BY LEKAN SOTE
An embarrassing comparison is doing the rounds on social media: Ukraine, with a mere 600,000 square kilometres of land, is 2 percent of Africa’s landmass of 30 million square kilometres. Its 40 million population is 3 percent of Africa’s 1.3 billion people.
Yet, most shamefully, Africa, with big giant Nigeria, is waiting on Ukraine, whose lands and sea ports have been under a siege laid by “Misha,” the belligerent Russian bear, for wheat to convert to bread to feed its people.
For Nigeria, the embarrassment is even beyond the wheat, flour and bread value chain. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo recently revealed that Nigeria produces only 1.1 trillion metric tonnes of fish it consumes annually. The balance of 2 trillion metric tonnes is imported.
Late Juju musician, General Prince Adekunle, once sang a supplication to the Almighty God in the following terms: “Give us this day our daily bread.” Though he wanted God, the El Shaddai, the All Sufficient God, to provide for him, his lyrics could be taken literally these days.
May Nigerians not be soon reduced to the position of the protagonist of a short video skit, who stole bread from a food shop to feed his family, but whose shame was hidden from his daughter by a kind shop owner.
The shop owner, figuring that the thief might be hard up, even issued him with a wad of notes, pretending it was his balance which he forgot to collect. Another shop patron beckoned him to collect a bag of rice, pretending that he paid for it.
The benevolent shop owner and the other patron, better off than this poor man, obviously thought he must have stolen the bread to feed his family that including his little girl who accompanied him to the shop.
If a man has to steal an item of staple food, you can imagine when all citizens of a country are unable to buy the staple. It means that other food items, that are more expensive, are out of reach.
To reflect the scarcity of flour derived from wheat, Nigerian bakers raised the price of bread by more than 20 per cent, while some bakers embarked on a four-day warning strike. Bread that was sold for N500 up to mid-2021 is now going for N700.
Thomas Odey, a member of Cross Rivers State bakers’ association said, “The planned increment (that they have already effected) is not even enough! This is because the price of every means of production has increased– from condiments to diesel and all other raw materials.”
He added the international dimension: “This is a global issue that is not peculiar to Nigeria, or (even) materials (used by) bakers alone. But the price of every foodstuff has increased significantly.”
You get the sense that Odey is using the global bread crisis to cut the Nigerian government some slacks and to justify the increased price that bakers charge for bread and other confectioneries that they sell.
“Maybe the Central Bank of Nigeria’s Governor, Godwin Emefiele, who prefers to dabble in the area of macroeconomic policies, while abandoning his monetary policy responsibilities, should add wheat propagation as one of the targets of his Anchor Borrowers scheme”
Not to be outdone, the Premium Bread makers of Nigeria proposed a nationwide strike, which they are yet to carry out, to protest incidentals, like multiple taxations and the high cost of licence renewal. Add to these, an 18.6 per cent inflation rate, Shylock 24 per cent interest rate and N710 parallel market exchange rate.
Bread, the staple food of most Nigerian poor, may no longer be a daily provision, as it has always been, from the day the Ukrainian-Russian War held up the export of wheat from Russia and Ukraine, the two warring nations that supply most of the wheat to the rest of the world.
To confirm that Ukrainian and Russian wheat fields are strategic to the nutritional wellbeing of the rest of the world, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, encouraged both countries to sign different treaties to allow wheat, blocked by Russia at Ukrainian seaports, to be evacuated.
Immediately after the treaties were inked, the price of wheat tumbled by about 5.9 per cent to $7.59 per bushel on America’s Chicago Commodities Exchange. This is expected to significantly ease acute hunger and reduce the price of bread.
But no one should expect instant availability of the wheat. Insurance costs and safety of the crew of the shipping lines threaten to adversely affect the enthusiasm of the shipping lines to go into the Black Sea to evacuate the wheat into the international commodities market.
Happily, on August 1, 2022, the first shipload of all categories of grains, including wheat and corn, was allowed to depart the Ukrainian seaport, though on a bitter note. A grain tycoon was shot dead for reasons yet unknown, about the time the shipment commenced.
Bread is so important to the people of the world that it has spawned spectacular riots all over the world and the ages. Though they are not usually violent, women have led many bread protests, to compel equally hapless bakers to sell bread at what they describe as “just” or “moral” prices.
Within one month 1775 housewives were involved in as many as 300 bread riots around the Paris area of France alone because of the shortage and very high prices of bread. The Bread Riot, also known as the Flour War, snowballed into the storming of the Bastille and the 1789 French Revolution spearheaded by the Jacobins.
Led by Robespierre, the revolution led to the ouster and guillotine of King Louis XIV and his insensitive Queen, Marie Antoinette, who suggested that if (less expensive) bread was unavailable the peasants could be served cake (a more expensive luxury food delicacy).
Other Bread Riots over the ages are the Novgorod uprising in Russia, caused by the Russian government’s insensitive purchase of grains for sale to Sweden, a neighbouring country, whose monarchy has a filial affiliation with Russian monarchy.
Yet others are the Boston Bread Riot, New York City Flour Riot, Southern Bread Riot of Richmond, Virginia, all in America, Egyptian Bread Riots, Casablanca, Morocco, Bread Riot and the Tunisian Bread Riot.
Whereas the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics reports that as many as 13 Nigerian states, all of them in the Northern region, can grow wheat that takes only four months from planting to harvesting, Nigeria’s agricultural policy makers are busy wringing their hands in resignation.
Maybe the Central Bank of Nigeria’s Governor, Godwin Emefiele, who prefers to dabble in the area of macroeconomic policies, while abandoning his monetary policy responsibilities, should add wheat propagation as one of the targets of his Anchor Borrowers scheme.
Of course, it goes without saying that the taciturn Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr. Mohammad Mahmood Abubakar, should step up to the plate in finding a long-term solution to the bread crisis.
And now is probably the time to begin planning for the next season of planting. After all, wheat planting starts in December. That way, the next Federal and State Governments should be getting sworn in the season of bounteous harvest on May 29, 2023.
You can only imagine the volume of foreign exchange that Nigeria will be saving if it does not have to import, but can substantially produce, wheat to bake the bread staple and the luxury confectionery items, like cake and other confectioneries.
Maybe President Muhammadu Buhari should graciously attempt to seize this moment as his last hurrah. But first, he must provide security for the farmlands.
