L-R: Reno Omokri, Josef Onoh
By Tony Adibe
The former southeast spokesman to President Bola Tinubu and Chairman of the Forum of Former Members of Enugu State House of Assembly, Dr. Josef Onoh has lashed out at a socio-political commentator Reno Omokri, who reportedly asserted that an average Nigerian can comfortably live on a budget of ₦3,000 daily.
Onoh described the statement attributed to Omokri as a mirage rather than factual and truthful in the current situation of Nigeria. He said Omokri just wanted to mislead the ordinary citizens, and advised him to resist from such act. In a press statement made available to journalists in Abuja, Onoh questioned and criticized Omokri’s recent claim, insisting that it’s not only a mere daydream but also a mirage coined to hoodwink the gullible Nigerians.
According to Onoh, Omokri’s presentation was “structurally flawed, economically detached, and deeply insensitive position that fails basic cost-of-living metrics.” While ₦3,000 a day aggregates mathematically to roughly ₦90,000 per month—seemingly above the national ₦70,000 minimum wage, he said.
But the Ngwo Enugu State-born politician said that it was an isolated calculation that “ignores the fundamental socio-economic structures of the modern Nigerian household, the realities of food inflation, and the soaring costs of non-food necessities.”
Onoh questioned Omokri’s analysis and said it treats the Nigerian citizen as an isolated, single economic unit operating in a vacuum. “Whereas in reality, the average Nigerian household consists of five to six individuals. For a family of five, a ₦3,000 daily budget translates to an impossible ₦600 per person per day. In today’s market, ₦600 cannot secure a single nutritionally complete meal for one individual, let alone cover three daily meals, clothing, schooling, and healthcare,” Onoh explained.
Onoh said that reality of Food and Nutritional Costs Data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) routinely underscores that the Cost of a Healthy Diet averages well over ₦1,500 per adult per day just to meet bare minimum nutritional requirements. And the cost represents raw ingredients alone and completely excludes critical overheads such as cooking gas, kerosene, charcoal, or potable water.
In major urban markets, where the price of absolute staples has outpaced baseline projections. Onoh said that a “standard paint bucket of fresh pepper ranges near ₦9,000, while fresh tomatoes costs around ₦12,000.
“Bulk agricultural grains, legumes, and tubers like rice and beans continue to spike annually due to severe logistic bottlenecks. Essential protein sources, including eggs and beef, have become premium commodities, squeezing the purchasing power of the working class which Omokri is fully aware of but opted to play politics with the truth.”
Onoh affirmed that Omokri’s claim further collapses when subjected to regional economic pressures. While a rural, agrarian household in the North West might lean on local subsistence farming to lower food costs, urban dwellers in hubs like Lagos, Abuja, and Port Harcourt face rigid, unavoidable structural overheads. High energy tariffs, fuel costs, and skyrocketing intra-city transport fares heavily drain disposable income before a single grain of food is purchased.
According to Onoh , “Omokri using the ₦70,000 minimum wage to justify a ₦3,000 daily survival budget is a regressive economic argument. That attempts to normalize extreme poverty rather than addressing the structural distress within the current economic realities of Nigerians. When households are forced to allocate upwards of 60% to 70% of their entire income strictly to food, it crowds out life-saving investments in education, savings, and healthcare.”
He emphasised that “Omokri’s poor attempt to micro-pricing a few raw items during an isolated market visit does not constitute an economic reality. To label ₦3,000 as a viable daily survival threshold for an average Nigerian is to mistake bare subsistence for living, masking a deep humanitarian and economic reality behind superficial retail arithmetic.”
Urging the Niger Delta-born social commentator to build his assertion on provable economic facts, Onoh declared: “I urge Mr. Omokri to align his narratives with the empirical financial pressures facing the Nigerian masses rather than serving suffering Nigerians with false political economic arithmetics for the purpose of mere political appointment, the welfare of Nigerians must be treated as a priority of any responsible government and it’s representatives and not a privilege.”
