I bought fuel yesterday in Toronto, Canada, at $1.7999 CAD per litre, and it cost about $98.95 CAD to fill up my tank. This should ideally last me about a week or more.
Now, the minimum wage in Canada is $17.95 CAD per hour, which means someone who works an average of 8 hours a day will earn $143.60 CAD before tax. A day's salary is enough to fuel his or her car for 2–3 weeks. This means that even one of the lowest earners in Canada can afford to own and drive a car daily without the cost of fuel becoming an overwhelming burden. Public education for children is also free and of high quality.
In Nigeria, fuel is about ₦1,300 per litre. It would cost about ₦88,000 to fill up a similar tank. The minimum wage in Nigeria is ₦70,000 per month. This means that an entire month's minimum wage cannot even fill the tank once.
A minimum-wage earner in Nigeria cannot realistically afford to own, fuel, and maintain a car. The same person still has to afford food, rent, children's education, healthcare, electricity, transportation, and other basic necessities. The list goes on.
In fact, even a bank manager in Nigeria earning ₦1 million monthly could still struggle to maintain a decent standard of living after covering these basic expenses.
This is one reason poverty is so widespread in Nigeria. The cost of basic living is simply too high relative to what the average person earns.
You don't just have an income problem in Nigeria. You have an affordability problem.
For millions of Nigerians, simply living a decent life has become too expensive and increasingly impossible.