By Christie Doyin
I wonder why people of southern Nigeria extraction are lamenting the stoppage of food items from the north to the south. I think it’s not a very bad idea considering all facts on ground. Perhaps this occurrence, whether permanent or temporary will teach us some hard facts about our relationship and self sufficiency.
My hope however is that southerners, West, East or South-South, will learn to go back to the farm and produce their own food. We have good land for yam, cocoyam, potatoes, palm trees, for palm oil, beans, even rice, all sorts of vegetables, including pepper and tomatoes.
I can go on and on. Our land is also home to all sorts of games, animals and various types of birds and fishes. If they stopped their cows from coming to the south, then we can go back to eating goats, antelopes, rabbit, chickens and so on. After all, before they brought their cows, we had what we were eating.
In fact, the action of the Amalgamated Union of Foodstuff and Cattle Dealers of Nigeria (AUFCDN) to withdraw their services and prevent foodstuff and their cattle from going to the south is a good one, which should serve as wake-up call for everyone and one that should encourage our people to go back to farm and do more in agriculture.
Not only that, we can also buy from our neighbours from other countries like Benin Republic, Togo and others. That fact is that they cannot continue to threaten us with withdrawal of food stuffs and items. We also can wield our power over petroleum buy stopping it going from south to the north. This can be done just as they are able to do same for their products. Ki ni obo fi sori to inaki o se.
It will be hard just for a while, especially because of the devastation caused by the killer herdsmen that have prevented our people from going to their farms but with the decision to allow Amotekun, our vigilantee and hunters to fight crime, then the effect will only be temporarily.
I was in Jerusalem and saw what the Israeli government did with the desert land on agriculture, fish farming including poultry farming that make them eat fresh food and record bumper harvest throughout the year. We can borrow leaf from them as well as go back to the days of yore when Cocoa, cassava, palm oil, cocoyam, and yam tubers and other food items were kings and agriculture was our mainstay.
When some friends called last Tuesday to say the cost of farm produce in the north has fallen, I told them it was just the beginning of great things to come. On Thursday, I read somewhere that cost of most vegetables, including pepper, tomatoes and onions have fallen drastically. I am confident that those perishable items are not such that will survive the strike or suspension. My take is that people should endure this period and start giving more considerations for other options.
For instance, you have over twenty varieties of fish, fresh, frozen or dried to choose from in Lagos. So if you have a party, rather than start slaughtering two to three cows, give the people the varieties of fishes, add chicken, turkey and goats. Don’t forget there are snails and other varieties of games from the bushes. Believe me the party is done and the herders can keep their cows. Allow this to roll for three months and we see what happens.
Just about the time I finished writing this piece, I heard the striking northerners are calling off the strike and I didn’t appreciate it one bit. My take is this strike and prevention of food produce to the south from the north is an opportunity to know and show our worth and ability to effectively take advantage of situations. This, certainly is the time to show that each region has something to share with the others and that the south food dependency on the North is not total. I was hoping it will last a little longer, though I was sure it was an effort in futility as Nigerian Southerners are the biggest purchasers of the North’s goods and services.
This is the best time to show that no region has too much advantage on food supply over the other. After all we have cotton, products from cassava produce; we have gari, fufu, lafun, starch, cassava flakes among others from cassava. We have palm oil, palm kernel oil and nuts, froth, wine and other wastes products that are not entirely wastes but useful for making fire and other things.
We still have our yam, cocoyam, odunkun (sweet potato), cocoa, beans, our specie of kolanuts, bitter kola, species of pepper and tomatoes among others. We have our green vegetables and really, I can go on and on. When we talk of fruits, we are not lagging behind. Banana and plantain are there, oranges, iyeye, star fruit, agbalumo, oronbo, pear, pineapple, amongst others. So who say we’re not able to feed ourselves? Our major constraints now is our governors, our leaders who should put their feet down and say no to herders and their cattle on our farmlands.
On the question of whether Kwara state is north or south, someone wrote, “I watch a video of where the people in charge stopped the Trailers at Jebba which is a boarder town with Kwara State. The Trailers were stopped from moving down South, they were instructed to turn back or offload their vehicles at Jebba. Only Trucks loaded with petroleum products are allowed to move.
“From the above, I can deduce two issues. The first is that the North do not see Kwara State as part of them when it comes to real issues like supplying of food items but they only see Kwara State as part of the North when they want to use them for political gain. Why is the Northern Task Force in charge of this strike stopping the Trailers at Jebba which is the last town in Niger State before Kwara State? Why not a boarder town at Kwara before Ogbomoso?”
I want to say I move in tandem with him and I hope those of us that are Kwarans will wake up and decide where we belong.
The question of why stopping trailers from Jebba Kwara and not Ogbomiso is a million dollar question and I hope our leaders would give the answer. Be that as it may, the fact on ground now is that on issue of food sustainability, the south can do it if the will is there.
*Doyin writes from Ilorin via e-Mai: [email protected]
