Sometimes I sit down and wonder what the average Nigerian is really working for, Is it to build a better life and enjoy life or just to make sure there is food on the table and pay bills?
Honestly, things are becoming tiring, people wake up early, go to work, run businesses and do different side jobs just to make money but at the end of the month, after paying for food, transport, rent, electricity and other bills, there is hardly anything left. What makes it worse is that even when you try to earn extra money, the cost of living keeps going up, you plan to save but another expense comes up, you try to move forward but somehow you keep finding yourself in the same situation. Sometimes it feels like people are no longer working to enjoy life, they are just working to survive another month and honestly, life shouldn’t be this way.
I’m not trying to turn this into a political discussion, I just want to hear from people who are going through the same situation. I always hear that hard work pays but what happens when you work hard and still struggle to afford basic things?
Are we really living or are we just trying to survive?
The situation a Nigerian finds himself has a lot to do with policies and implementation of government policies. Take this administration for instance, the first thing they did was to remove fuel subsidy, that singular act brought a shocker to the Nigerian economy, automatically every aspect of the Nigerian economy skyrocketed, expenses where skyrocketed transportation and every other aspect.
Another thing the government did as policy implementation was to float the naira, allowing market forces to determine the value of the naira in the international market, according to them, formally we were paying billions of dollars to support the naira, so they now allowed market forces to decide whatever flow the market price has, this particular aspect made the exchange rate drop in value when exchanged to other currencies. So when you find yourself in an economy that has poor and unreasonable economic policies, the citizens will always struggle to survive.