Barely 11 weeks to yuletide season, there are indications that poor Nigerians, whose living standards are presently below the middle class level, may end up celebrating the festive season without rice and complementary proteins like turkey or chicken to eat.
This is because the market prices of both imported foreign parboiled and locally manufactured brands have continued to skyrocket following the outright closure of the nation’s land borders, the routes through which these contraband food items are smuggled into the Nigerian markets.
High demand for rice and proteins during the yuletide season can be attributed to the celebrations, including weddings, anniversaries and other kinds of parties that come with the season.
Apart from rice and frozen foods, Nigerians may also have to pay premium to buy vegetable oil that are locally manufactured as the smuggled oil that formerly compete with the local brands, hardly find their way into the Nigerian markets.
By implication, it has been estimated that Nigerians may end up buying one 50kg bag of foreign parboiled rice for over N40,000, if the border remained closed as the local production may not be sufficient to cater for the demand in Nigeria.
BDSUNDAY recent market survey shows that the price of rice has skyrocketed as one bag of 50kg of imported parboiled rice, which formerly goes for N14,500 now sells for as much as N25,000 while local rice, which hitherto goes for N13,500 now sells for N18,200.
Also, one cartoon of frozen turkey now goes for over N18,000; one cartoon of frozen ‘Orobo’ chicken formerly sold for N8,500 or N9,000 now goes for N15,000 while a cartoon of Nigerian chicken, which people rarely due to poor quality, now goes for N12,000.
Following the scarcity of imported frozen turkey in Nigerian markets, one live turkey now sells as high as N35,000. However, it has been predicted that the price of one live turkey may likely be sold for N50,000 during the yuletide season.
“Prices of rice, groundnut oil, frozen chicken and turkey, which people smuggle through the borders to make up with the supply gap created by insufficient local production, have gone up in the last five weeks,” said a rice seller, who gave her name as Iya Bolu.
Iya Bolu, who was pessimistic that prices of the above listed food items would come down anytime soon, said her fear was that prices would continue to go up, going by the fact that increase in prices of food items are in line with high demands that comes with the season.
“Years back when rice used to be in surplus supply, prices used to go up during yuletide, now that we have seen noticeable supply gap, one can imagine what would happen in the next one month,” she said.
According to her, dealers are beginning to stock-up their warehouses by hoarding the available ones in preparation for the yuletide when the volume of foreign rice consumed by every Nigerian family, doubles.
Meanwhile, Eke Udochukwu, a Lagos-based businessman, told BDSUNDAY that there is still regular supply of foreign rice at N24, 000 to N25,000 per bag of 50kg in most places in Lagos.
According to him, this could also be an indication that smuggling still thrives, but at a higher cost and lower rate, meaning more income for those (security agencies) involved, yet government gets no revenue.
Udochukwu, who said that a portion of cooked rice that was formerly sold for N100 has been up-scaled to N150/N200 at the cafeteria.
“With over 2,000 border routes, one cannot expect the border closure to miraculously end the problem of smuggling. It is sad that the nation has not seen the need to have clear trade and industrial policies that would reduce Nigeria’s dependence on import, reduce smuggling and increase the country’s production sufficiency,” he said.
Udochukwu, who faulted the claims of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) that the service is presently recording high revenue as it was reported that Customs now generates over N5.5 billion daily since the border was shut.
“It is not to say there aren’t some benefits of this protectionist policy but it is deceptive not to tell the whole story. It would also be sycophantic to only applaud Customs when Nigerians see that these grey areas that led to the shutting down of the border are not being addressed,” he said.
Recall that Hameed Ali, comptroller-general of the Nigerian Customs Service (NCS) told members of the Senate last week that the closure of the border, has led to increase in revenue as the Service collected N9.2 billion in one day in the month of September, which never happened before.
“Since then, we have maintained an average of about N4.7 billion to N5.8 billion on a daily basis which is far more than we used to collect. We discovered that most of those cargoes that used to go to Benin Republic before being smuggled into Nigeria, now come to Nigeria direct because cargo owners are now forced to bring their goods to either Apapa or Tin-Can Island Port,” he said.
The Federal Government rice policy projects that Nigeria is expected to, not only produce enough rice for local consumption but for export in the nearest future. This is just a projection as the reality on ground is that the totality of local production and imports, together with the smuggled quantities, cannot match the high demand.
This explains the reason for the exorbitant price of rice as it is sold today in Nigerian market. Surprisingly, the locally manufactured rice appears to be non-existent in the market while a derica of available local grain, which formerly sells for N250, now sells for N320 per derica.
Pundits believed that government needs to adopt a gradual approach in implementing the rice policy to avoid creating more hunger and hardship for the populace.
To them, outright banning it will simply create market distortions and worsen the plights of households because prices will rise, and more people will fall into poverty.
According to them, the danger in adopting protectionist policy like outright border closure, lies in the failure to understand that it will take time for local production to pick as firms cannot automatically raise production.
Therefore, government needs to create more incentives for manufacturers to become competitive and also ensure the availability of needed infrastructure, which would lower prices.
AMAKA ANAGOR-EWUZIE
