Price Gouging Party Foul! Judge Orders Feds to Become Grocery Game Ref, Set Prices for Everything (Even Your Undies)!

By Mayowa Oladeji On Feb 8, 2024

Hold onto your wallets, folks, because the price-fixing party just got crashed by a judge with a gavel and a serious case of the “enough is enough”s! In a move that would make your grandma whoop with joy (and maybe stock up on canned goods just in case), a Lagos court just ordered the government to become the ultimate bargain bin bouncer, setting prices for everything from bicycles to…gasp…your undies! (Okay, maybe not your undies, but you get the picture.)

This kerfuffle started with legal eagle Femi Falana, who swooped into court with a fancy document called an “originating motion” (think of it as a legal ninja throwing a smoke bomb before unleashing a flurry of legalese). He basically argued that the government, through its Price Control Board (think Ministry of Bargain Hunting), is slacking on its duty to, well, control prices. Apparently, there’s a whole law about it, and the judge, Justice Ambrose Lewis-Allagoa (with a name that sounds like a superhero lawyer), agreed!

Now, the government has seven days (tick-tock!) to whip out its price-setting pen and start scribbling down fair rates for everything from flour to fancy cars. Imagine it: haggling over the price of a motorbike becomes a thing of the past, replaced by a government-approved sticker declaring, “This bad boy will set you back exactly N12,543.78!”

Of course, there’s always the chance this whole price-fixing fiesta turns into a bureaucratic nightmare. Can you imagine the lines at the “Ministry of Milk Mustache Measurement”? But hey, at least we can dream of a world where a bag of rice doesn’t cost more than a small car and where the only haggling you do is over the perfect shade of government-approved socks. Now that’s a future we can all get behind (or under, depending on the price of furniture)!

So, will this actually work? Only time will tell. But in the meantime, let’s grab some popcorn, settle in, and watch the government attempt this economic tightrope walk. It might be a disaster, it might be hilarious, but one thing’s for sure: it’s definitely not gonna be boring.

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