The situation has forced many housewives to adopt different survival strategies to cope with the escalating prices in view of fixed food allowances.
An investigation by our correspondent revealed that flooding in some key food producing states, particularly in the North, was largely responsible for the latest rise in the prices of major food items across the country.
The prices of tomato, pepper and other soup ingredients, it was gathered, started shooting up in June, which incidentally witnessed heavy rainfall in most parts of the country.
The number of lorries that convey the ingredients to Lagos and other parts of the country has considerably reduced, thereby leading to the scarcity of items like different varieties of pepper, tomato and onion.
Sellers of the items in some of the markets visited by our correspondent between Friday and Monday said that they had to make do with small quantities of the produce conveyed by mini-buses.
Some of the traders at the Mile 12 Market attributed the increase in prices to heavy rainfall and the resultant floods, which had washed away large quantities of ripe crops before they could be harvested from the farms.
Apart from the flood problems, our correspondent also gathered that the high cost of transportation also contributed to the escalating prices of the ingredients.
The situation, according to traders, is being exacerbated by extortion at the many police checkpoints on the way to Lagos, in addition to the activities of tax collectors.
A big basket of tomatoes at the Mile 12 Market, which cost N6,000 in April, now sells for N11,000, an 83 per cent increase.
The survey by our correspondent also showed that a big basket of tatashe (pepper), which now sells for N15,000, on the average, sold for N7,000 throughout the second quarter of the year. This represents a 114 per cent increase.
Similarly, atarodo, another variety of pepper, which sold for N3,000 a basket some months back, is now being sold for N6,000, representing an increase of 100 per cent. However, the price of onion only rose by 31 per cent, from N6,500 to N8,500 within the same period.
A pepper seller at Mile 12, Mr. Omotayo Lawal, who confirmed the adjustment in the prices of the ingredients, attributed the development to the recent heavy rainfall across the country, adding that farmers were afraid to cultivate new crops because they recorded heavy losses as a result of flooding.
He also said that the high prices were as a result of the difficulties being encountered by dealers in transporting the items from the farms to major cities like Lagos, where they were heavily consumed.
Lawal said, “Transporters with big lorries from various sources have also refused to travel down to Lagos because of the fear of spending all their profits on the roads.
“Some of them, who manage to bring the ingredients, have to cover the buses so that policemen and tax collectors will not know what they are carrying. Look at me now; I can only afford to sell only one ingredient. This will continue until the prices of the other ingredients come down, maybe after the raining season.”
“I don’t even want to know the cost; I have to sell at any price they bring in order to earn a living and feed my family,” another pepper seller, who simply identified himself as Semiu, said.
An onion seller, Alhaji Mohammad Aliyu, said that apart from the flooding problem, old onion bulbs were usually expensive at this time, adding that the price would come down when new ones started coming out.
Meanwhile, consumers are now adopting different methods to cope with the situation.
Many households now buy little quantities of fresh ingredients and combine them with dried pepper and packaged tomatoes in cans.
A businesswoman, Mrs. Nike Olatunji, said that the situation was getting unbearable, adding, “It has not been easy, especially having to manage the monthly allowance every time. I have to do a lot of explanation to convince my husband to increase the food allowance.
“So, when I cannot afford fresh tomatoes, I buy tin tomatoes; and when I cannot afford fresh atarodo, I go for dried pepper.”
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