It’s the end of the year when sales boom and
people want to buy lots of foods, clothes and other things in readiness
for the Christmas and New Year celebration. But traders in Lagos say
sales aren’t booming at all, rather, sales are poor.
But in an effort to cushion the hardship, President Muhammadu Buhari has directed the ministry of finance to pay December salaries to workers in all ministries, agencies and parastatals of government.
The economy has been struggling this year and a lot of
people have had to tighten up on their spending. It looks like this will
be a gloomy Christmas for many people especially traders.
Usman Ahmadu, who sells yam at a market in Lagos, told Naij.com that: “Sales
have been very dull lately. Even now that Christmas is just a few days
away we expect that by now a lot of people will coming to stock up on
food. But that’s not happening. And it’s not like food prices have gone
up that much. Yet people are not coming. Everyone is saying there’s no
money.”
Another trader named Nimota says: “I’ve never seen a
Christmas like this before. It’s not even as if Christmas is close.
Everywhere is just dry, and it wasn’t like this last year. By this time
last year I know how people were rushing to buy food and I was making
money briskly. But this year is very unfavourable for me.”
Speaking with Naij.com also, a trader who gave her name as Anike said: “I
didn’t expect that sales would be this bad in this period. We all
thought that with out new government, by this time we should be seeing
things getting better than they were last year. But now it’s quite the
opposite, although they’ve said we should be patient and let the new
administration get to work. So I hope that we won’t experience this sort
of thing next year, because that will be very bad.”
Meanwhile, the hardship seems to be gradually spreading across the
country as it was also reported that residents in Ogun, Osun and Ekiti
states are facing a severe downturn right now as civil servants in the states continue to go without pay.But in an effort to cushion the hardship, President Muhammadu Buhari has directed the ministry of finance to pay December salaries to workers in all ministries, agencies and parastatals of government.
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