Goods in a supermarket
Today, I write to appeal to Nigerians; to importers, distributors, dealers and retailers of goods and services. I appeal to your conscience to take it easy on your fellow Nigerians with your arbitrary increases of prices of goods and services.
Since May 29, 2023 when petrol subsidy removal was announced with subsequent floating of an already weak naira, you have turned to vultures only waiting for the next carcass. Carcass, here, refers to your fellow Nigerians, some of whom, vicariously or directly, contributed to the ravenous ruination of the economy, a hell-induced plundering of the national till that has brought the nation’s fiscal structures, both micro and macro, crashing in a heap.
I bear no ill-will to all men of means and merchandise. I side with every man, every woman who stirs just to eke out a living. Great societies are built from the sweat of those who do little things in a great way. The itinerant hawker, corner shop owner, small shop manager, mega store magnate, the dutiful dealers and distributors and all kinds of middle men who daily make it possible for products and services to get to the consumer, particularly the vulnerable, abused and fatally exposed Nigerian consumers; this appeal is to you. Grind the people no more. They are down, broke and broken. Add no more to their pain with your unconscionable juggling of prices. Does it really make sense that even after the dollar had spiked and settled, you are still adjusting your prices perennially upward? The other raison d’être for your eclectic adjustment of prices, fuel (petrol, kerosene and diesel), has since stabilized in price, yet you’re still obsessed with per minute upward adjustment of prices of goods and services within the remit of your business influence. This is an evil under the sun. Stop it!
I wager that Nigerian consumers are never protected. Their protection only exists in laws, regulations and public agencies that are inept and too encumbered to assert themselves. Those that even as much as have the powers to wield the stick for the sake of the consumer are held down by the bogey of corruption. They bark to be heard. They strut to be seen. But it ends there. Each time a suspect is caught grifting with prices and cheating through the system, no action is taken beyond issuing ‘paper’ warning or organizing press conferences to announce how they caught a thief but let him go because he has pledged to be of good behaviour. Reason is: The thief-catcher has no moral authority to prosecute the cheating crook because, only yesterday the supposed ombudsman and regulator who should superintend and exert regulatory influence on the marketplace cheats was in bed with the crooks, sharing ‘perks’ of office. Nigeria has a rich history of barking at thieves and letting them go. It’s the reason the country has a preponderance of anti-crime, anti-corruption agencies yet, ranks among the most corrupt nations of the world.
These days and these times, the neighbourhood markets, night markets, roadside and mega stores have turned to places where retailers play ping-pong with products’ prices. No whiff of morality. No ounce of conscience. It’s survival of the richest. Only the rich and affluent smile through the storm of galloping inflation with concomitant galloping prices. In our quest to make the most of the freaky moment, we lose our humanity to profits and lucriferous possessions. Or how do you explain the primitive upward adjustment of prices of the same goods three times in one day by retailers? How can the frequent upward calibration of prices, daily, find justification in the value of the naira when the local currency has floated itself to a level of stability in the forex market? So many questions. But the answers lay in our self-destructive wickedness. In our feast of blood where dog eats dog. What has happened with prices in the marketplace these recent months is beyond the failure of leadership. It’s a case of the people versus the people. A case of man’s inhumanity to man.
Remember the American Civil War mantra, “a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.” The American bourgeoisie ‘caused’ a war they didn’t want to participate in. The Confederacy came out with a military draft in 1862, but included in it many exemptions that allowed the wealthy to avoid war while pushing the poor to the battle front. It backfired. Two years later in 1864, the Confederates realized they were short in number of soldiers. They changed the tone of the draft. To plug the shortfall, it was decided that any white man aged 16 to 65 years was eligible for the war.
This is the Nigeria scenario. Fuel subsidy was the pastime and pasture of the wealthy. They grazed in that field and made billions of dollars and trillions of naira. It was their pleasure club. But once subsidy was removed, pleasure evaporated and paved way for pain. Rather than absorb the pain, the bourgeoisie transferred it to the poor. Now, the rich man’s war has become the poor man’s fight. The battle has shifted to the markets where the poor adjust prices to pinch the poor. The noodle, rice, beans, gari, meat, fish and yam sellers hourly jack up the prices of their wares. And they quickly cite removal of fuel subsidy and floating of the naira (in plain terms, the forex market) as reason. They cite the wealthy man’s war for a poor man’s fight. Indeed, what is happening now is a poor man’s fight. It’s the poor fighting the poor. For no matter the price of any product or service, whether elastic or inelastic, luxury or goods of necessity, the rich and the wealthy will always afford them. Yet, they were the ones who created fuel subsidy and forex arbitrage and profited from both. They have quietly passed the pain, the fight, to the poor.
This explains my appeal to the marketers and traders. Stop strangling your fellow poor. Stop the arbitrary price hike because it amounts to the poor fighting the poor. The wealthy class is unbothered and unburdened. They still travel the world at the whiff of a breath. They holiday in the uttermost parts of the Caribbean or anywhere they wish to satiate their desires.
But where is that agency called the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC)? It has largely remained a lethargic, inert bureaucracy. This is the time to protect consumers. FCCPC should take a second look at its mandate. Has it fulfilled it? Is it fulfilling it? It’s not enough to temporarily close down a popular Abuja-based mega store.
Part of your mandate reads: “The Commission is empowered by the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Act 2018 (FCCPA) to, among other things, promote fair business practices and safeguard the interest of consumers.”
What is happening now is neither fair business practices nor a safeguard of the interest of consumers. The consumer is vulnerable. And FCCPC is culpable. The commission must arise and overcome its own inertia. It’s now, more than ever, that the consumer needs your protection from the vultures of merchandise.
