Experts Enduring Hardship

BY Femi Akintunde-Johnson

At a bus stop somewhere in Lagos, a middle‑aged woman stood before a roadside vegetable seller, clutching a small nylon bag that held three tomatoes, a handful of pepper and half a loaf of bread. She opened her purse, counted the notes inside, frowned, and counted them again, as if arithmetic had suddenly become unreliable. With an embarrassed smile, she removed one tomato from the bag and handed it back to the seller. “Madam, let me leave one,” she said quietly. “The children can manage.”

A few kilometres away, a young office worker stared at his phone calculator, trying to decide whether it was wiser to buy fuel for his ageing car or to endure the daily battle of commercial buses. In another part of town, a parent stood before a school bursar, pleading for one more week to settle school fees. In the market, a trader had changed the price of a bag of rice for the third time in one week and was bracing for the familiar accusation of greed from customers who were themselves victims of the same economic