Chairman of Mile 12 Market in Lagos State, Shehu Usman Jubrin has said Nigeria will continue to be in trouble in terms of the prices of food items in the country.
TheNewsGuru.com (TNG) reports Jubrin said this when he featured in Channels Television’s The Morning Brief on Monday.
The Mile 12 Market Chairman said that unless something is done about insecurity faced by farmers, the situation about food inflation will only get worse.
Jubrin pinned the recent high cost of tomato, pepper, and other perishable items on insecurity and other factors. He stressed that insecurity in the North is a major factor for the hike in the cost of the items.
“The bone of contention, the real fact is just insecurity. Let me tell you, that’s the truth. And there’s absolutely nothing the country will do. This price hike will continue. They are still buying tomato, at the rate of N1,000 for three pieces.
“Ninety-nine per cent of the people in IDP camps are farmers. They don’t know anything apart from farming – both male and female. The people who are on the farm and are farming with one eye closed are just about 1,500 out of like 5,000 farmers we have across the whole country,” he said.
According to Jubrin, some of the farmers negotiate with and pay bandits before they can go to their farms to harvest the products.
“In those places where you are getting all these items, there are negotiations between them and the bandits who ask them, ‘How much are you going to pay me to harvest and bring to the market?’.
“So, for as long as those people are in IDP camps, the country will continue to be in trouble in terms of food items,” Jubrin said.
He also linked it to other factors including supply shortage from the Northern part of Nigeria to the South.
“Let me just talk about tomatoes first. From November, December, January, February, March, and April, up to May, you have tomatoes from the North.
“You have danja, danjumi, kadawa, Kano and then Katsina States. This is the off-season now, so we expect tomatoes from Ilaro, Ogbomosho, Abeokuta, and Osun to come to Lagos, you know, and also part of Cameroon. That is a kind of substitute for the Northern one.
“But unfortunately, it’s late: the one from Cameroon, the one from Abeokuta and Ogbomosho. And as we approach the festive period, tomatoes will be expensive. The northern tomatoes are finished and we don’t have substitutes from the south,” he said.
Jubrin also blamed the situation on pests, saying the diseases have led to low yields.