The Secretary General of Easylife Initiative for Rural Youths, Comrade Uche Emeku has described the food blockade placed on southern Nigeria by some northerners as good riddance.
Emeku who described the situation as blessing in disguise urged Igbo leaders, youths to look inwards and see the internal potentials of the land, stressing that necessity is the mother of invention.
He said, “I think we’re all beginning to see where this country is going to. I commend the Fulanis or Miyetti Allah for showing our people how we’ve been getting things wrong.
“When Michael Okpara was premier of eastern Nigeria, he had farm settlements scattered all over. These settlements helped in food production and sufficiency at affordable prices. It’s unfortunate that oil boom turned our people away from what’s right for us.
“Remember that when Sam Mbakwe was the governor of old Imo State, he also had his own farm settlements and revived some set up by Okpara.
“We had poultry farm at Ogwe and Avutu producing enough meat for our people to buy. We were very sufficient until we allowed ourselves to be turned into a mere dependent zone.
“The Fulanis have not done anything wrong. They’re only teaching us to be ourselves. The food deprivation we suffered during the war should have been enough to show our leaders what they should do and do better.”
Meanwhile, butchers and dealers of foodstuffs like tomatoes pepper, onions, yams and potato in Aba, the commercial nerve centre of Abia State, are groaning over scarcity of goods to sell.
A visit to all the foodstuffs markets in Aba showed that dealers of foodstuffs are stranded, frustrated and absolutely busy doing nothing in their shops, as no single trailer has arrived from the northern Nigeria for the past four days.
News Echo visited the Aba Good Morning Market, Enyimba Stadium Yam Market, Highlife Foodstuffs Market, Ahia-Udele Abattoir and Cemetery Market where buyers and sellers were seen haggling and struggling to reach reasonable bargains.
Butchers at the popular and ever busy-Ahia-Udele abattoir, where over hundred cows are slaughtered on daily basis, almost all the butchers’ tables were empty with few buyers struggling to bargain.
“How can we sell? We’re just here watching the development. Many persons are now looking for alternatives. I learnt some of our colleagues went through some bush paths to locate the herdsmen where they can be found in the riverine communities in Rivers State to buy cows three times the price we normally buy.
“Do you know that some people bought a cow for N600, 000? They carried raw cash moving about in the bush, taking risk to buy from herdsmen. Majority of them returned and sold cow laps for N100,000.
“Is that the kind of business I’ll be doing? Well, we’re hearing things will soon normalize, but if it doesn’t, we’ll all look for alternative. This situation is not helping matters at all,” said the butcher who preferred anonymity.
At Good Morning Market, traders said that a basket of tomatoes sold at N9000 as at last week is now over N19,000-20,000, and bag of pepper sold last week for N7,000 is presently N16,000.
News Echo discovered that tubers of yam sold for N500 at Enyimba Stadium Yam Market is now above N900 or even N1000 in some instances, depending on whom you are buying from.
Madam Celine Obiakor, a tomatoes dealer at the Good Morning Market said the situation is biting her more than any other person, as she depends on her daily sells for survival.
“Before, about three to four trailers loaded with tomatoes should have offloaded as early as 7:30am, but as you can see, we have only just a bus offloading.
“Is that what people will use to survive? I think government should be responsible enough to know when to play politics, but not with our stomachs and lives.
“I don’t know what they’re struggling about, but I’m sure that those producers of tomatoes and onions over there in the North are not happy as well.”Because, they have those things in large number and they can’t be selling it as we do here because they’re the producers.”
In the same vein, a professor of soil science at the University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN), Charles Asadu, has described the food blockade by the Amalgamated Union of Foodstuff and Cattle Dealers Association of Nigeria (AUFCDA) from Northern Nigeria as a development that should drive everyone to the farm.
Asadu disclosed this while answering questions from our correspondent on the solution to food scarcity caused by food blockade imposed on the southern Nigeria by some northern Nigeria foodstuffs dealers.
He blamed the shortage of food on the government and the people of South East who refused to take agriculture serious to ensure food sufficiency in the zone.
The Professor of Soil Science said governments of the South east should commit funds and infrastructure to develop agriculture in the zone.
The don explained that what works mostly for the North is irrigation, stressing that whenever one talks about irrigation farming in Nigeria, it is in the North one gets to see it.
In his words, “How many of our governments in the east have talked about creating irrigation channels for its farmers?
“Have you visited Omor in Ayamelum Local Government Area of Anambra State and Adani in Uzo-Uwani Local Government Area of Enugu State? “You will hear about Omor rice and Adani rice; I, myself was an undergraduate when the Japanese came to that area and the whole place was irrigated and began to grow large amounts of food there.
“But the whole thing later collapsed because no government was interested. “If we have irrigation channels here working effectively, the rice and other such foods that will come from Omor and Adani and Abakiliki will feed the whole of South East.
“Vegetables such as tomatoes do well during the dry season than rainy season because of reduced pest infestation so if you have reliable water source during the dry season, you can produce all these.”
The don regretted that south easterners went into trading and importation of goods rather than farming which could have fed the region’s population with ease.
Asadu urged governments and very rich individuals in the zone to invest in agriculture as that is the only panacea to food scarcity in the southeast.
