- Farmers exchange raw yams, cassava, others for cooked food from vendors
- Indigent women turned down in deals lament fate
- Hunger plagues families as multi- million naira farm produce rot away
Many homes in Agatu Local Government Area of Benue State are ravaged by hunger following their inability to sell their farm produce and earn income. The challenge stems from the naira scarcity that is plaguing the country from the poor implementation of the naira redesigning policy of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). Farm produce worth millions of naira are rotting away, and to survive each day, the people have returned to the antiquated practice of trade by barter. Unfortunately, many of the people, especially women, have have had the items they have to offer in barter arrangements rejected. They are consequently ravaged by hunger and frustration, INNOCENT DURU reports
EMUNAT Simon, a widow based in Odugbehon community in Agatu area of Benue State, looked miserable and dejected as she fruitlessly walked round the village market in search of someone she could give her food item in order to get some fish to cook soup for her hungry children.
She had shouted herself hoarse from seeking the attention of anyone interested in what she had to offer.
“Nobody has looked in my direction since morning. They are all avoiding me like a plague because all I can offer is beans,” she said in an emotion laden voice.
“My throat has grown hoarse because I have been shouting for anybody that has fish to take my beans. Nobody seems to be interested. If it was yam or cassava, I would have seen someone to take it from me,”
she said.
Following her inability to sell her farm produce to earn income that she could use to cater for her children, Memunat agonisingly said her family has been helplessly in the face of ravaging hunger.
Her words: “My children and I dying silently from hunger. I am a widow and I have nobody to support me. I have no money to buy anything. I brought beans to the market but nobody bought it and nobody is willing to accept it in exchange for yam or fish.
“People who have fish bluntly refused to give me attention, not to talk of collecting my beans in exchange for their fish.
“Last night, I cooked the beans and served it with soaked garri for my children to eat. We had eaten the same thing before then.
“I can’t continue to serve them the same thing every time. They are tired of eating beans and garri.
“That is why I came out today to look for someone who would take my beans and give me something else. But because it is beans, nobody wants to come close to me.”
Like many other Nigerians, the embattled widow is also suffering from the challenge of getting back all or part of the old notes she had deposited in the bank.
She said: “I went and deposited the small quantity of old notes that I had in the bank. They have refused to give the money back to us since then.
“Oga, you people should pity us. You people should pity us. Please pity us,” she cried, mistaking our correspondent for a government official.
Bose Paul, who hails from Odejo part of Agatu Local Government Area, also had a similar challenge. She had gone to the market with okro in search of someone that would be willing to give her fish in exchange. But her efforts were fruitless after combing every nook and cranny of the market.
She said: “I don’t have money to buy fish to make soup for my family so I brought okro to collect fish. I have money in the bank but I can’t access it.
“Life has never been this rough for us. People who have fish refused to collect okro in exchange. I can’t go home and start eating okro like that. I don’t even have palm oil and other ingredients that I would need to cook soup with it.
“If I put the okro that I have inside boiling water, will I not put oil, maggi, pepper, oil and fish to make it edible? Is it only okro I will be eating? This is reprehensible. Hunger has dried my children and I up.”
“In the past few days,” the embattled woman added, “we have been eating only yam. I didn’t even have ordinary palm oil and pepper to give it a better taste the children would enjoy.”
Following the scarcity of naira notes, whih has made it difficult for people to buy goods, Bose and other women in the area have watched their farm produce rot away. “All the things that we kept in the house to sell have all spoilt because there is nobody to buy them. People don’t have cash to buy anything.
“As farmers, most of our produce is highly perishable and they have really been perishing. Our investments and efforts have gone down the drain. Nobody cares for us and about us.
“Now that we have suffered all this huge losses, nobody will come and help us at the end of the day.
“The government doesn’t care about us. They don’t even know if we are existing.”
She noted with despair that their predicament had been worsened by mindless attacks from herdsmen which she said had failed to abate. “The government is so insensitive to our plight that they say or do nothing about the torments we are going through at the hands of herders.
“If you go to the farm and get caught by herders, they will beat the hell out of you and could even kill you. The problem is not abating and it seems nobody cares.
“We have been living at the mercy of herders all these years and now the challenge of naira scarcity has compounded our woes.
“I can even say that our forefathers who didn’t witness civilization are better off because they were never prey for herders, and they ate whatever they wanted from their farms and not anything they saw as it is in our case now.”
17-year-old Blessing Kilonwa, whose parents had asked to go and exchange cassava for fish, also didn’t find the exercise cheering.
“It is an arduous task,” she said, even though she had an item that many people would eagerly accept in exchange for others.
She said: “I have brought cassava to exchange with someone who has fish. If I don’t see anyone to exchange my cassava with, I will go back home and that means we would have to soak garri in water and drink for the day. If anybody in the house does not want to take soaked garri, they will roast yam and eat it like that.”
The living condition in the area, according to her, is so hard that some people, because they lack money to cook at home, would take large quantity of raw food to vendors to collect a plate of food they need to survive for the moment.
She said: ”Some food vendors accept the raw food and give cooked food to some of the people while some insist on collecting cash. When the vendor insists on cash, you will almost weep for the person as tears would well up in their eyes.
“You w ould see the children of such people wailing uncontrollably when their parents fail to get food for them.
“You can’t really understand what I am saying until you witness it. The human in us has been taken away. We are suffering in the midst of abundance.”
In a humble remark, Blessing said: “My family is not too much better than any of those people. We have all become beggars in our state which prides itself as the food basket of the nation.”
She said her parents did not have money for fish and that “is why they sent me to come and look for someone who would take cassava from me and give me fish.
“The cassava that I brought is much but the fish in the market is not much. I will accept whatever quantity of fish anybody gives me in exchange for the cassava.
“If I don’t accept it, the fish owner will walk away and before you know it, someone with even more quantity of cassava will agree to exchange it for the small quantity of fish.
“We give out cassava or yam to collect rice from anybody that has and willing to exchange with us.”
Blessing also expressed regrets about how the menace of herders has devastated their land and economy.
She sai: “My parents are farmers but the herders have vandalised their farms and ate their yams. The incident occurred last week Sunday.
“If the herders meet you on the farm, they will collect your phone and everything you have on you. You will be very lucky to escape unhurt.
“We still manage to go to the farm in spite of the attacks, but we don’t stay so long like that each time we manage to go. When we go to the farm by 6am, we must return before 9am or 10am. There is hunger in my place.”
More residents groan
For Memuma Adamu, a yam farmer and seller in the neighbourhood, life in Agatu has become a shadow of itself.
She said: “People don’t have money to buy what they want. I want to look for someone to give me fish so that I can give yam to the person.
My family and I have not eaten since yesterday because we don’t have money to buy something to eat. Before yesterday, we had been roasting yam to eat, but it has become boring. The children in particular want to eat something else.
“It has been very challenging to get someone to take my tubers of yam and give me fish. I am fagged out as you can see from walking about in search of someone to collect my tubers of yam to give me fish.
“If I don’t get anybody, I will have to go and roast yam again for the family to eat. It is so bad that we don’t even have money to buy palm oil to eat the yam.
“The action of the government is callous. They didn’t consider people like us who depend on daily income to survive.”
The community leader, Mathew Akubo, said: “Our people are surviving on trade by barter but it is not everything that can be obtained through that.
“People don’t accept beans, okro, pepper, tomatoes and a few others. The people bringing fish don’t like beans. They have pepper and okro in their place, so they will not accept it in a barter deal.
“This makes those produce we have in large quantities to rot in our houses because we can neither sell them nor exchange them for other food items.”
In spite of his position in the community, he said he also engages in trade by barter.
He said: “This morning, I gave out cassava to collect fish from another person. If you give them big cassava, they may give you two fish or three, and they are usually small. If it’s okay by you, you will agree and if it is not okay for you, you leave it and keep searching for another person as I said earlier.
“All the things we harvested to sell in the market have all spoilt. We can only eat the little we can. The rest is meant for the market in order to earn income needed to attend to family needs and expansion of our farm business. But all that is not possible now because nobody has money to buy anything. We have worked and slaved for nothing.
“The challenge of naira scarcity is affecting us badly. We don’t have money to buy anything. We go to the market with our cassava and exchange them with women who bring fish. We give them cassava or yam and they give us fish.
“We don’t measure what we give. If you put cassava or yam in a basin, they will give you fish. If you don’t like what they give to you in exchange, they will leave you and go elsewhere. That is what we have been doing all this while to survive.”
Like earlier responders, he said “herders are back to the business of unleashing terror on our people. They come in large numbers from the riverine area to our side now.
“We don’t go to farm anymore. If they catch any woman on the farm, they will rape her. If the herders are 10, they will rape the woman one after another.
“One of our men was coming home recently and unfortunately fell into the hands of the herders. The herders were 10 and they raped the woman in turns.
“About a week ago, they held another woman around Odejo and took her into the bush and raped her.
“Three days ago, one old woman from Ugbojo went to her farm. They caught her and beat her mercilessly. They cut her with a knife on the neck and the stomach. The victim was rushed to Obagaji for treatment. The woman died yesterday (Sunday).”
As a community, he said: “We have been reporting to security agencies but nothing has been done to stop the menace. We have soldiers at Obagaji and one other places.
“Look at the distance from here to Obagaji. Because of the terrible state of the road, it will take you two and a half hours to get to Obagaji from here. From here to Okokolo, there is no road again.
“The herders blocked the road. From Odugbehon to Ikovi, they have also blocked the road. We only have one way out from Odugbehon to Osugudu. The herders have surrounded us. We don’t have anything to do again and have nobody to assist us.”
Corroborating the community leader’s remark, Peter Eigege, a prominent member of the area said: “The problems caused by naira scarcity have become something else here. There is no money in our market and as you can see, people are surviving by exchanging what they have with someone who has something else to offer.
“Because we are producers of yam, our people mainly have yam to exchange for other things with people from other places. People from riverine areas bring fish to our community to exchange them with tubers of yam and cassava.
“For you to know how bad it is, our people take raw yam to restaurants to collect plates of cooked food to eat and survive. Some of the restaurant owners are surviving through the assistance of their husbands who engage in business activities that make some quantities of cash available to them.
“Our markets are scanty. People from other communities that used to come and do business here cannot come because they don’t have money.
“Trade by barter was something that our forefathers did and it went into extinction many decades ago. It is unfortunate that such antiquated practice is coming up in this modern world in a manner that is more crude than what our forebears experienced. ”
“What to eat has become a big problem for our people.”
He added: “Our plight is compounded by the menace of herders. They have been attacking, killing and vandalizing our farms at will.
“We are entertaining fears about coming out to vote on Saturday. We don’t know what will happen next. We want to come out and vote but these herdsmen are our problem.
CBN left us out of rural cash swap programme
The troubled people of Agatu berated the Central Bank of Nigeria for leaving them out of its naira swap in rural areas programme.
The CBN, last month launched a Cash Swap Programme in partnership with Super Agents and Deposit Money Banks, DMBs, to enable rural dwellers and those with limited access to formal financial services to exchange old naira notes for the redesigned notes.
Director, Financial Markets Department of the Bank, Dr. Angela Sere-Ejembi, had disclosed this when she led a team to the popular Modern Market and North Bank Market all in Makurdi to sensitise traders and their customers on the redesigned naira notes and the urgent need to return the old notes to commercial banks for new ones.
Incidentally, the people of Agatu alleged that the programme was not extended to their area.
Decrying the development, Hon Bawa Haruna, a notable member of the area said: “We didn’t benefit from it. We only heard that they did such in places outside this area but they never deemed it fit to come here.
“If Agatu is left out of the programme, which rural community benefitted then?
“It is not too late. The CBN should extend the programme to our community so that the burden that our people are carrying will lessen.”
Council laments inability to get revenue from markets
Consequent upon the inability of traders to make sales and earn income, the local council in the area said it has not been getting revenue from the traders.
The Supervisory Councilor for Revenue, Hon Friday Anyebe, said: “We have not been able to collect revenue from the market because there is no money in the hands of the traders. We are just patrolling the market for official purposes.
“We don’t take food items in place of money as revenue. I will go back to the council and give them a report of what is happening in the market.
“The naira scarcity had crippled economic activities in our community. Our people now depend on exchange of food items to survive.”
