Good morning,
Mrs Funmi Adeleke stood in Surulere market on Tuesday with ₦70,000 and the arithmetic of a country that no longer adds up. That is the statutory minimum wage, worth about $42 at ₦1,400 to the dollar. In 2019, the ₦30,000 wage was worth $83. Food inflation has climbed for six consecutive months to 20.31 per cent, even as headline inflation eased to 15.43 per cent. World Bank projections put poverty at about 63 per cent, or between 129 million and 141 million Nigerians. The national grid has collapsed once this year and partially collapsed again, dropping to 1,132 megawatts. Band A households paying ₦41,000 to ₦70,000 a month still get four to six hours on bad days. Small manufacturers are burning over 40 per cent of overhead on energy. And when 71 per cent of graduates tell Afrobarometer they are considering japa, they are not being dramatic. They are doing the maths.
The workers have done their own maths, and they do not like the answer. Public servants under the Joint National Public Service Negotiating Council have issued a three-day warning strike notice from 2 October, demanding petrol at ₦500 per litre and an immediate wage award. Petrol currently sells for ₦1,395 in Lagos and up to ₦2,500 in remote areas. Their letter to the President was dated 21 September. The ultimatum expires tomorrow. On the same day, President Tinubu returned from a four-week European vacation that the Presidency had announced as three weeks. The African Action Congress has sued over Section 145, arguing that no written declaration was transmitted to the National Assembly before he left. Meanwhile, activist lawyer, Inibehe Effiong, spent hours stranded because the Lagos airport was locked down for a President whose plane had not yet landed. An absent President can shut down the busiest airport in the commercial capital. A present one, presumably, would do the same.
In Edo, the special criminal court has handed down its first verdict, sentencing four kidnappers to death for abducting Precious Oseghale from a vegetable market in June. They are Marvellous Isaac, Wisdom Michael, Rufus Emete Michael and Gift Raphael. Isaac, the gang leader, also received life imprisonment. Meanwhile, the National Population Commission is seeking a harmonised national system for marriage and divorce registration, arguing that fragmented records undermine inheritance, custody and property rights, especially for women, and that birth registration coverage still sits at about 40 per cent. And the FCT has approved contracts to digitise 67 courtrooms, replacing handwritten notes and manual filing with electronic case management, with work expected to become visible in two weeks.
Finally, football and the NPFL table has turned upside down. Newly promoted Barau FC remain top with 12 points from six matches, unbeaten, after holding Sporting Lagos to a 1-1 draw. Rivers United and Plateau United are on 11. Enyimba, nine-time champions and two-time African champions, finally earned their first point of the season with a goalless draw at Kano Pillars, but remain bottom with one point from five games, still reeling from the arrest of their stadium manager and a boardroom war. And in Bissau, Guinea-Bissau humiliated the Super Eagles. Let that sink in.
A wage that buys half of what it did in 2019. A strike notice on Independence Day. Four kidnappers sentenced to death. A league led by a debutant while a giant sits bottom. These are not separate stories. They are the same story: a country where the numbers no longer add up for the people who work, pay, wait and keep the faith.
Warmly,
Lolade