The astronomical surge in food prices has forced many Nigerian households to adopt various coping mechanisms to survive, a survey by Financial Vanguard has revealed.
The latest inflation report of the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, indicated that the prices of tomatoes, beans, garri and some other food items have increased by more than 200 percent within a year.
This increase has kept many individuals and households in untold hardship and hunger, as the majority can no longer afford a decent meal a day.
Investigations revealed that many households have been adopting different alternatives to regular food items for survival.
For instance, with fresh tomatoes becoming increasingly unaffordable, many families now rely on tomato paste and palm fruits to prepare meals.
Households adopt alternatives
Speaking to Financial Vanguard in Lagos, Mrs. Kehinde salami, a retired civil servant, said: "The increasing rise in the price of goods and services is terrible.
"Everyday the prices of food items we produce keeps rising.
"Look at beans, yam, tomato, only few people are buying them, especially beans that many households consume once in a very long while.
"Early this year, I bought a paint rubber of honey beans at N6,000. Now the price is N11,000.
"What I do now is to buy one or two derica beans which goes for N4,400.
"Also, for tomatoes, I use the sachet tomatoes and add dry habanero pepper instead of buying N500 fresh pepper that is not up to a handful.
"Now that there is another species of tomato, they now have the portion of N200 and also pepper but it is very small in quantity when compared to how it was portioned early this year.
"I also go for palm oil (Banga), vegetable soups which can be served alongside rice and other delicacies.
"Now, people have embraced many alternatives for survival."
Also speaking, Mrs. Dorin Fehintola, a PoS agent, said: "It is not funny anymore. Parents now put on thinking caps to be able to feed their families.
"Before, in my family we ate beans twice a week in porridge form and cake. Now we single it to cake form once a week to reduce consumption and save cost.
"I replaced tomato sauce with vegetable leaf sauce, carrot sauce, garden egg sauce and palm fruit (Banga) sauce.I use sachet tomatoes when preparing jollof rice.
"I stopped cooking yam and buying bread. Instead I cook cocoyam or spaghetti."
Another respondent in Lagos, Mrs. Kemi Bamidele, a food vendor and baker said the inflation has made life unbearable.
"The government should have put some palliative measures on ground before removing the subsidy. They should do the needful as the masses are very hungry," she said.
On her part, Mrs. Nkem Chukwujekwu, who is a business woman said "the high cost of goods and commodities has really affected us because most food items have become unaffordable.
"Most of us have alternatively chose to replace stew with the local stew we make with palm fruit known as banger stew even with that, but a paint bucket of banger has gone up from N1800 to N4700.
"So the inflation of food has really affected us greatly to a point where most people could barely afford two square meal a day."
Also reacting, Mrs. Ngozi Egwuagha, a business woman and a grandma, stated: "Life in Nigeria has become a nightmare. What used to be our common stable foodstuffs have turned into luxury items.
Beans, rice, garri, yam and all food items are now beyond the reach of common folks. Beans that have been the comfort of average Nigerians where meat and fishes are no longer affordable has gone beyond reach. A derica of honey beans has gone above N2000.
"Almost nothing is within reach. Tomatoes, onions, plantain and garri all are beyond affordable. Life is now a nightmare. An average Nigerian household cannot boast of one square meal a day.
"Everything is like squeezing water out of stone to buy the next meal. No family talks of eating bread, eggs, butter, milk, teas and their likes as all those are now high luxuries. It's been a very difficult and agonizing time for many families."
In his reaction, Mr. Benjamin Nzekwe, a sales executive at DHL, said: "It is painful to even imagine the state of the country right now. To eat two square meals a day is now a problem, talk less of three.
"The cost of food is nothing to write home about and we cannot even afford to buy some food. These days, we eat food without meat or fish because the cost is not affordable. I wish the government could do something fast to alleviate hunger in the country."
In Enugu, some buyers at a market told Financial Vanguard that they have not made stew for their families in a long time. Those who still make stew said they opt for the cheaper, lower-quality 'awarawa' tomatoes, which are often rotten and fungal-infested.
Madam Bridget shared her struggles, saying, "We've stopped eating meat with our meals, and making stew is a rarity. We now buy tomato paste with pepper and onions to make jollof rice, which costs N150, compared to N500 for five pieces of fresh tomatoes, that wouldn't even be enough."
She added that they've had to mix beans with rice due to the high cost and even stopped eating beans altogether after a cup cost them N400.
Madam Gladys, a farmer, also sharing her experience, said: "We now make vegetable sauce to eat with white rice and use locally sourced mushrooms as a substitute for meat. Even finding affordable rice is challenging."
Sellers also lament
At Abakpa Market, sellers complained of poor sales despite having large quantities of tomatoes. One seller attributed the low demand to high transportation costs and fuel prices.
Another market seller narrated her ordeal saying, "You know we have different species of tomatoes. The one I am selling is from Nsukka. Half a paint is N3000, while a full paint is N6000. People buy this type better than the rest, which are of a higher rate. Even so, it's 5 pm and I haven't sold half of what I have in my shade. The high cost of transportation and fuel prices are the causes of all these challenges.
Yet another seller said:, "When things were cheaper, I could sell two big baskets, but now I struggle to sell just one basket. What we do among the sellers is buy and share one basket to sell for the day because we've noticed that not many people buy tomatoes like they used to."
Recall that NBS reported that in June, the prices of tomatoes, beans, potatoes rise above 200 percent in the last one year.
In its Selected Food Price Watch for June 2024, NBS listed the ten most expensive staple foods in Nigeria in June 2024 as: Tomato, Yam tuber, Irish Potato, Brown beans, White black-eyed beans, Unripe Plantain, Onion Bulb, Ripe Plantain, Sweet Potato, and Broken Rice (Ofada).
Traders blame crisis on insecurity
Chairman of Mile 12 International Perishable Market in Lagos, Alh. Shehu Usman, said: "The reason for rising costs of food items is because most farmers in the North have been chased away from the farms by bandits, and many of them are now in IDP camps.
"The only solution to this problem is for people to return to the farms. If you are not farming and you are not importing food, so, how do you get the food?
The people who are struggling to farm cannot farm because bandits are disturbing them.
"The problem is enormous. The federal government should just make sure it provides enough security for people to continue farming. That is the only solution. The government must find a way of taking farmers away from IDP camps back to their farms.
"As long as farmers are not able to go to the farms, food items will remain expensive."
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
In his comment, Chairman of Ile Epo Market, Oke Odo, Alh. Taofik Olorunkemi, said that insecurity is the major issue of the hike in food items because the farmers are not able to go to the farms due to the menace of kidnapping.
"Another reason for the food inflation is the increase in the price of petrol as a result of the removal of fuel subsidy, which has led to an increase in the cost of transportation.
"Also, many of the villagers who normally bring food items to the market no longer come around, because of civilisation. So, we sometimes have to go to the villages ourselves to source for the items," he stated.
FG committed to food security
Meanwhile, the federal government has taken steps to crash the prices of some staple foods with the suspension of import duties and taxes on essential food items.
This is in addition to the government's avowed commitment to ensure food security through the use of new farming techniques in Nigeria.
Speaking at a recent event, Minister of State for Agriculture and Food Security, Dr Aliyu Abdullahi, stated: "We are putting all efforts in place to ensure the availability of food across the country."
He said the government was exploring various indices to ensure food security, working to ramp up food production by returning Nigeria to a sustainable food production system where the country would be engaged in all-year-round farming.
"We are fully aware of the current food challenge in Nigeria. and we are already planning for the next dry season.
"Having learned our lesson in the last one, we want to make a huge success of the next dry season farming.
"We in the Ministry of Agricultural Food Security are doing all we can, all that is necessary, all that is sufficient to reverse the current trend, ramp up our production, guarantee that with massive production, affordability can be guaranteed."
