Femi Akintunde -Johnson
There is a Nigeria where a woman stands before a food seller, calculating how many cups of rice her remaining money can buy before deciding that perhaps the children can manage with something less expensive. There is another Nigeria where a man leaves home at dawn, not because he is particularly diligent or eager to beat the Lagos traffic, but because he is trying to combine three jobs, two side hustles and an occasional favour from a friend in order to keep his family from falling through the widening cracks.
There is the young graduate who has spent years acquiring certificates, only to discover that certificates are now decorative items unless accompanied by connections, influence or a relative who knows somebody who knows somebody. There is the pensioner calculating which medicine can be postponed until next month. There is the civil servant wondering how transport to work has become a major item in the family budget. There is the tenant who wakes up one morning to discover that his landlord has suddenly developed the entrepreneurial spirit of Aliko Dangote.
The rent goes up. Shop rent goes up. Transport goes up. Food goes up. School fees go up. Hospital bills go up. Electricity tariffs go up. The only thing that appears reluctant to go up with similar enthusiasm is the income of the ordinary Nigerian.
Yet, somewhere in another universe, the figures are looking impressive. Trillions have been saved. Revenues have increased. Allocations to states and local governments have risen dramatically. Foreign reserves are being discussed. Macroeconomic indicators are being celebrated. Inflation may be moderating statistically, even if the woman in the market is still wondering which statistics can be cooked and served for breakfast.
This is increasingly the fundamental problem with the Nigerian economic conversation: the Nigerian people and their government often appear to be living in two different universes.
In the official universe, there are graphs, percentages, projections and encouraging figures. In the real universe, there are empty wallets, shrinking meals, unpaid hospital bills, jobless young people and families quietly selling possessions in order to maintain the appearance of being okay.
And Nigerians are talking. They talk on radio call-in programmes. They cry on social media. They complain in buses, markets, offices, churches, mosques, beer parlours and neighbourhood meetings. Every day brings another testimony of hardship, another desperate appeal, another story of somebody who has reached a point where survival itself has become a full-time occupation.
But there appears to be a communication breakdown of monumental proportions. The people say, “We cannot breathe.” Government replies, “But look at the figures.”
The people say, “Food is beyond our reach.” Government replies with revenue allocations.
The people say, “Our children cannot find work.” Government announces a new policy framework.
The people say, “We are dying in hospitals.” Somebody reminds them of a proposed infrastructure project.
There is nothing inherently wrong with macroeconomic gains. A serious country needs them. Foreign reserves matter. Revenue matters. Investment matters. Infrastructure matters. Economic reforms sometimes require difficult transitions. Nobody is suggesting that government should run the economy from the kitchen table.
But an economy cannot be declared successful simply because the arithmetic is improving while the people doing the living are deteriorating.
The real test of economic management is not how impressively a minister can recite figures at a press conference. It is whether those figures eventually translate into affordable food, accessible healthcare, meaningful employment, functional transport, reasonable housing and a measurable reduction in human misery.
Nigeria’s poverty challenge is becoming frightening not merely because people are poor, but because the ladder out of poverty is disappearing. A young person without a job may once have hoped to acquire a skill, get employment, start a business or gradually improve his circumstances. Today, capital is scarce, borrowing is expensive, electricity is unreliable and basic survival consumes so much energy that planning for the future has become a luxury.
Meanwhile, government continues to speak proudly about savings arising from the removal of subsidies. Nigerians were told that the country could no longer continue bleeding resources into an unsustainable system. Fair enough. But a legitimate question remains: where, exactly, are the savings visibly working for the people?
If trillions have indeed been released or saved, citizens should not have to employ forensic accountants and diviners to understand where the benefits have gone. There ought to be clear, accessible and verifiable evidence: these are the savings; this is where they were deployed; these are the schools, hospitals, roads, transport interventions, employment programmes and social protections they have financed; and this is how ordinary Nigerians are better off.
Instead, explanations sometimes become so broad and technical that the people emerge more confused than enlightened. Government may be telling the truth, but opacity has a way of making even good news sound suspicious.
The other disturbing contrast is the widening gulf between the hardship of the people and the lifestyle of sections of the political and affluent class. At a time when families are reducing meals, government convoys still glide through traffic like visiting royalty. Public offices still maintain protocols and privileges that belong to a country much richer than the one being governed. Political office remains one of Nigeria’s most successful escape routes from the economic realities endured by ordinary citizens.
There is something morally uncomfortable about preaching sacrifice to people while those entrusted with leadership appear largely insulated from it. Nigerians are being told to tighten their belts, although many have reached the stage where there is simply no belt left to tighten.
This is why the government must be careful about its current economic messaging. Statistics should not be used to invalidate suffering. A citizen complaining that garri has become expensive does not necessarily need a lecture on gross domestic product. A father unable to pay hospital bills may not be comforted by a glowing presentation about fiscal consolidation.
The government may genuinely believe that the reforms are working. Perhaps, in certain respects, they are. But reforms that cannot communicate their human benefits, or cushion their human costs, will eventually lose the confidence of the people expected to endure them.
The two Nigerias cannot continue travelling in opposite directions: one riding on spreadsheets and projections, the other trudging through markets and motor parks, hospitals and unemployment queues. At some point, the numbers must meet the people.
Because Nigerians do not live inside macroeconomic indicators. They live in houses they must rent, on roads they must travel, with children they must feed, and in bodies that sometimes require medical attention.
And if the people are still asking, every morning, how they will survive till evening, then somebody, somewhere, needs to look beyond the beautiful figures and ask a more inconvenient question:
What exactly are we saving the economy for, if the people keep losing their lives to it?