hehehe....There is acute suffering across the country as the present economic downturn worsens,
These are not the best of times for many
Nigerians who have been struggling against all odds to make ends meet.
Many believe that the economy is damn too bad.
There is acute poverty and hunger in the
land. Within the last few months, many people have lost their jobs
because their employers could no longer cope with the downturn in the
economy. As a result, a lot more people than imagined, skilled or not,
suddenly found themselves back on the streets without the slightest idea
of where to get their next meal.
The spill-over effect on the poor and
less privileged, to say the least, is quite excruciating. Much more
alarming is the fact that this unhappy development has thrown up despair
everywhere, ripped apart otherwise peaceful families, shot up the crime
rate in different parts of the country and turned many, especially
among the poor, into beggars.
Growing army of dependent Nigerians
The present economic situation has
overnight spurned an army of helpless and needy people who are forced to
depend on charity and the goodwill of other Nigerians or organisations
to survive the hard times. A single mother of three children and a
native of Uromi in Edo State, Patience (surname is withheld), belongs to
this class of people.
Aged 26, Patience lived with the father
of her children, Efe, until three months ago. One day, he sneaked out of
their one-room apartment in Akute, Ogun State with his few personal
belongings and left without notice.
“I didn’t know when he left. He did not
leave any money behind for our feeding. I did not know that the rent for
the room was due, too,” Patience tells our correspondent. It was not
until she had waited for almost one week without a word from him that it
dawned on her that she had been abandoned.
Life with Efe, Patience says, had not
been all that smooth. They quarrelled and fought most of the time over
money, especially housekeeping money. He was an okada rider (commercial motorcycle operator) and never seemed to earn enough money for their upkeep.
Apparently, Efe had been unable to cope
with the pressure from Patience and, so, he decided to flee. After he
left, she was confused. Stuck with three young children – the youngest
was four-years-old – and not having any money, she did not know what to
do, where to go and who to turn to for help.
Eventually, help came from the church that she attends every Sunday.
The church now takes care of Patience
and her children. It has provided them with shelter, in addition to a
monthly stipend and regular rations of food items. Yet, she wishes that
she could turn back the hand of the clock.
“I never knew that my life would come
to this. I never expected to find myself in this kind of situation. How
long will I continue to depend on the church?” she asks.
However, Patience managed to find a job
in a small restaurant, which is a short distance from the church
premises. But the pay is very small – a little under N10,000 and not
sufficient to cater to the needs of her family.
Unlike Patience, Janet Akpan, who is
also a single mother, had a job until four months ago. She used to work
as a secretary with a marketing outfit based in Victoria Island, Lagos.
The company was forced to retrench some members of its staff in order to
stay afloat and she was affected. Life had then taken a turn for the
worse.
Although Akpan and her 10-year-old
daughter now live with a female cousin in the Ogba area of Lagos and she
does not have to bother about food or accommodation for now, other
matters keep her worried nearly all the time. One of them is the payment
of her daughter’s school fee.
“My daughter was recently sent out of
school because I had not paid her fee. I couldn’t ask my cousin and her
husband to lend me money. That would be asking for too much. I didn’t
know what to do and who to go to for assistance. But then, God
intervened. An old friend of mine suddenly came, as if from nowhere, and
offered to help,” she says.
Adetayo Obafemi, 44, has not been as
fortunate as Akpan. With a wife and five children to feed and very
little hope of getting a new job, despite roaming the streets for
several months, his burden appears to be three times as heavy.
Fortunately, a friendly property broker,
who lives in his neighbourhood, has made him an offer. All that Adetayo
is required to do is scout around for available property and find a
willing buyer. For his effort, he gets a certain percentage of the
proceeds.
Adetayo, of course, thinks that the
offer is good and likens it to a glimmer of light at the end of a long,
dark tunnel. Yet, there is a little snag: he always needs money for
transport.
“Poverty has already turned me into a
debtor. And I am tired of begging other people for financial assistance.
The only option left for me is to borrow from them. But, who will be
willing to lend a jobless man some money?” he says.
No longer ‘happiest’ people
Buffeted by endless social and economic
crises, Nigerians can no longer lay claim to being the happiest people
on earth. A combination of factors, including the effects of the failing
economy, has effectively dulled their zest for joyful living.
Instead of deep-throated laughter, there
is growing anxiety and fear of tomorrow. Nowadays there always seems to
be a reason to worry about the future, especially against the backdrop
of rising costs of living, unpaid salaries, mass retrenchments, rising
unemployment rate, galloping inflation, soaring crime rate and
insecurity.
Prices of goods and services keep rising
every day, leaving the average Nigerian further drained of his meagre
resources. Hunger continues to ravage the poor as some basic food items,
including tomatoes, garri and rice (which now sells for N14,000 per
bag), are no longer within his reach.
In some states, workers are being owed
several months’ salaries. Some of the affected persons have been in the
service of their employers for many years and they have a lot of
dependents. Still, there is no end to their dilemma in sight yet.
The worst affected, perhaps, are those
who have been borrowing money to keep body and soul together these past
months and, thus, incurring a lot of debts. A case study is the academic
staff of the Tai Solarin College of Education, Ogun State.
Lecturers turn ‘kunu’ sellers and okada riders
Investigation shows that lecturers in
the TASCE have not been paid salaries for a total of 13 months.
According to the chairman of the local chapter of the Colleges of
Education Academic Staff Union, Dr. Dan Oludipe, the lecturers only got
their salaries for the months of January, February, March and August in
2015. They have not received any salary since the beginning of 2016.
To survive, our correspondent gathered,
many of the affected lecturers have resorted to borrowing from their
friends and relations. And to avoid being seen as parasites, others now
engage in menial jobs, operate commercial motorcycles or sell local food
drink, ‘kunu’, in spite of their positions in the society, just to
survive.
Despite such courageous efforts and
determination to provide for their respective families, some of the
lecturers, including Oludipe, have remained so financially challenged
that they can hardly fulfil all their responsibilities.
In his own case, Oludipe had to choose
between paying the rent for his apartment and his children’s school fees
at the same time. He chose the rent and, afterwards, withdrew his
children from a popular private secondary school in Ijebu-Ode.
He says, “I have to do menial jobs and
work as a part-time teacher in a private secondary school in order to
make ends meet. Even at that, since I have not been paid my salary for
close to 14 months, I cannot meet with many of my responsibilities. I
have enrolled my children, three of them, in a public school, because I
can no longer afford their tuition fees.
“My rent is now in two years’ arrears
and my landlord has issued me a quit notice. So, I am moving back to my
father’s house in Ijebu Ode.”
Another lecturer in the institution,
Daniel Aborisade, admits that it has not been easy surviving without
being paid his salaries for over 14 months.
Like Oludipe, Aborisade has resorted to
doing menial jobs and selling water-melon and iced blocks in Ijebu Ode
to keep body and soul together. Also, his two children were recently
sent out of school because he was unable to pay their tuition fees.
To compound his predicament, his friends
and relations have not been answering his phone calls because they fear
that he might be calling to request financial assistance.
He says, “I cannot go to them for help
because they are already fed up with me. What I do now is sell
water-melons and iced blocks in Ijebu Ode. I know that, under normal
circumstances, I should not be doing this. But I have to survive. So
there is no shame in it. I can no longer pay my rent. I had to withdraw
my children from school because I could no longer pay their school
fees.”
More beggars on the streets
Although the presence of beggars on the
streets remains a subject of much concern to many Nigerians and state
governments, the prevailing economic situation in the country seems to
provide the impetus for their existence.
Clearly driven by desperation, more
people have turned to begging in order to survive the hard times. On
the streets, the picture is expanded by the arrival of new breeds of
beggars.
Apart from the regular
physically-challenged and destitute beggars, who are part of the
physical landscape of the major cities, there is the ‘corporate’ beggar
known among the ordinary folk as ‘fine bara’. It is easy to spot this
type of beggar in a crowded place. He is usually well-dressed, usually
speaks fluent English, pretends to be a professional of a sort (most
likely, working in a bank or oil company), claims to be stranded through
no fault of his and often prefers to wait in a strategic corner for his
next victim.
Nowadays, another group of beggars that
you are likely to encounter on the streets, especially in places like
Lagos and Ibadan, are surprisingly young and able-bodied men. Often
mistaken for street urchins (or ‘area boys’), they sometimes position
themselves around busy areas to beg money from passersby.
Begging itself is not a crime, so many
Nigerians think, but the problem is the tendency to encourage laziness
among the youth and those who see it as an alternative to hard work. The
real danger, it is believed, is that a culture of begging is being
gradually foisted on the society.
‘We are the worst affected by the economic crisis’
Interestingly, even those that are still
gainfully employed and earning regular salaries are forced to bear the
burden of the present economic crisis in such a way that many Nigerians
may not understand.
They are ceaselessly pestered by less
fortunate neighbours, friends, associates and relations for handouts or
other forms of financial assistance. Despite the implication on their
personal resources, they cannot turn down such requests.
Director, Marketing and Communication,
Babcock University, Ilishan-Remo, Ogun State, Joshua Suleiman, is one of
such people. Every year, he makes out time and resources to attend to
the needs of the poor, widows unemployed and less privileged in his
hometown.
“This period has been so excruciating
for everybody. Apart from dealing with the regular people that I meet
their needs, for example, there are some who manage to get hold of my
phone number and, from nowhere, they start calling to request financial
assistance from me.
“Some people even come to my residence
to tell me that they have not had anything to eat for awhile. On Tuesday
morning, I received a text message from somebody that I hadn’t even met
before, requesting N25,000 to pay his children’s school fees,” he says.
Joshua describes the rising pressure
from such needy people as a product of the “horrifying” economic
situation in which Nigerians have found themselves. He notes that it is
so serious that before receiving the next salary at the end of the
month, he would have already spent a large chunk of it.
Deputy Provost of the Nigeria Institute
of Journalism, Ogba, Lagos, Mr. Jide Johnson, had a similar experience
on Monday night. When he got home from work, he found a pregnant woman,
whose children attended the same school with his neighbour’s kids,
pining for assistance. It turned out that the woman was in distress
because her children had not eaten all day and her husband was nowhere
to be found.
“I think that we are the worst affected
by the present economic crisis. The pressure on those of us who still
have jobs to provide for the less privileged is becoming too much. In a
week, for instance, I spend about N8,000 on fuel at N145 per litre. In a
month, that amounts to N32,000. If you remove that sum of money from my
monthly salary, it will leave a large hole in my pocket.
“Don’t forget that there are other basic
expenditures to sort out, such as rent, feeding, school fees,
children’s clothing and more. I have to deny myself certain things that I
enjoy in order to accommodate the demands from friends, relations and
others that are prone to economic hardship,” Johnson says.
Another Nigerian, the Chief Executive of
Chibenz Travel Agency, Mr. Chibuike Ebenezer, has been having his fair
share of demands for assistance, whether financial or otherwise, from
non-relatives. “As I am speaking with you, there are six people who have
been putting pressure on me to respond to their requests for cash or
jobs,” he says.
After fulfilling his obligations to his
family, especially his parents whom he has placed on monthly salaries,
Ebenezer regularly doles out almost N50,000 each month to other people
in dire need of assistance. The demands keep rising, he notes, but he
cannot go beyond a certain point in his spending.
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