Hoarding, if any, is a very minor issue in this period of Tinubu’s unleashed economic hardship. Hoarding, by its simple meaning, is to secretly store goods including foodstuffs to create artificial scarcity in order to hike prices in the future for maximum profit for the hoarders. It’s a social crime which should be condemned and fought.
Do we have scarcity caused by hoarding of food presently in Nigeria? I say a big No. Go to the markets, the foods are always there. Rice, beans, garri, elubo, flour, noodles, bread,, beverages, ponmo, “orishirishi” fish like Ojuyobo, Kote, sardine, croaker, Panla, stockfish are always available on display and in their warehouses (for the big distributors). Visit bukateria, fast food centres, different kinds of cooked food are available and being sold by sellers who are still managing to survive marginally.
So, what are the problems? The foods are there but their prices are increasing hourly and daily. People who want to eat can’t afford it, and many “outgoing consumers” who still manage to patronise “bukas” are eating minimally and not eating what they like to eat maximally because of the increasing rate of poverty, dwindling income, devalued income and decreasing low purchasing power.
A major cause of this “income challenge” decreasing income and low purchasing power is the crazy removal of fuel subsidy announced without thinking deeply of the adverse multiplier effects by the president who said he was instantaneously seized by courage to unleash hardship on his fellow citizens. Courage, Excitement, Hangover, or all three factors combined for Mr President to make such a terrible announcement, a satanic verse, “fuel subsidy is gone” on his day of inauguration. With this announcement, the market became instantly disrupted with instantaneous hike in pump price of fuel and market prices of foods, goods and services up till now and will continue for long. Petrol is like blood to us in a majorly mono-product economy. Once the blood is poisoned the whole body is poisoned, it’s a multiplier effect.
Devaluation of the rolling stone naira added to it as a second major cause. Fela Anikulapo-Kuti called our attention during Babangida’s SAP regime to the effect of collapsed naira when he sang that “When Naira falls, many people fall with am. When naira crash, many people crash with am”. It was Fela’s lyrical protest against the devaluation of Naira, a World Bank – IMF economic death pill that IBB was using to treat a sick nation made sick by institutionalised corruption. The same dangerous path Tinubu is recklessleesly taking.
I have watched and reposted on social media some protests against economic hardship by food sellers and members of the general public. None of the protesters said they did not see food to sell or to buy because of scarcity. None. Their battle cry is that the foods are too expensive with increasing prices which their decreasing income cannot afford. The slogans of protesters who are Yoruba have also been”Ebi n’pa wa o, Tinubu.. “(we are hungry), “A o lowo lowo o” (we don’t have money to spend), “Owo Oja ti won ju” (Prices of goods and foods in the markets are too high). It’s the same slogans and messages in different languages across Nigeria. That’s the message by hungry, angry and poor Nigerians the government should focus on, not grandstanding that security operatives should be running after imaginary hoarders of food, or pretending a futile attempt at price control.
As usual with governments in Nigeria, they always like to apply the wrong medicine to an ailment just to pretend that they are working. Ribadu and his co “anti-hoarders squad” will run after ghost hoarders tire with no effects. At best, the Ribadu gang will just do some “gragra, sakara oloje” with some sellers for propaganda sake to pass a wrong message that the problem of flying inflation of food and lower purchasing power of consumers is caused by hoarders. Another chorus to be re-echoed by government’s standby but out of stage Abobaku Orchestra and many genuinely naive hungry and angry citizens. I hope the Ribadu gang will be discerning enough to know the difference between “Storage” and “Hoarding” in a market distribution system.
The shops are open, the foods are there on display but the prices are not affordable by vast majority of Nigerians who are made poorer everyday by government anti-masses economic policies. Now that many students are dropping out of school because of increasing high cost of education, will government start chasing and accusing school principals, VCs and private school proprietors of hoarding education and start closing their business centres because of hike in school fees?
Breweries have just announced price hike of their products, will Ribadu & his anti-hoarders squad start chasing hotels and beer & peppersoup joints when people who can’t afford price hike of beer and malt drinks start boycotting these joints? Quite laughable that government doesn’t think and when they want to think they think wrongly.
Where we can talk of “hoarding” which is momentary, is when, for example, some big time food distributors of flour, noddles, biscuits etc, who are selling but refuse to sell maximally for a day or two days because they have privileged information from the manufacturers that the next consignment to be produced and supplied to them will be at higher price possibly because of regularly falling naira, hike in cost of raw materials, fuel thereby increasing their running cost. By this, the market becomes speculative and there is likelihood of momentary hoarding and the moment the distributors know the next manufacturer’s price, they adjust their own prices to prepare them to restock with same quantity but of higher manufacturer’s price. The new higher price with their own profit is then passed to retailers and down to consumers in the ever-unstable and disrupted market chain of supply and demand.
It still comes back as government’s fault because when you run an unstable rolling stone economy, many people and many things will roll down with it and market speculation becomes the order of the day.
Think, Government, Think! When government refuses to think and gives false solution to a critical problem, it makes many gullible people not to think also by supporting false solution seeing it as real. Pity!
Adeola Soetan
