Kola Animasun
4 May 2008
Lagos — THIS country deserves whatever is coming to it. I mean the scarcity of food items and the attendant high prices.
For ages, I have contemplated what I missed and I live on memories of good times and for times that may never come back except we make very conscious efforts to retrieve that past.
I was poignantly reminded by a news item of April 25, 2008. In the item, I was informed that our country would be making a statement on its readiness to take control of the world's agri-business and Culinary tourism.
It was to be a food fare and thanks to the African Pot - Nigeria's premier television culinary programme. Perhaps, this is not a time for culinary tourism. Perhaps, it is. And it is a wonder why and how we will feed tourists with our specialities while our people go hungry. There were times when we had enough and quite a bumper to spare.
I do not know of the other ethnic groups but the Yoruba were very settled in their minds when they said: Bi ebiba kuro ninu ise, ise buse.
When hunger is removed from poverty, none is left. They had been apprised of the place of food production and so the people planted all sorts of foods items and they had cocoyams, yams -the main stream yam and water yam; they planted awuje; they planted beans.
They planted cassava as well. The land provided them all sorts of edible plants and the list is endless. There is gboro or munututu; there is igba; there is iworoko; there is ishapa. There were varieties of okro and efo (vegetables).
From these various food items are food made. Igba (garden egg) is eaten as it is still done today, but you have to taste the soup for a new experience; from the creeper - gboro - they made another kind of soup, from okro you can have orunla.
The beauty is, nothing is useless. You can cook the leaves shredded as soup as well. I can talk on and on about soup.
An isapa soup with fish garnish needs no meat. And as children we relished it and we did not care about whether there was meat or not. Yoruba soups and varieties are inexhaustible.
We now know about two or so varieties of gari but there are more. Gari as in the grain, eba which is universal. Cassava is perhaps the most versatile of our crops. From it we get the cassava flour. The beans may be more versatile.
You can make the gbegiri soup; you can eat it boiled; you may want to make akara ball from it or your favourite moin-moin etc. etc. Perhaps the maize is equally versatile. From the ogi paste you can make the eko ball (eko tutu) or the eko drink (the pap). It is a good combination with beans or it could be eaten boiled or roasted. It can come as egbo - a boiled and mashed concoction.
We have selectively narrowed our options and have limited our choices. We have killed the initiative of the farmers and we are the worse for it.
As culinary specialities we have upped the prices where they are available. As a tourism culinary item it will still cost more.
We must concentrate on awakening the people's interest to stimulate demand and encourage the farmers to produce them.
I have merely dwelt on the Yoruba ones that I know and there are thousands more in other parts of the country and conscious efforts must be made to boost them for our collective well-being. I have always said that a country that cannot feed itself is not a safe country.
Omo r'abe, t'abe
THE Yoruba people have a way of describing a trader who sells at a loss as Omo r'abe, t'abe (one who sells for the price he buys a commodity.
The Senate Committee on the Federal Capital Territory investigating the sale of properties in Abuja has been told how a German firm, Hans Gremly, bought the Abuja Sheraton Hotel and Towers for a "paltry" $34 million. This was an hotel that cost the government N300 million to build. And this was loan obtained from a German Bank.
When the loan could not be paid back, the Federal Government acquired 87 percent of its equity. For an hotel built in 1982 the price ought to have appreciated and one would have expected the selling price to have been at least N300 million if not more.
But Nigerians move in very mysterious ways.
They use national wealth to service themselves and their cronies. Ikechukwu Obiora submitted that BPE might have been under pressure from the Presidency which "was known for calling the shots during the period of sales of Federal Government Properties".
That may be true but it depends on what brief BPE gave the presidency or how the agency wrote the brief in the first place. And that was not the only enterprise that had been undervalued and sold. Due process was not always followed and a case in point has to do with government-owned insurance company - NICON.
Ownership of the winning team came in mid-stream. And you wonder why the government and the new owners are currently at loggerheads for the soul of the company. It even sold beyond the statutory 51%. And it had no constitutional backing to do that.
"Why must BPE sell at very much below cost price? Why did it not "suspend the sale and wait for such a time when the market was conducive for the sale?", Obiora asked,
BPE's Irene Chigbue said the properties were valued by experts valuers who gave the various reserve prices. She said BPE was being guided by the rules for the sale of the properties.
If the Federal Government had divested fully, it would have returned N68 million on its investment of N300 million and that means a loss of over N200 million on investment. And that is not talking of other expenses to be deducted.
No wonder the committee was not satisfied with the work that the BPE has done. I am not satisfied either. And government should have a close look into the finances of the personnel of the BPE. I smell a rat.
Yar'Adua rejects report on oil sector reform
PRESIDENT Umar Yar'Adua turned down an interim report on oil sector reforms. I cannot see that he did not like the reforms but he was not enamored by certain part of it.
Precisely the staff disposition was such that we might be paying for more hands than we need.
And they would not be efficient.
Yar'Adua sent them back to the drawing board rejecting the duplication of offices that accompanied the new firms and regulatory agencies created out of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and other government-owned companies in the industry.
Headed by Rilwan Lukman, Honourary Adviser to the President on Energy and Strategic Matters, Yar'Adua gave them the option of a holiday to some oil producing countries like Norway, Qatar and one Asian country.
It is to enable them study "how oil sectors are run". It should not be job for the boys. I hope we shall break away from the vicious cycle.
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