From Divine Macaulay, in Kaduna
Residents of the Crocodile City have lamented the shortage of funds to settle pending bills that accompanies the New Year 2025.
The bills primarily include the settlement of school fees for children who are resuming school after the Christmas celebration, which led to spending money not budgeted for.
It is, however, not surprising that many refer to January as a 60-day month, especially salary earners who are waiting impatiently for the January pay.
Findings by Citizenship Correspondent revealed that the residents, after enjoying the clinking of glasses and eating meals during the Yuletide season, are now at the edge of worry over the settlement of pending bills.
Traders in Kaduna metropolis bemoan the shortage of patronage after the bumper sales during the Ember Months.
A food vendor at Central Market, Ibrahim Musa Farki, expressed his concerns over the abrupt increase in prices of foodstuff.
In the same vein, a civil servant, Miss Chinyere Orji, described the outgone year 2024 as an extremely intolerable one for the vast majority of Nigerians who lived from hand to mouth.
According to her, the prices of goods and services went “beyond the reach of the common man” while many citizens were no longer able to afford the minimum comfort expected for them to lead a normal life.
She, therefore, called on the government to put the right mechanisms in place, invest in projects that will benefit the citizens, provide jobs, and follow up with marketers to ensure food items sell at stipulated prices so they can be affordable.
Miss Priscilla Adams, a trader who owns a provision shop for drinks at Kakuri, said that most of the issues that Nigerians complained about in 2024, apart from insecurity, basically started due to subsidy removal and policies of the Federal Government.
The policies, according to Adams, have come with serious shocks in the polity, although President Bola Tinubu has maintained that they are irreversible, but that there can be no harm in tweaking the policies in such a way that it will lessen the pain that Nigerians feel across the board.
According to her, she has not been able to restock her shop as she used to because the price of goods has skyrocketed, thereby taking the exchange rate high. It is a no-brainer that if the naira is to become stronger, there must be increased production of goods for exports.
However, she said most of the country’s manufacturing sector is not functioning, with many factories being forced to close shop due to the high cost of production and a consistently bad market performance.
“I am a mother of two. My children love noodles, but I couldn’t afford to buy them because a carton of noodles is around eight thousand naira, and this cannot even last for a month.
“Years back, if I go to the market with little money, I would be able to get something tangible for the home, but today, the reverse is the case, and this is the Nigeria that we live in today.
“So I urge the government to find a means to address this issue; the government has to first ensure a significant reduction in the pump price of fuel, which would bring down the cost of goods and services and enable Nigerians to live a better and fulfilling life,” she said.
Findings generally revealed that many residents proffered solutions to end this similar scenario in the future by calling on residents to embark on group contributions, limiting Yuletide spending, and avoiding unnecessary travels because, after the music and the dancing, January is waiting with plenty of bills to settle.
