HONESTLY, I get disturbed whenever I ponder on why the agricultural policies of past governments in Nigeria have not manifested in abundant food for the teeming population, despite the yearly allocation to the Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources.

It is even more worrying that at 49 years, we are yet to find our bearing in terms of common agricultural products, such as tomato, pepper and onion, which are indispensable for daily cooking in our homes. These ingredients are largely cultivated  in some northern parts of the country and transported to the southern part  where they are in high demand.

The issue is that the availability of these ingredients in our markets is dictated by season, that is, the dry and rainy season. The price of onion and pepper, for instance, is said to be low during the dry season. While it goes up in the rainy season. The price of tomato is said to go up during the rainy season and crashes during the dry season.

The problems associated with making up for whatever price variation of the commodities are usually borne by the women  whose primary responsibility is to cook for their families.

However, it is disgusting to note that the stakeholders in our agriculture ministries have still not been able to think-up a way out of this appalling situation as our women would not suffer heartache, if past governments had evolved a measure to make the availability of tomato, pepper and onion all-year-round.

Recently, women in Ibadan particularly, were subjected to an embarrassing situation in their attempt to source for tomato and pepper at some of the popular markets in the state, arising from rumoured crisis in some northern parts of the country, the source the commodities are cultivated.

This is indeed quite baffling,  since the failure or otherwise of a segment of the country to satisfy consumer demand, especially in the southwestern Nigeria, could result in acute shortage of the these vital ingredients.

One is tempted to believe that the government and stakeholders in the agriculture sector have been using the sector as a conduit pipe to siphon money into private pockets, while Nigerians still grapple with the lingering problem of food scarcity. If this is not the stance of agriculture policy makers, how come a whopping sum of N200bn was reported in the papers to have suddenly disappeared into God knows where.

There is also the angle of the nation’s universities’ departments of Agriculture, and even our universities of agriculture  which are yet to live up to expectations by tackling the problem of continued food scarcity head-on, through viable research projects that would place Nigeria among the comity of nations whose citizenry are well-fed.

Fortune Bani,
Ojoo, Ibadan.

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