As the day winds to a close, Janet Omole sits on a wooden bench under the stall where she sells smoked fish and pepper in Basiri, a bustling market district of Ado-Ekiti, in Nigeria’s southwest. Close by, small bowls containing tomato and pepper sit in rows.
These are all telltale signs that Omole’s business is going through hard times.
“Usually by this time of the day, most of my fish and pepper would be almost sold out. But for four weeks now, the market has become unbearably slow, and things have become more expensive, so customers don’t come,” said the 39-year-old, whose dwindling patronage has reduced her profits, making it nearly impossible to support her family of six.
The four weeks of unbearably slow markets followed Nigerian President Bola Tinubu’s May 29 announcement that he would end the country’s fuel subsidy regime, a decision that led the price of gasoline to soar from 190 to 550 naira per liter (a change from about $0.24 to $0.69), causing daily consumption
