Why Food Prices Keep Going up - Mile 12 Market Leader Explains

Panla fish is now N11,000, it used to be N7,500. A bag of garri now costs N26,000.

It is not news that food prices have dramatically increased all over the nation. Still for a lot of us, the civilians buying these foods, we have no idea WHY this price increase is happening.

Finally, to clear up some doubts and to give us insight into what exactly is causing all this, the Chairman of the Mile 12 International Market, Mr Shehu Jubril sat down with the women of Your View to answer some questions about the situation. This is what he said.

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The first question the interviewer asked was What are the indices (indicators) that determine the prices of goods and services such that we are seeing it at this time skyrocketing?

to which Mr. Jubril responded:

We experienced this thing (prices going up) last year too because of flood. Last year was a terrible year for us, the flood has taken so many things and what we are expecting to get from the North, we couldn’t get it as much as possible. By now we should be able to have Northern tomatoes, onions - we have onions - but tomato, pepper doesn’t come from core North – I’m talking Kano, Kaduna, and all those places that have it abundantly. It is seasonal. We need to have it up to this time, like maybe January, February, March, April, May, June up till July. August even.

To which the interviewer cut in and said, So last year was flooding, what’s the cause now?

Mr. Jubril answered:

This one is loss – a lot of harvest lost. We have experienced a lot of harvest loss. Usually when you have such situation, you need to get the cover-up from the southern crops which is from Odoba, from Benin Republic, from Cameroon – but those ones too are not coming. It’s not time for them to come because we have shorter time from the north. It’s supposed to be like 6, 7 months (how much time food from the North is supposed to last) – but this time, we only have it like 4 months. So we have a shortage of it. (Normally), at the time we have the Northern ones going (out of season), we expect the Southern ones to be coming in.

Poking for more, the interviewers asked saying The prices this year have really gone much higher compared to previous years. Is this only about the shortages?

To which Mr. Jubril said:

There is also insecurity. For instance Maiduguri we used to have dry pepper from Maiduguri that covers up this scenario but if you don’t have tomato, you go for the dry tomato, you go for dry things. Those are the things that come from Maiduguri but almost half of the farmers in Maiduguri are not farming, you can see where they are – they’re displaced. Even the core Northern farmers are facing challenge of insecurity. You and I know what they’re facing. They go to farm, they get killed. They’ll be asked for ransom to even curtail what they have in the farm.

Lagos doesn’t have a problem of food. It’s better that you even have it at a higher price than not having it at all. We’re talking about food. You must eat. You’re drinking tea now, you have everything so it’s easier for you here with much money that you have than to not have anything.

The interviewer asked Are there any mechanisms put into place by the market to protect consumers because some people are thinking maybe wholesalers and retailers are trying to take advantage of the whole situation?

Mr. Jubril responded saying:

At all. Absolutely not. There’s no way you can hide these perishable items, they are things that you have absolutely no way to control them. If it is ripe in your farm, you need to bring it down to the market and there is no way you can hide this thing, you have to bring it down to the market unless you lose so what do you do?

So there’s no mechanism to check the pricing at all?

Absolutely not. There’s no way.

Would you advice that states now push towards self-sustenance? Like when we had the Union farmers going on strike, people in the south where like we can grow our onions. Should we push for that so that cost of transportation goes down and access to farmers is easier?

You see the major problem is that 90% of this problem is caused by the elites, people that call themselves educated. Somebody that has never been to a farm, that knows nothing about the farm but you go to the government and speak big English for them and they give you money meant for farmers and you divert the money into something else and leave the farmer in the farm. I’ve been the Financial Secretary and Chairman now of this market for over 20 years. There was never a time anyone from Federal Government came to ask how far we are, what are you doing in this market? Who are the farmers we can support? Who we can help? To get data. Nobody.

So a shortage of food because of flooding and climate problems, insecurity, and money mismanagement is what is causing this price increase.

Nawa! Things are really getting out of hand. At least we now have more information about why exactly this is happening and hopefully, this takes us closer to finding a solution for the problem.

That's All.

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