University students are among those hit hardest by the Tinubu administration's IMF-directed austerity programme.
Ajadi Sodiq, an undergraduate at the University of Ibadan, receives a monthly allowance of N25,000 ($15.82) from his parents and relatives. Before February 2024, that amount not only fed him daily, it also left him with enough cash to transport himself from his hostel to his classes every month.
"Things were not perfect then but they were not bad," Ajadi says, as he recounts student life from about a year ago. But that's a thing of the past now, as the country's struggling economy has pushed his reality from being livable to almost unbearable.
"I now eat only once daily. And I do that a few hours after noon so that I'd be fine till the day ends," he told African Arguments on a Thursday morning in March. Ajadi's new reality does not exist in isolation. Across the country, young people have resorted to extreme austerity measures to cope with the country's economic crisis, the worst since the majority of them were born.
A crisis like never before
Nigeria is currently battling its worst economic crisis in recent years. The country's currency has lost at least half of its value against the dollar over the past 12 months. During his inauguration on 29 May 2023, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu removed the fuel subsidy, a decision that instantly tripled the cost of fuel. The trickle down effect of the move immediately spiked the cost of production across all sectors, throwing the economy into turmoil and taking essential commodities out of the reach of many Nigerians.
In January 2024, the country's headline inflation rate hit 29.9 percent, the highest in almost three decades. The cost of food, the biggest component of the budget of many Nigerian households, has significantly spiked over the past few months. Food inflation in the country has increased to 35.4 percent in the country with some states recording inflation as high as 40 per cent, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
A series of policies by the Tinubu administration has done little to ease the economic shock precipitated by the fuel subsidy withdrawal and spiralling inflation. The economy was years in trouble before Tinubu took office. The Buhari administration's preoccupation with defending a sinking Naira appeared to be a pursuit of the ghosts of the mid-1980s when, as military leader, his disagreement with the IMF over currency devaluation and withdrawal of fuel subsidies, had led to his ouster. It has emerged more recently that the previous Senate's deeply controversial N30 trillion ($20,827,836,900) Ways and Means spending, and a currency redesign project that spiraled into a nationwide crisis, left gaping holes in the country's economy.
Tinubu's determination to further deregulate the economy by removing fuel subsidy and floating the naira last year only exposed these existing macroeconomic cracks. Structural issues like insecurity in the North East and South East, as well as an abductions industry that has spread almost countrywide, have also contributed to the rise in food prices as farmers and others, especially rural actors in the supply chain, are deeply affected.
In July last year, the President declared a state of emergency on the rising cost of living in the country but things have only gotten worse since then. Various palliative measures announced by the government, like the temporary cash payments to poor households and the distribution of grains to people in rural communities, have done little to dilute the impacts of the economic crisis on the life of the average Nigerian.
Resort To Austerity
Olaomo Favour, a University undergraduate resident in Lagos, Nigeria's economic center, has made sacrifices to her lifestyle to enable her to adapt to the current economic situation. Before now, Olaomo, like many middle-class students in the country, found comfort in placing orders for food through online apps that delivered it to her hostel. It's an arrangement that many find convenient as it slashes the time spent in traffic and in queues, allowing them to better focus on their studies.
One afternoon in February, Olaomo opened one of these food apps to place an order. She looked at the new amount she had to pay and smiled. "I just cancelled it," she said, describing it as something she could no longer afford. "The price was just too high."
But that's not all. When she decided to get lunch from a fast-food restaurant, she realized that a plate of spaghetti that sold for N1300 ($0.82) some weeks previously now cost N2100 ($1.33), an increase of almost 70 percent. It was at that point she realized that she had to make lifestyle changes to continue to survive. Now, she rarely eats three times daily, spends more time cooking as opposed to the alternatives she finds more comfortable.
"Eating three times a day is a luxury now and not everyone can afford it, including me," she says. "I've had to be more prudent with my spending."
Ajadi and Olaomo's stories mirror a pattern of extreme austerity measures university students have adopted to survive the highest inflation of their lifetime. These measures are not limited to the cost of food. Rather, they now extend to all other basic necessities.
These days, Ajadi treks to classes every day from his off-campus apartment. He can't afford the transport fare any more. To make things worse, the high fuel prices have forced an increase in intra-campus fares.
For example at the University of Ilorin in Nigeria's North Central, anyone who stays off-campus, where the majority of students live due to the low capacity of on-campus hotel facilities, will spend an average of N15000 ($9.49) monthly, equivalent to 50 percent of the country's N30,000 ($18.98) minimum wage for workers.
Pandora's Box
The measures that students have embraced to cope with the trickle-down effect of the country's economic crisis and high inflation rate have potentially dangerous short- and long-term implications. Rildwan Bello, co-founder of Lagos-based consultancy firm, Vestance, says these implications can be categorized broadly into two: nutrition and psychological.
"On the nutrition part, you have a hungry man in the classroom which means there's a limit to what that person can learn, and on the psychological part, you see reduction in concentration from these students because now they have to start thinking of ways to get extra money," Rildwan said.
Experts believe there's not much students can do to change the situation because it's not their fault. "They can't go and plant what they will eat. They can't do anything at the level of policy implementation."
"What they can control [is how] to be more creative with [utilising] their time. This is not the time to rely on their allowance only. They probably want to pick up a skill or an activity that'll give them an extra stipend. It might be by exploring work-study schemes and paid internships and ensuring they do them in ways that don't affect their studies," Rildwan added.
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This, too, comes at a cost. Ajadi told African Arguments that his monthly allowance from home has been reduced since the economy had negatively impacted his parent's business. To get the same amount of allowance monthly, he takes on multiple gigs. The effect is beginning to show on his academic performance.
"Academically, this has also affected me so I've reduced the reading time I have daily from three [hours] to one. There's a limit to what you can read without food and when you have to do all these things to get a small amount to cope," he explained.
However, Rildwan maintains that the real solutions to the crisis must come from the government and the majority of these solutions are long term. "We want to raise productivity (so we ask): Can we produce? Can we secure farmland for farmers so that displaced farmers can return to farm? Can we get subsidies on inputs that they import because almost all the fertilizers they use are imported? All of these things are part of what we have to look at."
In February, as part of aggressive efforts to combat the high inflation rate, the Central Bank increased the benchmark interest rate by 400 basis points to a record 22.75 percent. But as the government continues to tinker with various policy options, University students continue to find individual answers for survival in an economic climate alien to them.
Adebayo Abdulrahman is Nigerian journalist, fact-checker, climate justice ambassador, and multiple-award-winning public speaker. A graduate of Mass Communication from The Polytechnic, Ibadan, he's currently pursuing a Bachelor's degree in Political Science at the University of Ibadan.
