Gloomy Christmas Ahead As Traders Lament Poor Sales

It’s the end of the year when sales boom and people want to buy lots of foods, clothes and other things in readiness for the Christmas and New Year celebration. But traders in Lagos say sales aren’t booming at all, rather, sales are poor.

The economy has been struggling this year and a lot of people have had to tighten up on their spending. It looks like this will be a gloomy Christmas for many people especially traders.

Usman Ahmadu, who sells yam at a market in Lagos, said that: “Sales have been very dull lately. Even now that Christmas is just a few days away we expect that by now a lot of people will coming to stock up on food. But that’s not happening. And it’s not like food prices have gone up that much. Yet people are not coming. Everyone is saying there’s no money.”

Usman Ahmadu said sales have been very dull that everyone is saying there’s no money.
Another trader named Nimota says: “I’ve never seen a Christmas like this before. It’s not even as if Christmas is close. Everywhere is just dry, and it wasn’t like this last year. By this time last year I know how people were rushing to buy food and I was making money briskly. But this year is very unfavourable for me.”

Nimota said she has never seen a christmas like this before because it’s not even as if christmas is close with the way everywhere is dry.

A trader who gave her name as Anike said: “I didn’t expect that sales would be this bad in this period. We all thought that with out new government, by this time we should be seeing things getting better than they were last year. But now it’s quite the opposite, although they’ve said we should be patient and let the new administration get to work. So I hope that we won’t experience this sort of thing next year, because that will be very bad.”

Anike said she didn’t expect that sales would be this bad in christmas period.

eanwhile, the hardship seems to be gradually spreading across the country as it was also reported that residents in Ogun, Osun and Ekiti states are facing a severe downturn right now as civil servants in the states continue to go without pay.

But in an effort to cushion the hardship, President Muhammadu Buhari has directed the ministry of finance to pay December salaries to workers in all ministries, agencies and parastatals of government.