Happy weekend guys. It's amazing to come your way again and with such a great topic on cost of living being compared to that of other nations of the world and whether or not one would consider relocating, leaves a lot of discussions on the board. Let's get to it already.
In a country like Nigeria, my beloved country, a place I have known as home and second to none, living has now gotten into an intense competition with surviving or dying due to the high cost of living.
From eating our daily bread and to rent and to clothing and even moving from one place to another, life has become very tough. It is even worse because most of the citizens are low-income earners whose take home can not even take them home. Some people's monthly remuneration cannot buy a bag of rice, let alone the ingredients to prepare it, as if that is even all that matters to the common man.
One adage in the Yoruba mythology says:
When food is removed from poverty, the rest is nothing.
The Whole World Is Experiencing Inflation But Ours Is Man-made
What we are currently facing in Nigeria is already being experienced in the whole world too. For instance, the government of our nation is not open to the populace. They just come out in the open to tell us of something that does not exist in the name of subsidy. Our inflation is man-made.
One could say that our government has pampered us to a fault.
There is no price control. Every market man or woman has the personal will to fix the price of commodities, make life more miserable to the populace.
How can we explain the rubbish that exists in the public sphere? We extract crude oil and import petroleum products. The corruption in our nation has pushed us to this level of wanton hunger and hopelessness.
In other countries, salaries and wages are paid in commensurate proportion with the cost of living. Little wonder you can work in parts of Canada, US and Europe and earn as much as $20 per hour. That is over #20,000. If perhaps, one works for 5 hours in a day, then the fellow will be earning over #100,000 in one day. Multiply that by 20 working days in a month, that's a whooping two million naira. How many Nigerian professors can you beat your chest that could earn that much in Nigeria? My people, life in Nigeria is a living hell.
Don't be surprised, most people who are still here are likely gathering money and documents to leave.
Truth is that you cannot keep doing the same thing and expect to get a different result. The bottom line here is that I do not trust the government of the day to deliver the dividends of democracy and good governance to the people. Though there has been some momentous move towards adjusting the state of things, the move hasn't brought the needed change as some people are bigger than the state.
I Have Considered Japa
This seems to be the only way out. Japa! This word is the most used word among the teeming youth of the Nigerian state in the recent past. And you can't blame them. Most people who are ready and available to be gainfully employed are not and those who are employed are under-paid.
Recently, I have done some research and found that there are millions of skilled and unskilled jobs available all over Europe. Some of these jobs are well-paying. The organisations where these jobs are located are even footing all the bills to bring in Nigerians who are ready to relocate.
So, I ask the question. Should I not relocate after graduating from the university for over seventeen years and not be gainfully employed?
My brother, life is too short to begin to hope that Nigeria will be better. It is not a curse, those who lived before us hoped so. The Nigeria Go Better syndrome has been a slogan from independence and till now it has only gotten worse.
Please, do not blame me. I also want to live like a normal human. I like to own a house of my own, drive a car and have some investment that would take care of me at old age. But with the current situation in our beloved country this goal may not be met. Let me JAPA