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Food inflation for the month of June was 15.18% despite Nigerians not earning more in income and wages.
Report by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) indicate that at the end of 2020, 7 million Nigerians will fall under the poverty line.
According to economic analyst, William Ukpe the government can no longer pretend that poverty isn’t Nigeria’s biggest threat, as living in denial could become our greatest undoing.
“Obviously we haven’t learnt from terrorist effects and bandit attacks on agriculture in the North-East and North-West respectively.”
The Nigerian government cannot obviously draw a straight line between poverty and violence, that’s why even after border closure policy it has made our food inflation worse.”
Today, the government has decided to ban maize imports, while we are not working on increasing yields, just ban and impoverish your population.”
For him, he believes productivity reduces poverty but productivity influenced by import substitution ( border closure) is a waste of time when your people are poor, it will lead to inflation as supply drops.
Not everyone will adapt, some will turn to violence and we will pretend to be shocked.”
A brief market survey of basic commodities in the Abuja open market reveal an significant increase in cost between March and July.
1. A crate of egg in March cost around N750 but today cost N1,000.
2. A kilo of beef in March cost N1,200 but today cost N1,600.
3. A basket (small) of tomatoes in March cost N800 but today cost N1,500.
4. A bag of Nigerian rice cost N19,000 in March but today cost N26,000.
5. A bag of beans cost N12,600 in March but today cost N19,200.
