people think of Nigeria as an oil-rich country, but after years of underinvestment and mismanagement, its state refineries produce hardly any gasoline. Until recently, the government subsidized that petroleum to the tune of billions of dollars a year. Successive presidents pledged to remove the subsidy, which drains a hefty chunk of government revenue—and later backtracked, fearing mass unrest.
Tinubu, to the working people’s dismay, carried out the subsidy removal, calling it a “necessary action for my country not to go bankrupt.”
Now, many Nigerians are going bankrupt—or working multiple jobs to stay afloat.
Life under the previous government was very expensive, Garba said, but nothing like today.
“It’s very, very bad,” Garba said to a reporter.
The International Monetary Fund said last month the state has started subsidizing fuel and electricity again, although the government has not acknowledged this.
Meanwhile, on June 4, “there’s very little clarity—if any—on where the economy is headed, what the priorities are,” said Zainab Usman, a political economist and director of the Africa Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
For now, Nigeria’s resourcefulness is being stretched to the limit.
The post Nigerian leaders warned of ‘imminent revolt’ as prices soar for medicine, fuel, and food appeared first on New York Amsterdam News.