Nigerians’ cost of living pain deepens as election looms
SBM Intelligence shows 80% of Nigerians say country moving in the wrong direction.
Black News 
Grace Adama puts her earrings on in her two-room flat before grabbing her handbag and leaving for work in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital.
The health NGO worker’s 135 000 naira ($99) monthly salary is nearly double the country’s minimum wage, but she said life keeps getting tougher as her salary fails to keep pace with rocketing costs.
“If I’m paid today, my salary stays with me just for one week,” she told Reuters. “If you see the cost of living, house, electricity, everything has gone up.”
Living standards for millions in Africa’s largest oil exporter have crumbled in the past three years as the government of President Bola Tinubu pushed through painful reforms, including fuel subsidy removals, naira devaluation and electricity subsidy cuts.
The government and investors say the reforms were essential to pull the country back from the edge of fiscal crisis and would pay off in the long run.
However now, it costs Nigerians more than double to make the staple jollof rice than it did when Tinubu took office, according to an index by Lagos-based SBM Intelligence which tracks the prices of ingredients which go into making the dish.
Petrol prices are six times higher following the scrapping of the subsidy and as the naira weakened and global oil prices surged.
NIGERIANS BRISTLE, INVESTORS CHEER REFORMS
The World Bank estimates just over half of Nigeria’s population were in poverty last year, up from roughly 42% in 2022.
Citizens’ struggles under Tinubu, nicknamed “T-Pain” by some bristling under the rising costs, contrast sharply with investor optimism.
“This is the most positive investors have been about Nigeria probably in the last two decades,” said Thys Louw, portfolio manager at investment firm Ninety One. “They’re taking the tough medicine now.”
The chasm between those like Adama, squeezed by costs, and booming financial markets, adds a new angle to a country already defined by contrasts: glittering, cosmopolitan Lagos and militant-threatened Maiduguri in the northeast; marble-laden mega mansions and tin-roofed shacks housing entire families.
Tinubu must convince voters that the benefits of the reforms will trickle down to them, too, before January’s elections.
