Sesan Bello
Journalist/Critical thinker
/Volunteer-Watchdog London, GB
Today, if you are truly qualified, you can move from one organisation
to another better organisation without the trepidation of the
unknown. Our graduates now use their diary for keeping dates with job
interview appointments and open days rather than recording hostile
uncles and cousins’ offensives triggered as a result of excessive
proximity caused by joblessness. Opportunities are now rearing heads
from different directions, far from what the situations used to be in
2005 and 2006 as the contents of this horse’s-mouth
link humorously reveals.
What a crab? by Sesan Bello
What an impractical way to tackle a problem when a problem isn’t
identified as a problem? This is a direct response to government’s
remarks about the hunger facing us in Nigeria. While the relatively
more comfortable and wealthier nations astutely square up with the
present global food crisis by officially acknowledging it; adopting
strategic plans to mitigate its unpleasant effects on its people, poor
and disadvantaged Nigeria is still denying it, with ministers and
officials claiming there is no food shortage; that what we have in
Nigeria is mere increase in prices. This is totally ridiculous.
What is it mean when more than half population of a nation cannot
afford to feed conveniently or afford the prices of food needed in
their house hold? Of course, that’s food shortage. And that is
generally a resultant effect of another shortage experienced somewhere
in the systemic malfunctioning of demand-supply chain. It could be
money, affecting demand; it could be the product, affecting supply,
with both still having many determinant factors.
Let’s go by this theory: “In an effective demand-supply
chain, products flow smoothly from producers to consumers through all
necessary actors of the chain and information flows fluently between
actors so that every actor can predict and plan its operations
compatible with their environment and other actors. Increased
co-operation and more fluent information flow improve competitiveness
of chains by reducing costs and improving accessibility to products,”
(Kotzab, 2001; Vorst, 2000).
Simply put, the above means that though consumers’ willingness to buy
may be stable, but if there is a breakdown somewhere in the system, as
our status quo; having low purchasing power as consumers, this will
lead to feelings of insecurity and loss of interest in food production
on the side of the producers which, as a result, will lead to a slight
drop in food supply.
This assertion has been made by the Vice President himself, Jonathan
Good luck, when he was reported in Vanguard, May 4, 2008 while
fielding questions from journalists, as saying “…So, the
high price…, while we grumble and complain that the lower earners are
not getting it, it also helps the farmers to come up and sell their
produce so that the farmers don t die. Do you want the farmers to die?
No!Consumers please put your hand up a little, pay a little
bit better so that the farmer can go back to the farm. If you do not
pay him well, he will abandon the cassava there and he will not go
back to farmingcassava.”Then I askwhy? It
is because the farmer had lost confidence in the consumers.
Besides,may I ask the Vice President if it is possible for him
to give what he doesn’t have?
No right-thinking
person would want the farmers to sell their produce at loss. Farmers
need to get good prices for their products so that they can go back to
the farm with confidence and bring more food. But we will only be able
to do this when we have the money. Like the consumers, farmers are
also a part of the same malfunctioning society; we both are just
victims of unfortunate circumstance.
That we still have a lot to do concerning food security is a reality
that needs to be confronted. It is just funny that with all our
theories; our postulations and suggestions, if all things remain
unchanged, Nigerians will still survive. That is a mystery to the
entire world and perhaps attributable to the fact that we run a cash
economy where most incomes are derived from
non-declared employments and businesses
and where those who declared or registered their businesses evade
lodging tax returns, as-well-as from other illegal activities like
what is happening in the south-south and other petroleum tapping
spots.
So while the economically disadvantaged
majority will be suffering in silence because they haven’t got a voice
stringent enough, it is only the minority few who found themselves in
the category of players above, who also are blessed with a stringent
voice that our government will listen to and use as our representative
samples. What the government should have done otherwise is
taking the food crisis serious by taking the farming problem to the
local/village level for the local people themselves to solve, with
government at the background, backing them while also injecting on
another parallel macro level, an appreciable investment that will
boost agricultural research and production for the food export
industry. Who says earning from Agric cannot compete with oil?
Even though we have
been nursing our own food shortage long before now, in other parts of
the world, the problem is the same at present. We all know that. The
American Agricultural economy for instance, at this time, may benefit
what is known as ‘emergency economic loss assistance’ or whatever.
This is in addition to other yearly handouts to farmers, to boost
their output. No wonder they are happy and willing to remain farmers
for ever. Until our government so empowers the farmers financially,
attaining food security will continue to be a fantasy for us in
Nigeria.
Meanwhile, let me congratulate us for what seems to be the dawn of a
new era in our life. That is the gradual re-emergence of a new echelon
in the middle-less stratification pyramid of our social structure
which though resembles the middle-class strata that had long
disappeared from the face of our society but still having enough
characteristics to have us scratching our heads.
Although the evolution of the class has its traditional process which
embraces steady upward mobility of its three constituents -- the
self-made people who owe everything to their personal efforts; being
it resources, expertise or educational qualification or whatever --
these are the white-collar workers such as salaried managers and
administrators, public servants, bankers, etc; the SMEs entrepreneurs
such as small-scale manufacturers, traders, artisans, farmers, etc,
and the qualified service-rendering professionals like lawyers,
doctors, beauticians, designers, architects etc.
With the exception of the first stratum where currently we are
witnessing a promising turn-around due to sharp increase in the
business activities of certain selective industries like banking, oil
and gas, IT, food processing, communication, insurance and a host of
others, and of course, the ever-increasing state needs for qualified
administrators as a result of our active political sector, the two
others are somehow still in the doldrums.
By
this depiction, one may say it is nothing worth of any jubilation or
congratulating ourselves over; thinking we have arrived. But the
cause for jubilation truly arises, and it is found in the reality that
many years a go, there had been unprecedented recession in these
industries which had, in fact, led to unannounced embargo on
employment whereby companies rarely publicly advertised vacant
positions as against now that
jobsites are filled with ‘vacancies’ posted by both local and
multinational organisations with mouth-watering salaries and
attractive paraphernalia of office awaiting the lucky dudes that pick
them up.
Today, if you are truly qualified, you can move from one organisation
to another better organisation without the trepidation of the
unknown. Our graduates now use their diary for keeping dates with job
interview appointments and open days rather than recording hostile
uncles and cousins’ offensives triggered as a result of excessive
proximity caused by joblessness. Opportunities are now rearing heads
from different directions, far from what the situations used to be in
2005 and 2006 as the contents of this horse’s-mouth
link humorously reveals.
