Food Blockade: Northern Traders Must Sell Commodities At Same Low Prices--Igbo Consumers

 Food Blockade: Northern Traders Must Sell Commodities At Same Low Prices--Igbo Consumers

The Northern Traders Union has strongly put up an insistence that members better dispose off (sell) their farm produce at randomly ridiculous low prices in parts of Northern Nigeria like Kano, Kaduna, Sokoto, etcetera, than taking such commodities to Southern Nigeria particularly, the South-East. Interviewed Igbo consumers across the region, have insisted that Northern traders should get readily prepared to sell their commodities (farm produce), at the same low prices as obtained in cities and towns within the North, if they eventually reverse their food blockade against Southerners.

On trips to different major markets within South-East cities of Onitsha, Aba, Enugu, Nnewi, Abakaliki and Port Harcourt, a team of Family Writers Press International correspondents got unanimous reactions from Igbo consumers. They pointedly stated that the new development has invariably threw up a moment of definitive decision. The consumers stressed that any time the Northern foodstuffs traders resume supply of their commodities in Igboland, same low prices as being maintained in the North, must be carried out. Many of these interviewed consumers in Ogbete main market in Enugu, Enugu State, clearly voiced that since report has it that a medium sized basket of ripe tomatoes that was previously sold at the price of eight hundred naira (N800), now sells at one hundred and fifty naira (N150), in Kano with absolutely no buyers. They therefore, maintained that whenever these Northern traders resume supplies to the South, they must surely be compelled to sell at maximally reduced prices.

A cross section of those interviewed in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, also unambiguously declared that there is no way the Northern traders will come down to the South to sell their commodities at inflated prices contrary to what obtains in the North. They insisted that such bias will never be allowed. Consumers contacted in Agbo-Edo market in Nnewi, Anambra State, were on the defiantly on the same page. Mrs. Chinyere Edokwe for instance, expressively stated that Igbo people should get ready to confront the Fulani controlled Northern traders when they eventually resume their  commodities supplies. These Northerners must be made to sell to our people down here in the South, at very same  reduced prices as in the North, she concluded.

Written by Mazi Onyebuchi Eze

Edited by Peter Oshagwu

For Family Writers Press International