Recently, the CEO of Air Peace, Allen Onyema, got on the wrong side of the internet when he said anyone earning N200,000 monthly in Nigeria is better off than someone earning £2,000 in the United Kingdom. According to him in a TV interview, the Nigerian with a mere N200,000 can afford a maid, a driver, and other domestic staff while the person who earns £2,000 in the UK can barely get by. His superficial comparison somehow reminds me of Nigerians who conclude they live a better life after comparing the cost of Coca-Cola in their country to the US/UK.

Now, thanks to the internet, Onyema has received more than enough riposte to warrant him thinking hard and long (if he cares to anyway) about the degree to which he is out of touch with the Nigerian reality. If he believes that a person earning N200,000 in a country with a bag of rice around N80,000 can hire at least three others, it also tells you how poorly he thinks wage workers should earn. Yes, he is a private individual with the right to his opinion, but he also hires people and that is why his opinion on wages matters.

But what I find interesting about his comparison between England and Nigeria and the subsequent pushback from the inhabitants of social media is that it leaves off the important question of how much Nigerians should earn. What amount would be sufficient for an average household in Nigeria to live? Without an empirical determination of what people should be paid to live, the best we can do is to resort to facile comparisons about what a sum of money can buy under regimes of their respective currencies without factoring other intangibles being bought along. The way Nigerians—particularly the ones who cannot get over other people’s “japa” decisions—talk about how hard life can be abroad because people there pay bills, bills, and more bills makes you wonder if they are even aware of the extent to which their own supposedly “bill-less” society relatively over-taxes them. Nigerians probably pay far more—at least relative to their income—in social services than their foreign counterparts.

While a society like the UK might pay people a sum as low as £2000 (in Onyema’s estimation by the way), hardly anyone is left to live on just their income. Their public infrastructure and social security are so relatively excellent that even though one might not have enough cash to stack up in the bank, one is unlikely to be shouting “ebi ń pa wá!” on the streets either. In a place like the United States, a person with that low an income will qualify for public health insurance, food stamps, and possibly even rent assistance. So while they might be considered “poor” by their society’s (and Onyema’s) standards, their poverty is not as stark as that of a society with no such provisions.

The question of what a Nigerian household should earn to live is complicated by differing ideas of what constitutes a standard household in Nigeria and what it even means to “live.” In a culture where there is a high percentage of polygamous marriages and our family structures are largely communal, it is hard to benchmark a standard household. For one, “household” here is unlikely to be a nuclear family arrangement. Then, what it means to live varies because of the increasing privatisation of our entire lives. Those who live in societies where they earn a measly £2,000 monthly do not generate their own electricity and water, provide their own security, send their kids to third-rate private schools, or even be called to donate money towards ransoming an abducted relative. If they do not hire a driver, maid, and maybe even a gateman on their salaries, it is not simply because their incomes are too poor. It is because, despite their mere £2000, their system allows them to own a car (or at least have access to an efficient public transport system); they have home appliances that eliminate the need for a maid; and their mode of securing society does not involve high fences and metal gates manned by a “gateman.”

There are practical implications to not knowing what is a just and fair income and thereby making silly comparisons. One of my observations when hiring workers in Nigeria is that most lack an idea of proper calibration of their wages. Because they have not developed a statistical sense of value for what they do, they place the moral burden on you who is hiring them by telling you to pay what you consider fair. Value for their labour is thus negotiated, and contingent on moral considerations and sentiments rather than a standardised measure. Recently, I spoke with someone who pointed out how “corruption” was distributed through every aspect of our society. His example was an instance of price gouging by “pure water” vendors, but what came through in his complaints was the problem of not calibrating value. That is why even the modest attempts of a low-income vendor to make a living looked to him like a rip-off.

In 2019, I talked with some friends regarding the standard of living. There are a family of six (two parents, three children, and a relative). During our conversation, I argued that, for a household like theirs to live a relatively comfortable life, they should earn nothing less than N500,000 monthly. Husband and wife, both school teachers (in a public and private school), understandably laughed. They agreed their lives would considerably improve with a higher income, but who would ever pay teachers that amount? Of course, the question of who can pay such an amount as average income in the country is pertinent. Nigeria simply does not have enough economic activities for any employer, public or private, to pay people enough for them to live well. The minimum wage proposals the Nigeria Labour Congress has bandied about ranged from N500,000 to N1m, and people think the union leaders are being ridiculous. At the bottom of those figures being thrown up is the unsettled issue of how much people should earn in order to live and how to standardise it.

Meanwhile, about five years after I spoke to that couple, their income barely increased but the cost of living leaped up by many miles. Nigeria is no longer where it was in 2019; most people are barely coping. When people seeking to justify the Nigerian dysfunction mention the high costs of living in Western societies that drain their poor £2,000 salaries, I also remind them that as hard as things might be over there, they do not spend 80 to 120 per cent of their income just buying food. Nigerians earn so little that people even take loans to buy food. Not luxurious feasts, just enough food to survive. That does not make any sense.

Through the experiences of this couple and several others I would argue that to the matter of what Nigerians need to earn in order to live should be appended the question of how frequently those kinds of figures need to be updated. The Nigerian costs of living change so frequently that the income that hired three domestic wage workers years ago can barely sustain a four-person family now. Whereas the hypothetical person earning the £2,000 pittance can still do most of the things they were doing years ago. Their reality is not upended as quickly as that of Nigerians.

That is why, instead of wasting time and absolving responsibility by talking about what the person living abroad and ensconced within a system with tight social security and welfare benefits ultimately lacks, we should focus on fellow Nigerians and define what it would mean for them to really live.

Punch