THIS FUCKING ECONOMY

You take away a man’s hope and his tools to make money (especially a Nigerian) and what do you have? A shell; a useless, walking zombie who is just going through life without a plan or dream. What use does anyone have for a shell but to strip it of its layers for what’s inside…and when its empty what do you do? Toss it away and forget the experience for shells have no interesting depths to explore.

I stood on the other side of the road… anxiously watching, waiting for something miraculous and TV like to happen. Her shop was almost empty of goods. It was the last day of the lease and she wouldn’t be renewing, not that she could afford to anyway. She sat in front of the shop, a blank expression in her eyes, staring at nothing in particular. She wasn’t waiting for something to happen for she knew there wasn’t going to be savior coming in some magical carriage packing a bag of money. She was resigned to her fate and was simply passing time till it was 7pm when she would lock the shop and go home. Some of the people from the area came to sit with me. We all watched… helpless to really do anything as another small business within the community got swallowed up in this recession. No electricity for weeks and businesses need power to illuminate. Suppliers are increasing prices on a bi-weekly basis so retailers with trepidation have to follow suit. There is rent, tax and utility bills to pay on small profits that are drying up with every new increase because people have started buying only what they need not what they want.

It has never been this bad… Even when we complained that “times are hard”, we said it with a smile on our faces…it was almost like we trying to make excuses for things we didn’t want to give or do. We always found a way for luxuries, a good time and left over for something in the bank. There was always something going on; some way to make a little extra on the side. It was easier to save because transportation was cheap and raw food even cheaper and when we started feeling trapped in our small community we could always go out for a good time without dipping. We could smile with heavy hearts, drink with throats constricted, dance with heavy legs, shake bodies that felt immobile because that’s just who we were. Hope was our constant; at night we dreamt of futures not so far away when we could pay bills without looking at the price, make money doing things that made us happy. 

We did all this coz we had hope lying somewhere…pushing, edging, daring us to be better than we currently were. When you can’t afford to have fun, you have to plan for every N10 (sorry but N5 doesn’t have value again in this country) going out of your pocket because the naira seems to be forever depreciating without any increase in what you make as income…that’s when you know you have problem. I felt disconnected from it all initially… I felt lucky to not have to worry about the downturn of the Nigerian economy but it was only a matter of time before I started to fill the heat. 

Suddenly, everything changed around me. The price of petrol and gas went up and with it the price of transportation, rice, oil, onions, tomatoes and everything that had a price tag on it. I went to Lagos and the shirts I bought for N1500 this week went up to N1700 by the next week. The shoes that went for N2000 increased to N3500 by the next week. It was crazy… I took N50,000 to the market and returned home with one miserly looking nylon bag…fucking N50,000!! Soon I couldn’t afford to hangout spontaneously if I wanted… I was on a restricted budget where I had to save and plan ahead for every expense…even emergencies.

I see how much more frustrated our youths are; how easy it is to turn to crime to get through each day and the next. I don’t blame them… I understand. The country has gone to complete shit…you think it was hard to get a job before…well brace up coz it’s going to be a lot harder to get a job now.

I was at the local store a few months and they told me about a woman (in her mid-thirties) who was caught trying to steal a medium size bag of semolina from the store. She was crying, explaining to the store owner that her kids had been drinking only water for the last three days. She was going to take the semolina home, cook it without soup and give it to her kids to eat. Nobody offered to buy her the bag of semolina. The store owner couldn’t let her walk away with the bag of semolina… turning a profit was hard enough so they just let her go.

I stopped an okada a few weeks ago, it was around 9pm and I always ensured that I had enough small bills in my wallet so we wouldn’t argue about change. But on this day I didn’t know what happened, maybe the devil was trying to test both our breaking points coz what transpired when he dropped me was simply ridunkulous!

Me: Okada shebi na for my house you suppose drop me!! Why you kan dey drop me for junction on top load wey you no even carry for me sef?

Okada: stares blankly at me because he doesn’t understand English and says in a bored tone ‘money’.

Am already livid at this point; I dragged my small gear down the street to my house and walked back to pay him.

Me: Here, this is N60 for not carrying my luggage or dropping me at my home.

It’s important to note here that this particular okada man not only didn’t understand English but he was also a Fulani youth. One of the worst people to pick a fight with down here coz things can degenerate so quickly you wonder how it went downhill that fast.

Dude says pay me the N70 we agreed on…I refuse…he comes down, parks his motorcycle and puts his hands in front of my face. Lawwwwd!!!!! I had stacks of N10s and N20s in my wallet, I could have paid him and walked away but instead I dropped my bag, got right in his face and dared him to hit me! Steam was breathing forth from both our noses; the argument was without reason but I wanted blood! Fortunately, some passerby came around and talked him down and he went away. There I was stocked for a fight that never happened. Like, for real yo! I was ready to throw down on the street with this Fulani at 9:20pm. The devil possessed me right? I know…

We be fighting for everything these days. I call it “the recession mentality” … any small quata person go just frustrate without reason. The betting houses are making a shit ton of money…they have never had it this good! I see my neighbours almost every morning on my way back from a run and they are coming from the bet9ja shop with fresh hope on their faces… every fucking morning without fail. Churches are somehow finding money to build bigger and more magnificent headquarters and pastor houses that look more like where the grand-son of Queen Elizabeth would live and less than a home built in this recession economy. But it all makes sense… If you build for the Lord… God will build for you, give more…even out of the little you don’t have…

There are more crusades every Friday… women trooping from one church to the other looking for that miraculous financial breakthrough that can make their lives easier… How about for once the churches ease up on bleeding their members dry…advise on the importance of hard work to go with prayer and stop preaching false hope that only seems to put money in the pockets of those that run the church while the members seem to remain stuck in the same new year resolution all the damn time! Even my neighbor who seems to have the most active sex life ever has reduced his sex drive. This nigha used to keep me up with the screams and moans women always made when they came over for ‘a visit’. They never wanted to leave! I don’t know what he was doing but apparently he was doing something right…these days all I hear is grunting, not shouting or moaning…grunting and groaning. It’s like they just smashing for smashing sake…broke Dom can really steal the joy and pleasure from sex.                                                     

I bet you all heard of MMM, Givers Forum, Ultimate Cycler, Helping Hands, iCharity, etc…there is a whole plethora of Ponzi schemes going on right now…Nigeria’s answer to a failing economy. Almost everyone I know (including yours truly) has money invested in one of these schemes. Young boys are buying cars, building houses, getting married…people are even advertising it in churches and giving MMM testimonies about how God has used MMM and co to grant them ‘financial independence’.

Yeah…Nigeria is perfect for a Ponzi scheme like this. Flat broke, cash strapped country full of poor people looking to upgrade to the sunny side of life and voila! You introduce a plan that magically increases your profit by 30%, 40% and sometimes 300%...fucking amazing right! We all balling like Kings in the street…hopefully when it crashes our money won’t be inside…somebody say Amen!

This economy had me depressed at a point…I was reading all these books about how to get it, but the getting couldn’t be got without any initial investment. I had all these ideas without a means of execution and I felt trapped. I looked at my passport and I was filled with hatred for a country that did not know who I was or gave a shit if I killed myself in depression or suddenly came upon a Billion Dollars to make it rich!

The country cares for nobody…so everybody steals and hoards till there is nothing left to take and we all bear the burden of the greed of our leaders and guides. Well…tough shit!!! Coz as bad as I thought I had it a couple of weeks back…my neighbor was drinking garri for breakfast and eating royal noodles for dinner on a daily…no money for indomie abeg…

Shoutout to all those who still balling in strip clubs and dance clubs, peeps who still turn on a/c in their cars and can afford to eat Chinese and drink mock-tails of N3,000. Y’all are the real MVPs biko….

We live today, we rise tomorrow and we stay alive the day after till we get out of this fucking funk! All man for e self oooh….aint nobody gonna save you now!