BY CHARLES ADINGUPU

The aftermath of the ravaging flood witnessed in most parts of the country is gradually taking its toll on Nigerians as price of staple food  continue to rise in each pasting day.

A Lagos based farmer, Jude Ogwu said Nigeria has no choice but to rely more on neighbouring countries and developed nations for our survival till the flood water which had washed away many farmland dries up.

But he warned that Nigeria should be weary of genetic maize, meant for animal fattening in developed nations as well as guarding against repeating the tragic incidence of killer beans.

What should Nigerians expect after the flood?

Well, looking it from the perspective of food production, one will not say that staple food will not do well in flood affected areas. Right now, most of the crops planted by the farmers have been swept away by the flood.

Most of these arable crops like yams, cassava, rice, maize have all been swept away by the raging flood, making the farmer to run at  a lose because they invested in it, hoping that if there wasn’t this flood, they would have reap something from it. At the same time, making provision for food.

Most of these crops mentioned are staple food people consumed every now and then. They are basically meant for the poor  man because you can easily buy a tuber of yam and use it to serve a meal for family of four or five.

Apart from the fact that it may lead to starvation or famine which we are looking at now, because the way things are at the movement, there will definitely be famine in few months from now because there is no crop.

Apart from this, we also look at the implications to production. Look at arable crop in terms  of animal production. Maize is one of the ingredients used in making poultry feeds. So, now, we are expecting it to go higher. We talk in terms of groundnuts, that too will experience increase in price.

Jude Ogwu

So, what it will translate to by December is that a chicken may be sold for between N3,000 and N4,000 for Broiler or Layer because no maize to produce feeds so we need to go to neighbourng country like Niger Republic where we can now start importing these essential food stuffs we have earlier mentioned.

Implication to the farmers

Definitely the farmer has nothing again to rely upon. Therefore, his ability to fulfill his responsibility in the house will be affected.  How will he pay the school fees of his children by January when school will be reopened again for another academic session? Unfortunately in Nigeria, the people doing the farming  are the ageing ones. Agriculture in Nigeria is still at the subsistence level. In other words, it is still on small scale.

Very few farmers in Nigeria are operating on large scale and it belongs to the influential people who parade themselves as practising commercial agriculture. Nigeria presently, or mostly in West Africa, we can attribute it that we are still at subsistent level.

Though, food may be abundant again in the next planting season if Cameroun fails to release water from their dam so that the soil will be able to drain off the high quantity of water it is currently holding.

Secondly, we look at places where there are doing crop production, we take the poultry house and pig sty. The implication is that the roof will be too heavy for the blocks or planks that have already been weaken by flood water, so most of them will collapse. Therefore, it is not advisable for any farmer now to go on using the erected poultry stand, or pig sty because it is very risky on till after the flood, moreso, that the rains are still falling. We have to relax after the flood water is completely drained away.

 Livestock too suffer lose

Most of the fishing ponds will not be able to crop or harvest any fish for now because they have been moved away from the pond. You could find instances where nobody is even cultivating the fish. Yet you just find them moving about now and nothing to show for the farmers’ effort. That’s why we are looking at the implication of flood. One, it will lead to famine which is starvation. Secondly, it will affect the income of the farmer. Also, it will affect agricultural resources, those that use such crop as maize as their livestock ingredients, they will not have enough livestock which means that it will translate to high cost of agricultural produce as much as these festivity period is fast approaching. Again, we look at it that the flood will affect the income of the nation. There are some crops that are being exported, we will not be able to export enough this year again because the farm have been ravaged  by this flood.

Raw material for industry

Most industries in Nigeria largely depend on farm produce as raw materials such as the Beverage industries like Cadbury, Nestle. They will not have cocoa in large quantity as they usually do in the past. The groundnut which usually comes from the North and use for the making of pea nuts should not be expected.

Invariably, this will lead to lose of jobs because some of these factories may be forced to close down pending when the condition will be favourable for production.

Also, those engage in production of can foods as tomato purie. In the north now, we are not finding it easy. If you go to Mile 12 market to find what they are now beginning to sell may be ten seeds of tomatoes for N400 or more. It means that in this season of Christmas, we should zero our minds into using more of the artificial tomato purie we are using.

Brewery industries

It will affect the brewery industries as Cocoa-Cola and production of beer. That means that Moqua farm in Niger State will be affected, because there will not be enough maize for the breweries to brew their products. The Wheat too will be scarce because people are now more knowledgeable of the implications, health benefits of eating wheat – it is very nutritious, helping to control diabetic and aid digestive stability. It means we won’t have enough of it.

However, we can trace all these problems to the Niger Delta region, people living within the Benue River. The Benue, we see it as the food basket of Nigeria and it has been ravaged already by this flood. We should again zero  our minds that we are not expecting much food down here in the south.

The way out

The only option now is for the federal government to look into their reserve to see how they can bring out the grains they have in the reserve. Government should also look at possible ways to compensate the farmers because they don’t have any land to farm on now.

Also people  living along the coastal or River Basin should be evacuated immediately  as the federal government has already budgetted a whooping sum of N17 billion to cushion the effect of flood base on NEMA’s report.

Epidemic outbreak

There will be outbreak of different types of diseases because people are now forced to stay together in different camps across the flood affected areas.