Ikechukwu Obi
A couple of days ago, my wife startled me with a question –
“When last did you eat beef?”
I was startled for the reason that I have been eating meat(s) every day. So I answered,
“I’ve been eating meat since naaa”
She said, “No, I mean beef”.
You see, my surprise was that I did not quite realize that I had not been eating beef for many weeks now. We eat goatmeat, chicken, pork, fish etc. I was surprised that I could do without beef for so long yet not know it! As in, I didn’t know beef was NOT so important to my diet! A realisation that has turned to a boycott.
This so-called food blockade between the North and South by a hitherto unknown trade centre, Amalgamated Union of Foodstuff and Cattle Dealers of Nigeria (AUFCDN), is rather amusing. I see many Northern friends and a major Northern media house playing it up to the fullest. Media watchers understand what is going on. It’s just about agenda setting in a Nigeria where perception is stronger than reality. Tomorrow, whenever any Southern regions make demands of the centre, those who are trumpeting this so-called blockade will be able to say, “Remember how we almost starved you in 2021”. They will hope to use this in the media space to cow some Southern nannies in the continuing identity politics which define Nigeria. It’s just a play on controlling the narrative, the same way they’re moving towards branding the terrorists as victims.
Let me just say a few things –
1. There is no food scarcity in the South.
2. There is no imminent food scarcity or starvation in the South. Daily Trust’s alarming headline this morning is all so amusing
3. It will take at least 5-6months consumption-without-replenishment before Southern food stocks in markets run out and before any real scarcity will be noticed in cities and communities. It will take years before Southern food production capacity will be stretched and tested to the point of being noticed as a major issue. There is no such issue of food insecurity in the South, not beyond what Nigeria has been since 1966.
4. If the so-called blockade persists beyond those few months, these will be the natural consequences –
i) hundreds of vessels bearing food will be waiting to dock in the ports of neighbouring countries
ii) smuggling will burst Nigeria’s borders in the South East and the South West. Nigeria never had the ability to monitor her borders in the best of times much less in crisis. And since small arms are now like pure water, food convoys will be escorted at gunpoint. Please refer my previous post here titled, ‘Time is Coming in Nigeria.
iii) intra-regional ‘smuggling’ between North and South will take over the conventional means being disrupted by radical youths on the highways. States like Benue who are NOT sympathetic to the Northern agenda will continue to be points of trade. So long as there are demand and supply, the smuggler will bridge the gap, quite so simple.
iv) the affordability index is higher in the South. What this means is that while prices may shoot up as a result of the sustained blockade, it will not lead to anything remarkable. And alternatives abound. On the other hand, this cannot be said of Northern farmers who cannot sell their produce, especially perishable goods. Statistics speak poorly of the rate of poverty in the North, no pun intended.
5. Personally, I don’t see any matter in this blockade. When people get tired of sitting with their rotten tomatoes and onions, they will sell them. Elementary economics trumps all madness. We saw it with onions not long ago. But let’s hypothesize – supposing the South takes similar action, what happens?
i) all production of crude oil will be shut down
ii) the difference here will be BOTH Southern and Northern states will suffer it.
iii) looking at a list of state viability in Nigeria, there are far more Northern than there is Southern and so the Northern states will suffer more if there are no sharable revenues available. Plain stats.
6. Real crisis retaliation? All petroleum products can also be stopped from getting to the North…tankers can be turned back. Guess what will happen?
i) perennial fuel scarcity in the North; prices will shoot up here (which would also reverberate southwards, surely)
ii) life will gradually grind to a halt or there will be a resort to camels and donkey
iii) reliance on the Soraz refinery in the Niger Republic will help the way one tablet of paracetamol will help in malaria.
I don’t think there’s anything written here that isn’t backed by facts. Ok, that’s as far as addressing bullshits and mutual madness goes.
Back to reality, the movement of goods North-South is of mutual benefit. If conflict goes down the wire, all will lose but some more fatally than others. Commonsense sees that the problem here lies with the political framework needed to regulate this trade. That framework is embedded in a dubious Constitution which has foisted a useless-to-purpose President on you.
So the commonsense question is – what do you do about it? The mutual madness option attracts me sometimes. Let’s test it and see…
