Nigerian economy moving from bad to worse-Proprietress

For the Proprietress of Yaky-Y Ventures, Lagos, Mrs. Iyabo Obokhale, Nigerian economy is moving from bad to worse.

According to her, when she started her business eight years ago, the economy was enjoying a boom and business was stable but today the economy is nothing to write home about.

“I started eight years ago and if I want to compare the economy then and now, there is nothing like improvement. The economy is bad now,” she lamented.

The mother of three who deals in snacks and provisions compared how much she bought her raw materials eight years ago and now. “We were buying flour between N5,000 and N6,000, now it is bought between N12,000 and N13,000. The economy is really bad,” she complained.

The proprietress added that, “There is not much money available now, when you buy expensive materials people are not ready to buy at expensive rate so we too have to manage the resources so we can be able to make little profit.”

Narrating the survival strategy of business owners in Nigeria, she said, “What we do these days is different from how we operated then. In those good old days, you made sure you feed your children three square meals, sometimes you have some snacks in-between meals but now you don’t do that. You give them breakfast, lunch and sometimes skip dinner. That is how we have been doing it in this economy.”

Commending the rugged nature of Nigerians, she said, “For Nigerians there would always be a way. We are very rugged. In those days we sold egg roll for N50 but now we are selling at N60 or N70 just to be able to make little profit.”

Observing that the recently concluded Ramadan fast also slowed down business for her, Obokhale observed that sales dropped because only the Christian children were regular.

“The Muslim fasting affected the business. Children always compete among themselves. They would say I am a Muslim I want to fast for 30 days, a lot of them were deceiving themselves, they don’t fast. So their parents won’t give them money because of the fast but some of them still dodged some money and often sneaked here to buy,” she laughed.

“Parents don’t give them much money during fast. Today now that the fasting is over they have been coming. During fasting we reduced production but now within thirty minutes they have bought everything we produced,” she said.

The optimistic entrepreneur however prayed for the people at the helms of affairs. “With God all things are possible. People at the helms of affairs are human beings, so we commit them to God to touch them so He could direct them well,” she said.