BAG OF RICE AS ECONOMIC INDICATOR

BAG OF RICE AS ECONOMIC INDICATOR

Price of bag of rice, that is. In other countries it is price of bread (this had led to real revolutions in Sudan, Tunisia, Algeria, and elsewhere). Nevertheless, both are carbohydrate-themed and carbohydrate-centric. “Stomach economics,” uh? Why did it take Nigerians too long to correlate a healthy national economy with stable prices of food staples? Nigerians wasted time lambasting former President Goodluck Jonathan and so they forgot the basic economic rule that zero inflationary regime of foodstuffs over a stretch of time is a marker of a good national economy space. This is surely so because as the prices of staples skyrocketed these past five years, job losses and unemployment figures blossomed.

This being so, we should ask ourselves if the government of Goodluck Jonathan was truly a “corrupt” one. Everywhere you go in Minna, everyone laments that rice is now luxury foodstuff beyond the purchasing power of the typical household and they are quick to add that this was not so during, pause, well, during the PDP era. Truly, folks here are a mite confused about broken promises and incompetence and threatening insecurity.

Sunday Adole Jonah,

Department of Physics, Federal University of Technology, Minna, Niger State

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