Food is an essential commodity that one cannot live without. Foods are the basic building blocks for good health. Without food, or when not properly taken, one will be malnourished.
Muslims are observing one of their holy months. It’s the 9th month of the Hijrah Calendar which is the holy month of Ramadan where every healthy, mature Muslim is expected to abstain from any act that will render void.
These are abstaining from eating, drinking, sexual intercourse, and others for 29-30 days consecutively. Failure to do that will attract severe punishment except one falls under the category of young, old, sick, travelers, breastfeeding mothers, and a host of others that are exempted from fasting but will pay back after the month or will feed the needy instead.
Amidst all the hunger and thirst, food prices are on the rise. Though some since the initially planned increment over two weeks ago, they did not add a Kobo to the price till date, like bread, sachet water, etc, unlike rice, beans, sugar, milk, and other related items which prices are on the rise.
Prices of staple foods like rice keep shooting up. Rice is what the poor manages to eat because it requires less labour and fewer ingredients to prepare. With little spices, rice can be consumed unlike others like millet, maize, and a host of others.
In addition, the milk that one takes to feel a bit nourished, even medical practitioners do advise people to always keep it close by especially for those suffering from ulcer and like illnesses for emergency purposes, is now untouchable for the poor. A bag of powdered milk is over N75,000 which makes a measure about N3,000 plus.
Marketers have made it an annual routine, every Ramadan fasting they increase the prices of foodstuff that are in high demand. Some marketers buy these food items at cheap prices months before the commencement of the fasting, and wait for the fasting to sell them at double the prices they bought them.
In the third and fourth week of the Ramadan, in respect to the preparation of the Eid celebration, those that will be largely used, will be artificially made scarce just to double the prices when the demand is high (when Eid finally comes).
Despite the recession and others, everybody wants to get rich through exorbitant prices of commodities that finally fall heavily on the poor man in the streets. To make the matters worse, job opportunities are nowhere.
Yet upon all these quagmires, nobody is saying anything that will at least give a poor man on the street hope that things will get better. This can push many to take up arms as bandits, kidnapers, terrorist, armed robbers, and others, to make ends need.
Government should come to the rescue of poor Nigerians and control the high food prices in the country to make life more meaningful.
Mujahideen Adamu Ali,
Mass Communication Department,
University of Maiduguri.
