There were abodi and others at the same price. By the time you bought the rounds, you had not gone half of what you had. Condiments of N2 would cook the meat and you probably would need 20k or so worth of oil. Your wife would still have something to spare for things contingent to house-keeping.

Now, the middle class would need a minimum of N1,000 to barely manage the same obligation. That is an average of 5,000 percent rise. No-one talks of clothing these days. The talk these days is how to fill the stomach. Or how to survive. Before, it was a rhetoric. Now, it never rings truer that bi ebi ba kuro ninu ise buse. Remove hunger from poverty and there is nothing left.

Everybody is into the business of looking for food. What is the matter? Or the cause? Nobody can deny that the economy is a-flush with money, yet, it is buying smaller and smaller quantity. People are feeding badly. Or not at all.

Oil and its money has meant a lot of troubles; it means too much money has made too little sense.  Admitted, most prices have gone up to keep up with the current profile of things - a room in the poor suburb costs 7,000 percent more using the 1985 base; electricity about the same; transport is now about 2000  percent more.

Even as salaries have gone up, they did not do so at the geometrical proportions that the other aspects have done. These have made the urban centres very attractive and has left the country-side desolate and the urban migration has now left all of us holding the baby - in terms of food.

That cannot be the entire reason: population has grown and the city has overtaken the country.  The result is that both are now competing for the same things: the good things of life.

Now, those who produce the food in the country have two pronounced handicaps: they produce too little because of their diminished number and have no good roads to transport them. And our most urgent need today is food - food for the population and for export to pay for some of our consumption - in terms of machines and luxury. What shall we do? The simple answer is produce more, but it is not as simple as that. To do that will mean to encourage more people to stay back on the land to cultivate what we need.

To provide for them the things or some of the things city people enjoy - things like good road and uninterrupted electricity. Good schools and primary health centres will have to be provided.

Even as the level of production is low, yet, we waste a lot of our produce. Some of them that we cannot immediately use go bad and the spectacle in some of our markets will make many sad. Oranges, pawpaws and others are left to the garbage vans to dispose of. Storage facilities should be provided and there must be plans to process some of them into cans and bottles.

There should be an intermediary arrangement for doing this. I have in mind some of our products like plantain, bananas, yam, cassava and beans and its other families. Accepted that processing of these are already in progress, but it has to be intensive. Even if it is only going to be in small scale industries, it cannot be emphasized enough what a load off our shoulders in terms of employment this would take.

At various times, policy pronouncements were made concerning our preparedness to use what we have to get what we want. Sometime ago, the last President made mention of incentives for cassava production. They were meant to take care of our excesses and to earn foreign exchange. Many farmers jumped at it and went to town to grow cassava. Many of them are regretting their action.

The incentives were not coming along. And many are owing their bankers.  It is not a good policy that would leave the farmers holding the baby. Farmers have again gone to town to grow more paddy rice and they are hoping to reap the benefit.  But would they? 

Government has banned the importation of brown rice.  Which is a wise policy but would the farmer at the end of it see it as a wise policy?

Like the cassava policy, the rice policy promises lateral benefits to rice millers and cultivators.  The farmers could grow as much as they can and the miller could mill as much.  The government policy promises storage facilities for the surplus production. This will enable millers buy at commensurate price at non-peak period.

Will it work out? I have deliberately not touched too much about oil because, for a long time, my advocacy has been to limit ourselves to the things for which we have natural flair. And, if we do, we shall be able to pay for our export and suffer less heartache on account of troublesome and unstable prices of oil.

Our land has not stopped to sustain our groundnut, just as it has not stopped to sustain our cocoa and oil palm. Our importation of fish has barely met our demand for protein. It is running at billions, yet, we have not exploited our fish resources in the waters and in aqua-culture.

Imo State has gone back to its cultivation of oil palm and it is involving its graduates in the programme. It is also involving some South Africans in its fish farming projects. It is trying in other fields of livestock. I liked what I read the other day. 

It was from Longinus Anyanwu, Imo Commissioner for Agriculture. He said: "It is disappointing that government has been investing in agriculture but nobody has invested for agriculture".

It is high time we protected the food and energy security of our country now threatening food and oil prices. No one will help us except we help ourselves.  London and Washington; Paris and Berlin are up to their neck in their own problems. Money market is jittery.

I do not believe what favourable noises the authorities are making to the effect that the Nigerian boat will not be rocked. No man is an island entire to himself. Let's face the food problem first and any other thing will fall into place.

Sarkin Numa is not a monarch

YOU can tell the guild   to which some belong    from the title. Most especially if he comes from the North. You can also tell the size or the ailment. As I read a news item, these titles or appellations raced through my mind. And I was amused Madu-West called Sarkin Numa a monarch. Sarkin Numa is chief farmer or head of farmers. Sarkin Pawa is the chief butcher or head butcher.

Dogo is a tall man; Kujere is a short one. Maikuturu is a leper just as Maikafo is a blind one. Our brothers in the North will always call a spade a spade. A district head is not a monarch. While we are at it, our Sarkin Numa has made some useful suggestions.

Sarkin Numa of Maidobi in Kano State, Alhaji Abdukadir Sanusi, wanted government to construct enough stores or ware-houses for the storage and preservation of excess farm produce. He also called for the provision of insect proof sacks and chemicals for farmers in Kano State.

He wanted government to liaise with farmers in the local governments for the purpose of buying off their excess produce as part of efforts to promote agricultural development. He predicated these requests on the hope of bumper harvest this farming season.

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