Nigeria's Rising Cost of Living and Security Challenge

Nigerians are facing lots of challenges ranging from poor electricity supply to unemployment. With no social safety nets in place and couple with rising insecurity in the country, business are crumbling down or wrapping up. Economic activities are gradually going down in most States of the North East and North West. The South East is gradually becoming a hot zone of crisis with constant escalation. All this put together makes being a Nigerian in Nigeria tough and rough. 

Let me put it more succinctly. The main economic activities of the North is agriculture. With constant banditry and kidnapping, most famers have not been able to go to farms out of fear. So it is a reduction in income to some communities. Reduce agricultural activity means reduction in food supply and ultimately food security is not guaranteed. Hunger and starvation are almost eminent when one consider the ripple effect of the actions of banditry, kidnappings and couple with cattle rustling. Ultimately prices of food will continue to increase due to poor supply.

A few steps further, no economic activity can strive in a state of confusion and anarchy, and it seems that's where we are heading too. The security crisis is pervasive and it seems only few states not even regions are spared the constant barrage of attacks. 

Putting these all together we are equally faced with a constant increase in consumer products cost. Hardly a day pass that you go to the market without adjusting your budget, prices keep skyrocketing. The price of manufactured good and imported good are all on the rise. With an exchange rate that has become volatile changing on a daily basis, one is certain that we are on a spiral decline.

There is need for government to as a matter of urgency to act proactively in curtailing this issue of rising cost living, there is need for the economy to be stabilised. The fire brigade approach to the economy, where it is response based, should be reconsidered. The Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning should evolve a more robust economic stimulus and plan.

For the security, it is time to be on the offensive. We can not continue to sit and wait for the bandits to attack so that we can repel them. The intelligence community should be able to infiltrate and identify targets for the infantry to take out. We should go beyond rhetorics and act decisively. Banditry is a multi million dollars business and it is lucritive to a jobless population. The earlier it is tackled the better before it consume us all. 

The two issues of rising cost of living and insecurity are a twin monster that feed on each other. Solving one can have a profound effect on the other. Not handling them will lead to more problems. Already separationist are beating drums of division around the nation. 

Finally, like the Italian prime minister said at the peak of the first wave of the Covid 19 pandemic - "we look up to the sky"

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