Gbemisola Ademola, a 44-year-old mother of five children, could stock up food items for the month and buy clothing and other household items last year.
But with inflation at a 28-year high, she now buys less of everything and can only stock up daily food items and cannot afford to buy clothing or any extra household items now.
“I now shop for a meal as I cannot afford to stock up as I usually did,” said Ademola, who works as an accountant in an audit firm in Ikeja, Lagos.
“My N300,000 income can’t get me the comfortable life I had. Prices of everything are surging but my income has been the same for three years,” she explained.
“Buying new clothes for my children and going to the mall which we usually did are now luxury,” she noted.
Real wages have fallen in Nigeria by over 100 percent, according to experts, making Nigerians face increasing pressures daily and forcing them to make hard choices as prices of items continue to rise.
Ekechi Chukwuka, a 35-year-old salesman, said with his N250,000 monthly income, living has become a daily struggle. He noted that the soaring food and transportation costs have made things worse for his family of four in recent months.
To add to this, Chukwuka received a notice from his organisation that salaries won’t be paid by the year’s end as the business plans to go through a restructuring process. This is the most frustrating news yet for Chukwuka, who is desperate to provide good lives for his family.
“I can no longer afford to buy the things we usually bought because of high prices. We only buy necessities right now.
“This Christmas is going to be tough as I won’t be getting any salary or bonuses amid surging prices of everything.”
Like millions of middle-class earners across the country, Ademola and Chukwuka are feeling the pinch of Nigeria’s accelerating inflation that has hammered salaries and spending power.
Read also: Analysts expect 50 basis-point rate hike on elevated inflation
With the cost of everything from food to stationeries going through the roof, a chunk of Nigeria’s middle class is said to have been wiped out as their purchasing power has taken a dive.
The deep dive in spending for Nigerians is reflected in the latest Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN)’s half-yearly review report.
Inventory of unsold products in the manufacturing sector rose to N1.24 trillion in the first half of 2024, according to MAN, indicating a 357.6 percent surge from a year ago when Nigerians were able to spend more.
“Nigerians are focusing on necessities while turning to cheaper items. And they’re buying only a little at a time,” said AfricanFarmer Mogaji, chief executive officer of X-Ray Consulting.
Subsidy removal, naira devaluation, and the worsening impact of climate change and insecurity are fuelling continuous spikes in the prices of goods and amplifying Nigeria’s worst cost-of-living crisis in decades.
The combination of all these issues has ensured that the country’s inflation remained double-digit and wiped out a large portion of its middle class, according to experts.
“Nigerian middle-class has been seriously affected and disappearing owing to stagnated income and surging prices,” said Uchenna Uzor, a marketing professor and academic director of the Africa Retail Academy at LBS.
“They have dropped either to the aspiring middle-class or to the bottom of the pyramid. But the good thing is that they have maintained their consumption behaviour even if they now buy less of everything,” he noted.
The World Bank, in its latest Nigeria Development Update report, said the loss of purchasing power from high inflation has increased poverty in the short term.
The global financial body stated that at least 129 million Nigerians are living below the national poverty line in Africa’s most populous country.
Households are weighed down by stalled income growth and rising prices. The situation is worse for most Nigerians living from hand to mouth, which means they spend virtually everything they earn to sustain themselves daily, and there’s little or no spare cash to tuck away in a savings account or invest.
No fewer than 133 million Nigerians live in multidimensional poverty, meaning that two in three people are poor and experience just over one-quarter of deprivation such as health, the standard of living, and work, according to a recent report by the National Bureau of Statistics.
The statistics agency also reported that inflation hit 33.8 percent in October 2024, accelerating at the fastest pace in recent years.
“With accelerating inflation, the real value of wages will continue to fall and this affects how far salaries go in the day-to-day life of employees,” Femi Egbesola, national president of the National President, Association of Small Business Owners of Nigeria, said in a response to questions.
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