orjidaniel@aol.com
Locally grown food, local content for local consumption, why do we have less money in circulation yet the cost of locally grown food is gradually on the increase and nothing is being done as yet to mitigate this rising menace.
Yes Senator Ben Murray Bruce made salient points during the plenary session of the Senate few days ago, the fact of his submission is the continuous increase in suffering of Nigerians, the poor masses. One major point he made and proffered solution for; is the issue of rising cost of locally produced foods that Nigerians majorly depend on. Now he hinged the cause in the rise of cost of locally grown food to the rising cost of transportation, invariably putting the blame on transporters. He made little reference too rising cost of diesel but didn't marry it to the transport cost when he finally made his submission on his proposed solution to the problem of rising cost of food.
Yes, we all know that cost of transport had to move up because there had upward review in cost of fuel be it petrol, diesel or domestic gas. If a truck driver bought diesel at more than 50% increase in cost, wouldn't he translate this to the cost of conveying goods? Of course he would, and that is the root problem we have here, the rise in cost of locally made food is not directly the fault of transporters, neither is it the fault of the sellers in the market, but purely the fault of the governments. Don't expect a truck driver to buy diesel at over 210 Naira per liter to charge you same fare as he usually does when he bought diesel for 140 Naira per liter. No one, no transporter will do that.
Senator Ben Bruce apparently put the blame on the transporters and ask for a government regulation on what the transporter can charge for conveying goods/food from point of production to point of consumption. Now that is the problem, regulating a liberal market is wrong and cannot work, in fact it would be unfair to the operators in that sector because they would most definitely run at a loss. Transport sector as it were, is an unregulated sector, transporters charge fares/fee that is best suitable for their profitability. If government cannot fix the price of diesel or subsidize the cost, then it doesn't have any business regulating cost of transportation that is majorly powered especially by diesel, because the transport cost reflects the average cost of diesel in the land.
In my opinion, Senator Bruce made his points clear and they are excellent, but the solution he proffered by asking for government regulations and a cap on transfer fare; is inadequate giving that the sector is liberal and largely powered by unregulated cost of diesel is inadequate and cannot solve the problem. Yes, there could be regulations, but there must be direct government intervention in those areas before regulations could be enforced.
What I believe the government could do to ease the rising cost of locally grown food is to provide subsidized, effective and timely transportation/logistic support to farmers who want to move their produce from their farms to the city. They can engage specialized, committed and focused private operators for this purpose.
I hear a lot of politically correct statements from our politicians about how they plan to ("plan to, going to, will to, soon to") lend support to farmers so they could be able to move their farm produce to the cities, do we have any of these "plan to, going to, will to" kind of politically correct statements making any impact as yet? Are they being sincere about such statements? Or perhaps they might be sincere, but the "WILL" to execute the statement is not there anymore soon after the elections and press conferences were over.
The government must design a sustainable road map designed to bring down the costs of the food we grow, produce and eat locally in Nigeria. These are foods that don't depend of foreign exchange, no dollar is being planted to harvest local foods, so why should we be having steady increase in the cost of food we produce and eat in Nigeria?
We all know the government have put wonderful policies in place to address the needs of the Agricultural sector which is a major sector in our economy, but the fact remains that we still have 3 major problems which has always brought hardship to ordinary Nigerians.
(1) Bad Roads, in some cases no roads at all leading from the inner farms to the cities
(2) Cost of Diesel, ever increasing.
(3) interstate taxes, local government levies, extortion by men in uniforms and local government touts etc.
Secondly, the government can subsidize the cost of transporting the farm produce to the city. This can be achieved through state governments, co-operatives, community leadership councils, or even the NGOs and CLOs.
Talking about extortion by uniform men, its an endemic problem and it has to do with morals. Having policemen on highways is to primarily ensure safety and security of people and property. Extortion has to stop at all levels. I know farmers pay levies and taxes to the center, this should be minimal and designed to encourage the farmers to increased productivity, not to kill their businesses. Transporting their produce is an indirect levy on the farmers, how can this be reduced?
This is about the only country in the world where touts go around markets and business places to collect money unlawfully for some kind of political godfathers or a local kings or chief. This has to stop because it adds up to the cost of the foods Nigerians buy. It paints a scenario where farmer are over burdened with fees, traders who buy from farmers to resell are also over burdened with fees and levies, where do these cost components go? Off course to our wallets, the final consumer, you and I.
For us to move forward, we need to know what is stopping us, why that thing is stopping us and then we can design how and where to start solving the problem.
What do you think?
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