Date: 2017-03-02

Economic recession may be taking its tolls on some residents of Ilorin, the Kwara state capital as they have begun to devise means of alleviating the hardship.

Some of the residents especially in some settlements at Kwara North Senatorial District now use Shea butter (Ori in Yoruba language) as a substitute for Palm oil or groundnut oil.

Besides, apparently due to the escalating prices of cooking gas and kerosene, coal pots of different shapes now flood many backyards as alternative to energies for cooking.

At many social functions, serving rice for refreshment has become a common feature only with privileged few. Porridge is at present the most common food served at wedding receptions due to the cheaper nature of yam tubers.

Also, it is becoming common among some civil servants in the state to park their vehicles on the same spots after resumption at work, join commercial vehicles to adjoining settlements and would only drive home at the close of work in an effort to reduce the fuel consumption rate of driving private vehicles.

Alternative medicine practitioners now thrive in their endeavours as many patients who cannot afford the costs of orthodox way of treatments have seen the indigenous healing centres as a credible alternative.

A trado-medical healer, Ibrahim Ajakore said his customers have tripled since the beginning of this year.

Ajakore who resides at Apata Yakuba area of Ilorin said most of the cases brought to him are purely medical just as he thanked the state's ministry of health for its recent trainings of all the qualified medical herbalists in the state in such areas as correct prescriptions and the law of hygiene.

A former state chairman of Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria (PSN) Mojeed Oderinde said many patients on doctors' prescriptions at present ration the purchase of their drugs just as he warned of a serious outbreak of "treatment failure, " if nothing is done to halt the trend.

In churches there are more electricity sockets for congregation, majority of those who could not afford to power their homes to charge their mobile telephone handsets and rechargeable lamps.

A Pastor in Cherubim and Seraphim Church (Gospel Light ) Mubo Street Ilorin, Most Senior Apostle Samuel Oluyemi described the method as a bait for evangelism as many of the handsets owners have the opportunities to listen to the gospel.

Some students of post primary schools who before now could not do without food flasks preserving their lunch now go to schools empty.

Sources told The Guardian that they now eat beans mixed with gari as breakfast and would only need intake of more volume of water at noon as a substitute for lunch.

Some students of higher institutions living away from their campuses prefer soliciting for "lifts" from private vehicular owners rather than going to motor parks for their trips to and from their campuses.

For many women and especially ladies, patronage of sophisticated salons has reduced as many of them now use traditional weavers to plait their hairs.