How would you describe a people who are able to look a powerful enemy in the face and gird themselves to do battle, even if that enemy had beaten and plundered them many times over? Heroic! For countering the rising price of garri by flooding the markets with the product, the people of Enugu in South East Nigeria are Heroes.
Their heroism approximates, even if by a lesser degree, that of Frederick the Great of Prussia (Germany) who saw potato’s potential to help feed his nation and lower the price of bread, but faced the challenge of overcoming the people’s prejudice against the plant. In the end, potatoes, which were even described by the people as tasteless and without smell, gained traction, saving the country from starvation many times.
Describing the good people of Enugu as heroes is within the context that the country has been ambushed and raped by rising prices in recent times,including the price of food. As with national statistics, the trend is that while the general prices of goods are inching downwards, that of food continues to soar. Garri is among the staples that were beginning to go out of reach of the people, selling for more than N1, 250 just a quarter ago. For the benefit of our non African readers, “Garri is a creamy-white, granular flour with a slightly fermented flavour and a slightly sour taste made from fermented, gelatinised fresh cassava tubers. Garri is widely known in Nigeria and other West African countries”.
The irony in high prices is in the fact that Nigeria is the world’s highest producer of cassava.According to Wikipedia, “the crop is produced in 24 of the country’s 36 states. In 1999, Nigeria produced 33 million tonnes, while a decade later; the country produced approximately 45 million tonnes, which is almost 19% of production in the world. The average yield per hectare is 10.6 tonnes”.
The paradox is further seen in 2002, during the presidency of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, a Presidential Initiative was embarked on to ramp up more areas for cassava cultivation, taking up the number to 5 million hectares by the end of 2010 with a projected annual yield of 150 million tonnes.The big question is, where are all the cassava? Unfortunately, many have been exported for dollars. It was part of the original plan to export to the tune of $5billion. The untoward result of reckless exportation is high prices. The same fate suffered by Nigerians for unbridled yam export.
The rise in the price of the product threatens many families; several of whom already live below the poverty line. But the people of Enugu decided not to succumb to that threat. They faced the challenge head on and many headed to the farms to plant the cassava crop from which Garri is derived. The result today is that the price of the product has crashed by 60 percent to N450 from N1, 250 in those parts. What a glorious outcome.
What is particularly sterling about the feat is that Enugu is not on the list of the highest growers of cassava in the country. The big time cassava states are neighbouring Anambra and Benue. Others are Delta, Edo,Cross River, Imo, Oyo, and Rivers, and to a lesser extent Kwara and Ondo’.
There are very important lessons here for Nigerians; the first is that every problem, no matter how intractable, can be overcome. The country is enmeshed with myriad problems, including corruption, insurgency, bad government and a backwater economy. These problems can be surmounted if tackled frontally as the people of Enugu did with garri price.
The second lesson is that we have the answers to every challenge within us. We do not necessarily need foreign intervention to deal with our challenges. And the solutions are often simple and in front of us, only if we can apply ourselves.“How do we tackle the high price of garri”, the Enugu people may have asked themselves. “’Let us farm more cassava’ they must have told themselves”. And three months later, problem solved. Let us ask ourselves the basic and primordial questions that need answers in tackling the challenges of the country. Every other state should pick a lesson or two from Enugu.
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