COVID-19: Effects on the average Nigerian household.

Following WHO’s declaration on January 30th, 2020 of COVID-19 as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), the whole world was thrown into a phase of global economic uncertainty. For the first time in the digital age, we saw the world on  lockdown  (since tagged  The Great Lockdown ). It brought normal social and economic activities to a physical halt, sending the world into a virtual realm the likes of which has never before been experienced in the history of man.

The 2020 corona virus outbreak has in many ways been likened to the 1918  Spanish flu  in terms of its mode and speed of transmission, however, few could have anticipated the toll it would take on the global economy in general, and the already fragile economies of developing nations in particular.

Apart from the tremendous loss of lives recorded (which currently stands at  1,406,660  globally), its damaging effect on the global economy cannot be overemphasized. With experts having predicted a  recession filled global economy come 2020  prior to COVID-19, the extreme reduction in economic activities, during the lockdown could only have worsened the already gloomy outlook.

Since the country recorded its first case on February 27, 2020, there was a steady increase in the number of infected persons in the major economic capitals of the country (Lagos, Ogun, Oyo, Edo and Abuja), necessitating a  federal government imposed lockdown . Its resultant burden on socio-economic lives of residents in these cities is what my survey has sought to analyse.

First was the total lockdown (beginning March 30th) imposed in some of the country’s major cities, including Lagos, its major commercial capital. This meant a total close of all physical representations of non-essential service businesses (essential being Food, Healthcare and Security). This also meant that the majority of people could not leave their homes for at least the first phase of the lockdown, as there was tight measures in place restricting movement.

For a country where 90% of its businesses operating only physical stores, with just a fraction of that also having an online presence, this meant a complete halt of economic activities for at least 90% of businesses offering non essential services.

As is expected, the government embarked on several policies aimed at cushioning its effects on the citizenry. The execution and effectiveness of these policies have however been  criticized .

Some of the strategies put in place by the government include;

• The Economic Stimulus Bill 2020
• Conditional Cash transfers
• Central Bank of Nigeria stimulus package
• Food assistance

Research has revealed that these efforts have largely been inadequate in performance mainly due to 2 sets of factors.

1. Firstly, some of these policies are targeted towards formal sector businesses, ignoring the informal sector that produces about 65% of Nigeria total GDP and employs over 90% of the working population.
2.  Corruption and opaque accountability  have also contributed in limiting the effectiveness, of the food assistance and Cash Transfers initiatives especially.

Although the distribution of palliatives in the food assistance program was done at the local level through state and local governments, there were issues of  gross mismanagement and hording  by those tasked to distribute palliatives.   The magnitude of hording was eventually exposed in October 2020 when several locations were discovered to contain  huge amounts of food items  donated by the Coalition Against COVID-19 group (CA-COVID) that were supposed to have been distributed within the duration of the lockdown”.

The Cash transfers on the other hand was handled by the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, through the National Social Register and had started long before the COVID lockdown began (2018). This program was however, also criticized because of the  inherent inadequacies  of the social register, which only contained 2.6 million household out of the over 87 million Nigerians living below the poverty line as at 2018. Although the government vowed to increase this figure to 3.6 million household (15.5 million) as a  COVID relief measure , not all  registered received the cash.  Even the method of selecting those households included in the register in the first place, and thus qualified for relief is shrouded in controversy.

Some of the strategies put in place by the government include; The Economic Stimulus Bill 2020, Cash transfers, Central Bank of Nigeria stimulus package and Food assistance.

Although much research has been done on the effects of COVID-19 on the  economy of the country,  little has been done to understand from the perspective of residents and how it has affected them personally. This is what influenced the decision to carry out this survey.

The purpose of my survey is to put a face to the statistics, hear directly from residents that these policies affect. I sought to understand first hand their account of how their means of livelihood have been affected by COVID-19, what they did or did not get as palliatives and relief materials from the government or otherwise, while also trying to understand how much their lives and living has been altered as a result of the COVID period.

The survey questions are split into 3 sections;

Section 1: Relief Materials received / Sufficiency

This section contains questions on the COVID-19 relief materials received. How many household got relief materials, what constituted the relief materials given, and how sufficient it was to alleviate the negative effects of COVID on them. It was found that out of the 74 respondents (as at November 25th) only 9 (87%) received any form of COVID-19 relief materials, while 3 (4%) received from government sources.

Section 2: Household dynamics

This section sort to determine the dynamics of respondent households. In the absence of a recent National census (population growth and expansion has been projected since 2006) and household characteristic like number of dependents and independents cannot be adequately determined by this alone. It was found that while the majority (29.7%) reported at least 4 independents (aged 18-65), The number of employed independents for the majority of households (28%) was 1. The charts below also show the dynamics in the distribution of dependents in the respondent households. This offers a glimpse into the unemployment situation in the country.

Section 3: Perceived effects of COVID Lockdown

Although much research has been done on the the effects of COVID-19 on the economy of the country, little has been done to understand from the perspective of residents and how it has affected them personally.

This section contains direct questions on how COVID-19 has affected the sustenance of household income. Here, I sort to understand how many of the independent/working members of households were directly affected by COVID lockdown, and how their household have suffered with respect to it. I found that of the 74 respondent households, 78% reported at least 1 employed independent being negatively affected by the lockdown, while only 8 (10.8%) were not in any affected by the lockdown. Most signified a combination of negative effects, chief among which was a reduction in income (revenue, salary). Others include reduced sale, increased cost of commute, remote working, job loss, increased cost of raw materials among others.

Although the largest producer of petroleum resources in Africa and one of the largest in the world, with a population estimated at 208 million people and a GDP of ₦145.64 trillion ($448.12bn) in 2019, Nigeria, as of 2018, is also the  "poverty capital"  of the world with projections that Nigeria will account for 30% of people living in extreme poverty come 2030. Alas! This was before the COVID-19 Pandemic even became a thing.

With Nigeria currently among the over 47 countries of the world struggling with the aftereffects of COVID 19 on the economy, the burden falls to the over 200 million people and over 70 million households living in here.

According to the  National Bureau of Statistics , Nigeria foremost source of national data, Nigeria’s Real GDP year-on-year growth rates in Q2 and Q3 were -6.10% and -3.62% respectively. This coupled with a high unemployment rate of 27.1% (before COVID), Inflation rate of 14.23 (up from 12.26 in Q1), Food inflation rate officially 17.38 (an increase of 2.4% from Q1), means Nigeria is officially in a recessions at November 2020,  making it the 2nd recession in 4 years.  Apart from this, Nigeria also has high negative percentages in both Business Confidence index (-66.2%) and Consumer Confidence Index (-29.2%), and a  Moody's Credit Rating of Negative.   This will only continue to widen the gap between rich and poor, and thus expose even more people to extreme poverty.

All indicators currently point to a gloomy  financial future for Nigeria and Nigerians . There is therefore a need for a call to action. For the international community to be awakened to the precarious situation in which the country currently is.

Nigeria is officially in a recession as at November 2020, making it the 2nd recession in 4 years.

Despite the fact that the highest percentage of people ever recorded accessed the internet via a mobile phone in Nigeria in 2020 (41.1%) with a total internet penetration amounting to 46.6%, this is still not representative of the entire population that a survey of this magnitude is supposed to reach. The implication of this is that this survey could not be accessible to a large percentage of the population and thus was restrictive in responses.