Nigeria Confronts Worst Economic Crisis in a Generation

People in Africa’s most populous nation are suffering as the price of food, fuel and medicine has skyrocketed out of reach for many.

A woman suffering from hypocalcemia, caused by a lack of calcium, in a hospital in Nigeria. Food prices have shot up and Nigerians are not eating enough.

By Ruth Maclean and Ismail Auwal
Photographs by Taiwo Aina
Reporting from Kano, Nigeria’s second-largest city
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Nigeria is facing its worst economic crisis in decades, with skyrocketing inflation, a national currency in free-fall and millions of people struggling to buy food. Only two years ago Africa’s biggest economy, Nigeria is projected to drop to fourth place this year.

The pain is widespread. 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 wracked by spasms from calcium deficiencies.

The crisis is largely believed to be rooted in two major changes implemented by a president elected 15 months ago: the partial removal of fuel subsidies and the floating of the currency, which together have caused major price rises.

A nation of entrepreneurs, Nigeria’s more than 200 million citizens are skilled at managing in tough circumstances, without the services states usually provide. They generate their own electricity and source their own water. They take up arms and defend their communities when the armed forces cannot. They negotiate with kidnappers when family members are abducted.

But right now, their resourcefulness is being stretched to the limit..


By The New York Times
No Money for Milk
On a recent morning in a corner of the biggest emergency room in northern Nigeria, three women were convulsing in painful spasms, unable to speak. Each year, the E.R. at Murtala Muhammed Specialist Hospital in Kano, Nigeria’s second-largest city, received one or two cases of hypocalcemia caused by malnutrition, said Salisu Garba, a kindly health worker who hurried from bed to bed, ward to ward.

Now, with many unable to afford food, the hospital sees multiple cases every day.

Mr. Garba was sizing up the women’s husbands. Which source of nutrition he recommended depended on what he thought they could afford. Baobab leaves or tiger nuts for the poor; boiled-up bones for the slightly better off. He laughed at the suggestion that anyone could afford milk.

Salisu Garba, a community health worker, treating patients at a hospital in Kano, Nigeria’s second largest city, last month.
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 its size. And 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.

But over 92 percent of working-age Nigerians are in the informal sector, where there are no wages, and no unions to fight for them.

For the Afolabi family in Ibadan, in southwestern Nigeria, the descent into poverty started in January with the loss of an electric tuk-tuk taxi.

Forced to sell the taxi to pay his wife’s hospital bills after the difficult birth of their second child, Babatunde Afolabi turned to occasional construction work. It paid badly, but the family managed.

“We had no thoughts about starvation,” he said.

Patients wait to be seen at the Murtala Muhammad General Hospital. The crowds are thinner than they used to be, as many can no longer afford the bus fare.
But then, he said, cassava — the cheapest staple in many parts of Nigeria — tripled in price.

All they can afford now, he said, is a few biscuits, a little bread, and for their 6-year-old, 20 peanuts a day.

A Country Built on Gas
Nigeria is a country heavily dependent on imported petroleum products, despite being a major oil producer. After years of underinvestment and mismanagement, its state refineries produce hardly any gasoline.

For decades, the national soundtrack has been the hum of small generators, fired up during daily power outages. Petroleum products move goods and people around the country.

Until recently, the government subsidized that petroleum, to the tune of billions of dollars a year.

Many Nigerians said the subsidy was the only useful contribution from a neglectful and predatory government. Successive presidents have pledged to remove the subsidy, which drains a hefty chunk of government revenue — and later backtracked fearing mass unrest.

Nigeria is a country that runs on imported gasoline, which the government has long subsidized to the tune of billions of dollars a year.
Bola Tinubu, who was elected Nigeria’s president last year, initially followed through.

“It was a necessary action for my country not to go bankrupt,” Mr. Tinubu said in April, at a meeting of the World Economic Forum in Saudi Arabia.

Instead, many Nigerians are going bankrupt — or working multiple jobs to stay afloat.

Mr. Garba, the hospital worker, used to be solidly middle class, even though 17 family members, including 12 children, depended on him.

After shifts at the hospital, where he is setting up the first statewide ambulance service in addition to working in the emergency room, for which he is paid $150 a month, he heads to the Red Cross. There he occasionally receives a $3.30 volunteer stipend for helping tackle a severe diphtheria outbreak.

At night, he works at the pharmacy that he and a colleague set up. But few people have money for medicine anymore. He sells about $7 worth of medication per day.

Last year, Mr. Garba sold his car when the gas subsidies were removed, and now takes a tuk-tuk to work. Unable to power the generator, he reads medicine labels at the pharmacy by the light of a small solar lantern. He can only afford to buy rice and cassava in small quantities.

Life under the previous government was very expensive, he said, but nothing like today.

“It’s very, very bad,” he said.

It’s gotten so dire that there have been several deadly stampedes for free or discounted rice distributed by the government — including one in March at a university in the central state of Nasarawa where seven students were killed.

The vast majority of Nigerians work in the informal sector, with no salaries, unions, or safety net. And because of skyrocketing inflation, many can no longer afford basics, like food.
Mr. Tinubu promised to create a million jobs and quadruple the size of the economy within a decade, but has not said how. The International Monetary Fund said last month the state has started subsidizing fuel and electricity again — though the government has not acknowledged this.

“There’s still 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.

The Tapping Craze
A spate of new crypto-mining games that promise to generate income the more the user plays has people across Nigeria spending all day tapping on their smartphone screens, desperate to earn a few dollars.

People tap as they pray, in mosques and churches. Children tap under desks at school. Mourners tap at funerals.

Many Nigerians desperately hope that hours spent tapping on smartphone cryptocurrency apps will eventually earn them a bit of cash. One man, Rabiu Biyora, says he made millions of naira this way.
There’s no guarantee any of them will ever benefit from the hours they put in mindlessly tapping.

Then again, they can’t count on the national currency, the naira.

The government has twice devalued the naira in the past year, trying to enable it to float more freely and attract foreign investment. The upshot: It’s lost nearly 70 percent of its value against the dollar.

Nigeria cannot produce enough food for its growing population; food imports rise 11 percent annually. The currency devaluation caused those imports — already expensive because of high tariffs — to explode in price.

Nigerians can become paupers almost overnight. So they’re searching for anything that might hold its value — or ideally, get them rich.

“People are looking for me everywhere,” said Rabiu Biyora, the undisputed king of tapping in Kano, opening one of his five foldable phones to add to his 2.7 billion taps on the TapSwap app. “Not to attack me, but to collect something from me.”

A relaxed, businesslike 39-year-old followed everywhere by young tech-savvy acolytes, Mr. Biyora would only say that he made “over $10,000” from the previous tapping craze.

With the proceeds from his tapping, Rabiu Biyora is opening an office in Kano to promote and educate people on cryptocurrencies. Nigeria already has the world’s second highest cryptocurrency adoption rate.
He profits from everyone else’s taps, so he encourages them in posts on social media, and by providing free internet to anyone willing to sit outside his house. Nigerians don’t need much encouragement — despite the risks and volatility, Nigeria has the second highest cryptocurrency adoption rate in the world.

So every evening, struggling young men gather by Mr. Biyora’s home and tap.

Pleas for Help
In much of Nigeria, it’s normal to share with your neighbors and give alms to the poor.

Every day, people come to the gate of Kano’s Freedom Radio station to drop off sheets of paper containing heartfelt appeals for help paying medical bills or school fees, or to recover from some disaster.

A radio presenter chooses three to read out daily, and often a sympathetic listener calls in to pay the supplicant’s bill.

But lately the appeals have multiplied, and offers of help have dried up.

Good Samaritans used to come to the E.R. and pay strangers’ bills for them, Mr. Garba said. That rarely happens now either.

Still, Mr. Garba said, the number of patients coming to his hospital has almost halved in recent months.

Many of the sick never even make it. They can’t afford the 20-cent bus ride.

A presenter on Kano’s Freedom Radio station reads out petitioners’ requests for assistance. But these days, few listeners have the means to help.
Pius Adeleye contributed reporting from Ibadan, Nigeria.

Source:
https://nyti.ms/3VD0gIc

Facts

Mynd44
Fergie001

Don't you think all Nigerians need to see this.

Article source:
https://nyti.ms/3VD0gIc

Mynd44
Fergie001

Don't you think all Nigerians need to see this.

I don't know why The New York Times still exists

Tinubu is the destroyer of Nigerian economy . It is now official.

Someone that didn't fix Lagos cannot fix Nigeria .

Someone that was roundly rejected in Lagos in the presidential election cannot fix Nigeria

Someone that vowed to continue from buhari failed legacies cannot fix Nigeria

Someone that once said he doesn't believe in one Nigeria cannot fix Nigeria

Tinubu is clueless . He's a monumental disgrace to leadership and the most rejected Yoruba leaders since independence. He was rejected in Lagos , Osun, Oyo even in his home at bourdillon Lagos, he was roundly rejected .

But the ever corrupt INEC chairman, Yakubu compromised the presidential election and give tinubu the win now see how bad he has governed the country .

What a shame

Nigeria is going through turbulent times but it shall be well

Shame the man who claim to have built lagos suddenly looses is intelligence.
The barawo also claimed to fight for democracy but suddenly lost memory of what a democratic society should look like..
Obviously he was fighting for his pocket

0001Lagos:
Tinubu is the destroyer of Nigerian economy . It is now official

He destroyed the economy by crushing and defeating bitter grieving obi, Nigeria would have been at war, but God disappointed the craftiness and deceit of the devil and his embittered rogues

I always give it to these western Media. Their reports about Nigeria is always apt and on point. Asif they reside in Nigeria. Cmon

The horrors of electing a drug snorting, clueless, daft vagabond as president.


I won't believe such a time will come when a vast majority of Nigerians won't be able to afford one painter of garri, we classified as hungry man's food.

To my greatest consternation, this is happening before my eyes.

BATist will soon start to insult Peter Obi for this post.

And he is jalopping from one country to the other looking for investors or consolidating drug cartel pathways.

Wonder how somebody who didn't attend a single debate was made a president.

Things are rough but lagos boys are in London every week partying.

Steal money, party and sleep with one another women. That is what they live for. They can do anything to maintain such lifestyle

magoo10:
Shame the man who claim to have built lagos suddenly looses is intelligence.
The barawo also claimed to fight for democracy but suddenly lost memory of what a democratic society should look like.

Be optimistic, don't let bitterness take better part of you because baba disgraced and defeated the religious war daddy, bitter grieving obi, cool down , God is on the throne, it shall be well

Thank God the article wasn't written by an Igbo man. They would have termed him a hater. The whole world is seeing what is happening in Nigeria. But it is really pathetic

There was a country

Vote wisely... e get why

These two disasters brought Nigeria to her knees!

Ordinary picture, u no even upload
Everything just rough like life of an obidient

Tinubu failed Practical Economics 209 and Applied Statistics 208.
President Tinubu needs to bring back Iweala and Adesanya to engage in International Monetary politics and local reorientation policy.
Iweala should go back to Finance while Adesanya go back to Agriculture.

DMerciful:
These two disasters brought Nigeria to her knees!

Some people think leadership is tribally and religiously transmitted. TRhey fail to know its a function of brain matter - what's in-between your ears. Vote in dullards, you get dullardic results.

COMRADES, why should a sane human being celebrate democracy in Nigeria when apc has made the living unbearable for us

Ebola Tinubu has destroyed Nigeria beyond recognition

Depiction of how tinubu is trying to build Nigeria

OP add source.


So heartbreaking

OriOko88:

I always give it to these western Media. Their reports about Nigeria is always apt and on point. Asif they reside in Nigeria. Cmon

The author of the article is a Nigerian living in Kano

Tapping king 2.7billion taps

SwissMass:
Nigeria is going through turbulent times but it shall be well

Na from sleep we dey take know how death be. This hardship is for the next 7 years

franchasofficia:
OP add source.


So heartbreaking

I added it below the post... Let me do it within the body of the post.

Thanks.

mrvitalis:
My fear is not even that we are in economic turmoil
The real fear is APC and majority of Nigeria don't even understand the problem

Take out corruption and nepotism APC economic theory is primitive and can't work

The idea of borrow money to build infrastructure in a nation thats struggling to make revenue to run government and pay debt is crazy

For the ordinary people it's like a man who's salary is not enough to run his household then same man borrows money to buy car build house in his village and buys dstv.. All this increases his monthly expenses without increasing revenue... Does that make any sense? What APC is doing is worse even

They are not borrowing the money to build infrastructure, they are purposely borrowing the money to loot/steal. Because nobody is going to ask questions.
Just imagine the quantum of moneys in trillions already borrowed in just one year of this Government, is it commensurate with the infrastructure on the ground? It is just pathetic.

SwissMass:
He destroyed the economy by crushing and defeating bitter grieving obi, Nigeria would have been at war, but God disappointed the craftiness and deceit of the devil and his embittered rogues

if you like mention OBi in all your stupid emotions. The fact remain that Tinubu is worse than Buhari..