To evade the torrent of the gleaming sun of a Tuesday afternoon in November, many students of Usmanu Danfodiyo University Sokoto (UDUS) deserted the footpath to the school minimart.
With all the sweat on the face of a 100-level student of Biochemistry, Huzainah Bako was left aghast when a shop owner at the minimart refused to collect N1000 to print her 45 pages handout, therefore demanded N1800, which means to pay N40 per paper.
In her bemusement, she wondered about the increment rate in price. “I didn’t budget for this, so I can not print it out. I seriously have many things to buy,” she complained. Huzainah left soberly without getting the handout. Her only option was to peruse the softcopy. However, reading on the phone had been challenging for her due to difficulties in charging her phone and the detrimental effect of the screen light on her eyes.
Not Only Huzainah
Abdulrauf Sofia, a 200-level student of Law, and her coursemates wandered the school minimart just to print a 4-page group assignment. They went around the minimart, looking for a shop that would print at a subsidized price. Their efforts became fruitless as they found none.
These prospective lawyers tried hard to persuade the shop owner at a bargain price but to no avail. “Sir, we want to print 4 pages. We tried all our necessary efforts to find this shop. We just need to print for the submission of our assignment,” they pleaded. At last, they resorted to printing the 4 pages at N160, which doubled the previous price of N80 for 4 pages.
While speaking with Nura Abdullahi, a 300-level student from the Fishery Department said he had forgotten the last time he printed a copy of anything in a cafe as a result of the hike in printing papers. Nura became a PDF reader as he couldn’t afford the costly hardcopy.
According to the findings of this reporter, over 50% of students are now reading PDFs instead of hardcopies due to the hike in printing paper prices.
Business Owners Bemoan
The business owners at UDUS minimart bemoaned the astronomical rise in the price of printing papers that it takes a great toll on their incomes.
A computer business owner at the school minimart, Mr Monday explained how it affects him financially apart from losing his customers. “As citizens of Nigeria, there’s nothing we can do about it because the situation is changing from bad to worse.”
He explained vividly, “If not because of the lack of constant power supply we could have done all our work in peace. This will make us operate all our instruments at once and the money will be reduced for customers. But if we are using generators our work is not going to be easy the way it is supposed to be. However, this will still increase the money because of the fuel.”
Just like Mr Monday, Engineer Mufty recounted how the increment in printing paper’s price affected his business and turned him into a mere onlooker of passersby in his shop.
“The increment of A4 paper affected our business badly. The reason is that the price continues to increase incessantly. When a bundle of A4 paper was sold at the rate of N600, photocopying was N5 per paper, while printing was N20. When it rose to N1200, the price of photocopying and printing became N10 and N30 respectively,” he narrated.
“The increment of the A4 paper started in the year 2020 from N600 to N1500. Currently, it increased from N1500 to N4,000,” Mufty recalled.