There is a tweet that I came across last week: it says that if you want to pay for something and the seller’s phone rings that you should quickly make payment before the seller picks the call because if he\she picks the call before payment is made that the price of the goods will automatically go higher because the caller will tell the seller of the latest price increment. That is the sad reality in Nigeria now.
Sharing his experience, Mr. Kenneth Bode recently contracted a furniture maker to do some work for him. They agreed on a price and he immediately advanced him some money. He was supposed to pick the work after one week. Three days later, the furniture maker called him to say that he had gone to market to purchase wood and other materials for the furniture only to find out that prices had gone up.
He told Mr. Bode pointblank that he was ready to refund him if there was not an upward review of the previous price they agreed on. Exasperated Mr. Bode had to add almost up to 30% of the price that they previously agreed.
Like Bode, Mrs. Obiamaka Nwoye laso suffered the same fate. She bought a 50kg bag of foreign short grain rice from her customer of many years in November 2023 at N41,000. According to her, the long imported rice grain was selling for N51,000. However, a few weeks after that, she kept hearing from different people that the price of rice was going up every day. On the 5th of this month, she called the same rice seller and she told her that foreign short grain was selling for N60,000 while the long grain was selling for N64,000. Two days later she called the same rice seller and she told her that short grain was now selling for N69,000 while the long grain goes for N74,000.
Also, Mrs. Funke Adeyo said she bought a D’erica cup of beans for N700 early last week. The next day she gave her daughter N700 to buy the same beans from the same shop but her daughter came back without the beans because the price had gone up to N750. By the next day again the same beans from the same shop had gone up to N800. The same thing applies to all products.
A bag of cement that was selling for N5,200 sold at N7,500 last weekend. By the time you are reading this, the price would have jumped up going by the way prices are jumping up in Nigeria.
Most supermarkets no longer put prices on the shelves because prices change almost every day. Emeka Orji who went to Shop Smart Supermarket in the Island said he was so frustrated because you will have to take every product to the checkout counter before you can know the price of what you are buying.
“It is only when the cashier scans the barcode that you can see the price, making shopping very difficult.”
In a recent press release from the government regulatory agency Federal Competition Consumer Protection Agency, FCCPC admitted that participants in the food chain play a major role in the arbitrarily increase in prices of goods.
“The Commissions surveillance efforts suggest participants in the food chain and distribution sector including at the retail level are engaging in conspiracy, price gouging, hoarding and other unfair tactics/strategies to restrict the supply of food, manipulate and inflate the price of food in an indiscriminate manner, this conduct violets both moral and legal codes. Taking advantage of consumer anxiety and vulnerability to inflate prices, and restrict or distort competition is obnoxious, unscrupulous, exploitative and illegal.”
In the view of analysts, the Nigerian market is free and mostly unregulated thus sellers and producers of consumers goods are allowed to peg their prices wherever tickles them and wherever satisfies their greedy urge, they are only forced to readjust the price by competitors or by other market factors and never by the Nigeria government, unlike other countries where the government mandates services providers and sellers on the price range they are to peg for a product or service.
In choice cities like Abuja, Lagos or Port Harcourt, landlords and house owners charge arbitrarily for rent on houses with the perception that if a particular tenant cannot afford to pay the rent, there are other tenants who are willing to pay whatever rent that is fixed on the house.
Transport companies as well do raise their fare arbitrarily, without any control or regulations.
Thankfully, the Price Control Board, an agency under the Federal Ministry of Commerce and Industry and the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) have the primary statutory duties of these agencies are to protect consumers, make sure they are not being cheated or ripped off by producers and service providers and fix prices for some popular basic consumer goods, but these agencies, sadly are not just doing enough.
It is so bad that most Nigerians do not even know that there are government agencies that have been charged to control prices and are also charged to prosecute service providers who charge exorbitant prices. They need to be more proactive now than before because producers and service providers due to the economic hardship and high cost of raw materials are shifting all the burdens, including tax to the final consumers.
Good enough, Dr. Adamu Abdullahi, Acting Executive Vice Chairman of FCCPC noted in statement that in rare situations and pursuant to part X1, and section 88 of the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Act, [FCCPA], that the Commission may advice the President fix the prices of certain goods and services based on empirical evidence.
