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By Kayode Abdulazeez
Dissatisfied Nigerians have expressed deep concern over the arbitrary increase in prices of commodities as the prevailing economic situation keeps biting many households.
In recent times, Nigerians have been grumbling each time they buy essential commodities at higher prices than they previously bought the product; prices have been hard to predict.
Ranging from garri to sachet water, it has become so expensive and nearly no longer poor man food.
A small bowl of garri now sold for N1000, while a unit of sachet water popularly called pure water is now selling for N30, and a loaf of bread is now N800.
This situation is fast becoming worrisome to some concerned stakeholders and questioning the role of government in making life bearable and affordable to citizens through the deployment of government machinery to checkmate the greedy producers and retailers.
Speaking on this development, Dr. Olanrewaju John Shola, a lecturer at the Department of Political Science and International Relations, Landmark University, Omu-Aran, Kwara State described the current economic situation as “self-generated inflation”.
“When you talk about inflation it’s not peculiar to Nigeria alone, inflation is a universal phenomenon. Developed countries like the United States, and France also experience it on an almost yearly basis.
“When you now begin to notice government ineptitude. That is when you now begin to analyze the peculiarity of Nigeria’s inflation. Instead of arbitrary, I would prefer to describe what is happening in Nigeria as self-generated inflation.
“Nigeria is just a funny country where people would wake up from their comfort zone and decide to increase the prices of commodities arbitrarily just as you have said, that is because there is a lack of government regulatory agency.
“Kwara states, for example, I don’t think there is an agency of such and if at all there is one, definitely, they are not effective.
“It’s not all inflation that we consider from an economic angle. It’s not all inflation that you need to summon your cabinet and begin to brainstorm.
“A reasonable government must have a price regulatory agency, in fact, they would regulate virtually everything from sachet water, toothpicks to condoms.
“There is nothing the government is regulating in this country. These commodities of things we are talking about are not under the exclusive list. You know that we have concurrent, residual, and exclusive.
“Look at Abia state, for example, they just celebrated 48 hours of uninterrupted electricity supply, this was made possible because former President Buhari signed a bill to change power supply from exclusive to concurrent and Abia has been able to take advantage of this, and do something spectacular.
“So other state governors should wake up, the time of blaming the Federal government and Tinubu is over, many of the things affecting citizens are not under the exclusive list.
“Governors should look inward and come up with projects that would make life more bearable and affordable for their citizens. You can only blame FG or the president on things that are listed on the exclusive list.
“It’s only the price regulatory agency that can solve the problem of arbitrarily increase in the price of commodities or else producers, associations and retailers would continue to take advantage of the porosity of the market and begin to increase the price of commodities unnecessarily.
“Look at pure water producers, for instance, I don’t think the government is collecting any special tax from them apart from the normal tax KWIRS is collecting. Some of the boreholes they dig would serve them for many years, yet, they keep increasing the prices of the water.
“There should be a time when producers must be ready to compromise some profit margin due to circumstances. Assuming you are making 100 Naira profit before and you look at the new economic reality, you must be ready to compromise 20 naira and make 80 naira profit to ensure sustainability in the market.
“But many of them always want to maintain the status quo regardless of current economic reality, so there would be a problem of economic hardship.
“For instance, although, Kwara State is under North Central, but they operate what I call a liberal economy along with the states in South West, while in the North they operate a conservative economy.
“A liberal economy is more exploitative compared to a conservative economy; in fact sometimes in a conservative economy religion do play out, that is why when you go to the many states in the North, you hardly find the so-called Micro Finance Banks like LAPO that would borrow you N8,000 and you pay back N12,000, you know it’s denounced in Islam.
“But in the West, we want to invest one naira and make one million, we claim to be too wise and too unnecessarily smart. That’s the problem we are facing in this part of the country, unless the government comes to the rescue, the exploitation may likely continue.”
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