Things fall apart in Nigeria

Lagos – Shopkeeper Toyin Jacob never thought she would have to rely on handouts.

Before 2020, food and cash distributions were for her neighbours in Makoko, a coastal community in Nigeria’s economic hub Lagos.

Thousands of families live in the floating slum, often in tightly packed huts with no running water or electricity.

Until recently, 60-yearold Jacob was better off, living in a concrete house connected to the grid on a busy tarred road. Her daughter went to university and her son had a job.

But everything fell apart last year after her husband died, the “arrival of the coronavirus” pandemic and the economic crisis that followed.

Jacob’s small business had been just enough to get by, but could not withstand the five-week lockdown imposed at the end of March. “With Covid-19 I couldn’t continue the business. There is no money to buy new provisions,” said Jacob, who has started selling household items to survive.

In a matter of weeks, she became like many of her neighbours in Makoko, a person categorised by aid agencies as “extremely poor”, who depends largely on assistance.

“After the lockdown, until now, I’m not doing anything”, Jacob said.

Before the pandemic, nearly half of Nigeria’s 200 million people were living on less than $1.90 ( about R30) a day, rivalling India for the world’s highest number of poor.

Seven million more people are estimated to become poor in the West African nation this year, according to the World Bank, which added they will be “more urban” and “more educated”.

Extreme poverty is rampant in the country’s rural areas, but the lockdown has also affected city dwellers, the World Food Programme (WFP) said.

In the second largest city, Kano, the number of hungry people tripled in just six months, reaching 1.5 million. The economic situation became so dire it prompted WFP, which usually concentrates relief efforts in the country’s confl ict-hit northeast, to start delivering aid along with the government to the largest hubs of Lagos, Abuja and Kano.

Jacob was among 68 000 people who have received 37 000 nairas (about R1 500) in Lagos since October, the equivalent of two months’ worth of food.