Ibrahim Yahaya, a man from Kano who sells fried yam and chicken at the Mammy Market Gate in Effurun, Delta State, explained that he decided to marry five wives because he thinks depending on just one woman could leave him vulnerable to heartbreak if she breaks his trust.
The 45-year-old father of nine shared this during an interview with the Nigerian Tribune over the weekend.”I have five wives and nine children—four girls and five boys,” he said, mentioning that they, along with his elderly parents, are still hundreds of kilometers away in Kano.
There’s no need to have just one wife,” he said, shaking his head. “If you have one wife, she might cheat on you and hurt your heart, so I decided to have five of them.”
Yahaya came to Warri, a major city in the South-South region, two years ago with one clear goal: “to hustle.”This tough move was driven by the common desire for a better income, a way to escape the difficult economic situation that had made his old business in the North unsustainable.He also talked about the high cost of living, comparing the current government to the previous one.
“Nigeria was much better when Buhari was the president than it is now that Tinubu is the president,” he said.He said the cost of living has gone up so much that just surviving has become a daily struggle. He remembered a time that seems like a distant dream, where his profits were high, and the prices of his food were affordable for many.”
When Buhari was in power, the fried chicken I sell for N500 now was sold for N100 or N200,” he said.The yam he buys to fry now costs a lot more than it did before, which makes his business less profitable. The yam that was N3000 to N5000 when Buhari was in power is now N10,000 to N15,000,” he explained. He said the price of a basic ingredient has nearly tripled, so he has to charge more to make ends meet, but still struggles to cover his costs.He added, “We can’t stop hustling because we don’t want to go hungry. That’s why we’re still doing things the way we see fit.”
The current economic situation has made it hard for him to support his family back in Kano. The money he sends home is much less than what they need, but they have to manage with what little they have.
“We are just trying to survive. We are just managing. What I send home to them is barely enough to feed them, but we are managing,” he said.
Yahaya said frying yam in Warri was actually a backup plan. He had been selling goods in Kano before, but the harsh economic conditions forced him to stop that and move south. He hoped Warri, with its oil industry and wealth, would offer a better income, but he ended up settling for frying yam to make a living, switching from one low-profit hustle to another. He warned, “The government should do something before people start falling down on the streets because of hunger and the high cost of living.”