Prices of food items have continued to soar in the market causing Nigerian housewives’ serious heartache.

The skyrocketing food prices in Nigeria have made many housewives and mothers ‘mathematicians’ as they constantly struggle to manage the resources available to meet family needs amid increasing prices and declining purchasing power.

“I’m always agitated anytime I remember that I have to go to the market because of the surging food prices. Things are very expensive in the market and the cost of making a pot of soup has more than tripled in the last year,” said Chidinma Kalu, a Lagos-based housewife.

Catherine Ako, a civil servant said that husbands are not passing through half of what their wives are passing through nowadays because men only give their wives money, and the women will go to the market to find out that what they have would be enough only for them to add their money to make up.

“The cost of protein is very high with meat, fish, stock fish, egg, chicken and turkey gradually going out of the reach of the poor. I spend almost 85 percent of the family feeding allowance on buying protein to cook soup, stew and other meals.

“To prepare a pot of soup for my family of eight, I have to buy meat of about N9,000, frozen fish of N10,000 and stock fish of N4,000, totalling N23,000 for protein alone. This is aside from other ingredients that are needed to make soup, which would take nothing less than N7,000. This means that every week that I make soup for my family, I spend nothing less than N30,000 but this time last year, it only cost about N10,000,” said Kalu, the mother of four.

According to her, “I always feel like crying each time am coming back from the market. I feel robbed. With a lot of money, you hardly get something to fill a nylon back. It is crazy right now in Nigeria.”

Comparing how prices have changed in the last year, Funmi Adewunmi, a nurse, said her family’s weekly feeding bill has increased from N30,000 to over N50,000.

According to the mother of two, her family of four manages to make do with N100,000 weekly expenditure on feeding alone at a time salary is not increasing.

“Since Tinubu’s administration, all we do with our salaries is to eat food without being able to do any other thing. It is now difficult for families to feed well and save money to pay other bills. We only eat food and struggle to pay children’s school fees, house rent and meet other needs,” said Adewunmi.

She said that families hardly talk about saving for investment in today’s Nigeria.

“I nearly fainted when a yam seller told me that a tuber of new yam sells for N11,000. Both old and new yam are no longer reachable to the poor. Beans and maize are also expensive, meaning that there is no more ‘poor man food’ in Nigeria because every food item is expensive,” said Efe Esosa, a Benin-based fashion designer.

She said she bought 5kg of Semovita for almost N9,000 last week and that ate into the money that she was supposed to cook soup and stew for the weekend.

The fashion designer said that the only saving grace for her family in recent times is the cooperative society where she belongs where a group of women come together to make weekly contributions.

“I contribute N5,000 every week and when is my turn to take home, I use the bulk money to stock the house. It is a bit cheaper to buy food items and even protein in bulk. This is why the rich are the ones who are buying food cheaper compared to the poor.

“The beauty of bulk buying is that it not only makes it cheaper to buy food but also takes some measure of stress off one’s shoulder. Food is expensive in Nigeria but buying it in a bit even worsens it,” Esosa said.

Franklin Godspower, a transporter told BusinessDay Sunday that he always feels for his wife who complains every time she goes to the market to buy food items for the house.

“I commend my wife because I don’t know how she manages the little money that I give her as a weekly feeding allowance. I didn’t know that things had gone this bad until last week when my wife was not feeling too well and I decided to help her buy ingredients for stew only to realise that N15,000 was not able to buy tomatoes, pepper, rice and chicken for stew. Since then, I gave kudos to Nigerian housewives,” said Godspower.

BusinessDay Sunday discovered that part of the reason why food prices are surging is the fact that middlemen and off-takers buy agricultural produce from farmers and hoard them to sell at expensive prices.

According to a dealer, who does not want his name in the print, off-takers go to farmers and buy agricultural produce in lands, when the farmers have not harvested.

The dealer said that middlemen in the supply chain contribute a great deal to the price surge. He cited an example with a basket of tomatoes that sold for as much as N140,000 in Lagos recently when off-takers were buying for as low as N40,000 or N50,000 in places like Jos, Plateau State.

He also claimed that insecurity in the northern parts of the country is also adding to a high of cost food items in Nigeria.

“Many farmers are no longer going to their farms due to insecurity and few farmers who are still going to the farm are forced to pay tolls to bandits to access their farms without any interference,” the dealer said.

He said that the high cost of logistics also plays a critical role in driving food costs to the extreme, especially with the removal of petroleum and forex subsidies by Tinubu’s administration.

Credit: BusinessDay