Why Tomotoes are now so expensive in the Nigerian market

   

  In the last few weeks there have speculations and rumours peddled that Africa's richest man Aliko Dangote and his tomotoe paste factory located in Kano are responsible for the scarcity in tomotoes. This reports however are erroneous and should be disregarded. If Nigerians want to point fingers at the guilty party then the leaf mining moth(Tuta Absoluta) should be held responsible

      Consumers of fresh tomatoes in Nigeria are gradually switching to
pastes, on account of a ravaging insect pest known as ‘Tuta
Absoluta’ which has destroyed an estimated 40 percent of
anticipated harvest, causing prices to shoot up by 105 percent,
from N17,000 to N35,000 per basket.

      Many fresh tomato sellers have also resorted to purchasing the
produce from neighbouring countries, especially the Republic of
Benin and Cameroon, in an effort to bridge the shortfall in Nigeria.
The disease which farmers also refer to as ‘Tomato Ebola’ has
reduced locally available fresh tomatoes, forcing consumers to buy
canned purees/pastes which are relatively cheaper.

        Tuta absoluta is a harmful leaf mining moth, also called tomato
leaf miner and has a strong preference for the tomato plant.
The moth travels and breeds in swarms and has a reputation for
swiftly ravaging tomato cultivation in a little above 48 hours –
prompting farmers to nickname it Tomato Ebola.
The moth and its lava feed on the leaves of the tomato plant,
depriving it of the nutrient to flower and develop friut.
The disease has spread across tomato farmlands in the north of
Nigeria, including areas in and around Makarfi, Hunkuyi, Soba and
Zuntu villages in Kaduna State; in Danja, Katsina State, and in
Kadawa, Dakasoye and Kura villages in Kano State, according to
Agro Nigeria.

        Tomatoes constitute 18 percent of all vegetables consumed by
Nigeria’s 180 million populace, according to a research by the
Agricultural Economics Department of the University of Ibadan, Oyo
State Nigeria.
Nigeria’s domestic demand for tomatoes is put at 2.3 million
tonnes, while it produces only 1.8 million tons annually, according
to the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development
(FMARD).
A cross section of consumers in Lagos and other major cities told
BusinessDay that they had to resort to buying tomato puree when
they found that the price of the fresh fruit had risen by over 100
percent.

       “There is a disease now that has made fresh tomatoes more
expensive. You can imagine that a basket of tomatoes which went
for N17,000 last month now sells for almost N35,000. Some of us
now buy the cheaper cans and sachets,” said Alice Aliagun,
managing director of small-scale Sandton Shop in Lagos.
According to Lawal Biliya Adam, secretary, tomato section of the
perishable goods segment of Mile 12 Market in Lagos, there is
scarcity of tomatoes currently in the market, owing to ‘Tuta
Absoluta’ disease that has affected most tomato farmlands in the
north.“We now send some of our boys to Cameroon to buy
tomatoes since we cannot meet up with demand,” Adam said.
“Sellers bring in tomato from Ghana, Togo and Benin Republic to
sell in Nigeria,” said Abiodun Oyelekan, Lagos State president of
FADAMA project, and chief executive officer of Farm Fresh Agric
Ventures.

        According to Oyelekan, countries on the West Africa coast usually
complement one another in the area of vegetables because when
there is scarcity of tomatoes in one country, there is a surplus in
others.
Bashir Zakari, a tomato seller in Mile 12 market said a basket of
tomatoes now sells between N28,000 and N35,000 depending of
the size of the basket, as against N17,000 and N18,000 obtainable
a month ago.
“The price of tomatoes usually goes up by this time of the year,
but this year’s increase is higher because of the tomato disease
that has affected some farms in the north. It has also been raining
excessively in the north and this inhibits the progress of
tomatoes,” he added.  
     
         I wonder what the Nigerian Ministry of Agriculture is saying or doing in all this? I wonder what measures the ministry is taking to ensure that this doesn't become a reoccuring problem not only with Tomotoes but with other Nigerian stable crops.

Day 2 from Juliane Okot Bitek's 100 days

      100 days is a collection of poems that recall the horror, pain and senseless loss and innocence in the Rwandan genocide. The words are so powerful, they make you feel the emotions of living, dying, pain, loss and all other emotions that represented the madness of the genocide.

       Bitek says the poem started out by being inspired by the quiet homage to the 1994 Rwandan genocide that the Kenyan American artist Wangechi Mutu started pasting on the social media in April with the hashtags #Kwibuka20 #100Days. She says these pieces should give us a way to understand better the Rwandan genocide and other wars we have endured.


Day 2
This will not be a litany of remembrances:
We know who the guilty are
The guilty know themselves
This is a charge against the witnesses
& those who cannot speak
This is a charge against those who speak incompletely
& incoherently
Against nature who saw everything & did nothing
against the bodies that dissolved
& the ones that refused to dissolve
those that insisted on writing the landscape with bones
This is a charge against pain
against heartbreak
against laughter
against the dead.

For Vanity Fairs sister issue, Nigerian Author Chimammandah Adiche talks about her relationship with her sister

          I remember standing at the foot of the long stairway in our new house, too frightened to climb, everything big andunfamiliar, until my sister Uche silently took my hand and we went up together. I was 4; she was 15. It is my earliest memory of my attachment to her. But, according to family lore, the attachment started much earlier. I was a fussy baby whose nightly screaming was soothed only by her. Newly weaned, I would eat okra and liver sauce only if she fed me. “By the way,” she told me recently. “I ate all the liver—that’s why you didn’t grow tall.”

        In my teenage years she was the glamorous big sister who was studying pharmacy at university and had a handsome boyfriend in a white car. I looked up to her. Her beautiful face, seamless grape-dark skin, the gap in her teeth inherited from our mother. I was in awe of her original style. She fashioned dangling earrings from parts of an abandoned chandelier and made bows for her shoes from old handbag straps. At the back of her notebooks were delicate sketches: dresses with large sashes, lavishly shaped trousers. Sometimes she went to her tailor’s shop in the market and stood over the sewing machine to make sure the details were
right. Many of her clothes were handed down to me. At 12, I wore ruched, fitted dresses when my age-mates were still in little-girl clothes.

       I was sometimes afraid of her quick temper, her prickliness. I hated domestic work, while she always cleaned with a sweaty zeal. She often scolded me for not dusting the furniture. She was the tough one in the family—the unconventional girl. When she was in primary school, the neighbor’s son called her a devil, and she climbed over the hedge, beat him up, and climbed back home to continue her game of table tennis. That evening, the neighbors came over to report to my parents. Asked to apologize to the boy, my sister said, “But he called me a devil.” When she was at home from boarding school, she once sneaked into my mother’s wardrobe and took her high-heeled sandals back to school. They were promptly seized by a prefect. She told my mother about it more than 10 years later, describing the sandals in detail, laughing. She laughs easily and often.

       She sends funny jokes by e-mail and WhatsApp. She is the second and I amthe fifth of my parents’ close-knit six children. Because of the age gap, I came truly to know her as an adult. I fled the study of medicine to become a writer; she is a successful pharmacist. We have different tastes. She touches my natural hair and says, “What is this rough mop?” And I ask of her long, straight weave, “What’s that plastic horsehair?” Still, we ask each other’s opinions of outfits and hairstyles. We have long conversations about my book events and her pharmaceutical conferences. We talk and e-mail often. I love to spend weekends with her, her wonderful husband, Udodi, who is like a big brother to me, and her 18-year-old twin daughters.

          Now I recognize what I most admire about her: her transparency, the absence of layers, the bright, focused light that is her loyalty. There is an immense solidity to her. To be her little sister is to feel always that a firm cushion exists at my back. When our father was kidnapped for ransom, it was her steady voice that stilled my despair. “You work so hard,” she told me once, simply, matter-of-factly, during an unproductive period, and it made everything seem better. She turned 50 in early March. “Don’t get me cards that say,‘Happy 50th birthday,’ ” she told my siblings and me. “Just ‘Happy birthday’ is fine.”

Quotes of the day

What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is
always the same step, but you have to take it. ~Antoine de Saint-
Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars, 1939, translated from French by
Lewis Galantière

Give thanks for what you are now, and keep fighting for what you
want to be tomorrow. ~Fernanda Miramontes-Landeros

In understanding freedom one understands also what discipline
is.... Freedom and discipline go together, they are not two
separate things.... Discipline does not mean suppression and
control, nor is it adjustment to a pattern or an ideology; it means
a mind that sees 'what is' and learns from 'what is'. ~Jiddu
Krishnamurti, "Freedom," The Impossible Question, 1970 July 19th

Every day is conquerable by its hours, and every hour by its
minutes. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com

South African Author Thabo Jijiana is our Author of the day

Thabo Jijiana wasborn in 1988, he was the recipient of the 2011 Anthony Simpson Foundation award and the also long listed for the 2015 Short Story Day Africa Prize for his short story "Native Mayonnaise"  and the 2014 winner of the Sol Plaatje European Poetry Award, he also won the 2016 Ingrid Jonker price for his collection "Failing Maths and other crimes".

      Jijiana is currently at the Rhode University where he intends to have an MA some of his works include the "Searing first-person investigation into the taxi industry, Nobodies business" published in 2014.

8 Dynamic Nigerian Female writers you should know about

1, Efuru
About the Author: Flora Nwapa was a Nigerian writer, teacher, and administrator, a forerunner of a whole generation of African women writers. Flora Nwapa is best-known for re-creating Igbo (Ibo) life and traditions from a woman's viewpoint. With Efuru (1966) Nwapa became
black Africa's first internationally published female novelist in the English
language. She has been called the mother of modern African literature

About the Book: The book is about Efuru, an Ibo woman who lives in a small village in colonial West Africa. Throughout the story, Efuru wishes to be a mother, though she is an independent-minded woman and respected for her trading ability.

2,  I Do Not Come To You By Chance
About the Author: Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani is a Nigerian novelist and journalist. I Do Not Come to You by Chance , her debut novel set amidst the perilous world of Nigerian email scams was the winner of the 2010 Commonwealth Writers
Prize for Best First Book (Africa). She lives in Lagos.

About the Book: A deeply moving debut novel set amid the perilous world of Nigerian email scams, I Do Not Come to You by Chance tells the story of one young man and the family who loves him.

3, Bitter Leaf
About the Author: Chioma Okereke was born in Nigeria and came to England at the age of seven. She started her writing career as a poet before turning her hand to fiction. Her writing has been published in Bum Rush the Page and The Callaloo Literary Journal. Additionally, her work has been shortlisted in the Undiscovered Authors Competition 2006, run by Bookforce UK, and in the Daily Telegraph's, write a Novel in a Year Competition 2007.

About the Book: Bitter Leaf is a richly textured and intricate novel set in Mannobe, a world that is African in nature but never geographically placed. At the heart of the novel is the village itself and its colourful cast of inhabitants: Babylon, a gifted musician who falls under the spell of the beautiful Jericho who has recently returned from the city; Mabel and Melle Codon, twin sisters whose lives have taken very different paths, Magdalena, daughter of Mabel, who nurses an unrequited love for Babylon and Allegory, the wise old man who adheres to tradition. As lives and relationships change and Mannobe is challenged by encroaching development, the fragile web of dependency holding village life together is gradually revealed.

4. Zahrah the Windseeker
About the Author: Nnedi Okorafor , the American-born daughter of Igbo Nigerian parents, has regularly visited Nigeria since she was very young. Her novels andstories reflect both her West African heritage and her American life. Okorafor is a 2001 graduate of the Clarion Writers Workshop in Lansing, Michigan, and holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Illinois, Chicago. She is a professor of creative writing at Chicago State University and lives with her family in Illinois.

About the Book: Zahrah the Windseeker is one of a very small handful of young adult fantasy novels that incorporate the myths and folklore and culture of West Africa. It is the winner of the 2008 Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa. Set in the northern Ooni Kingdom, fear of the unknown runs deep and children born dada are rumoured to have special powers. Thirteen-year-old Zahrah Tsami feels like a normal girl - she grows her own flora computer, has mirrors sewn onto her clothes and stays clear of the Forbidden Greeny Jungle. But unlike other children in the village of Kirki, Zahrah was born with the telling dadalocks.

5,  The Spider King’s Daughter
About the Author: Chibundu Onuzo was born in Nigeria in 1991 and is the
youngest of four children. In 2010, Onuzo, then an undergraduate studying
History at King's College London, made headlines after signing a two-novel deal with Faber & Faber, making her its youngest ever female author . When not writing, Chibundu can be found playing the piano or singing.

About the book: Seventeen-year-old Abike Johnson is the favourite child of her wealthy father. She lives in a She lives in a sprawling mansion in Lagos,
protected by armed guards and ferried everywhere in a huge black jeep. But being her father's favourite comes with uncomfortable duties, and she is often lonely behind the high walls of her house. A world away from Abike's mansion, in the city's slums, lives a seventeen-year-old hawker struggling to make sense of the world. His family lost everything after his father's death and now he runs after cars on the roadside selling ice cream to support his mother and sister.
When Abike buys ice cream from the hawker one day, they strike up an unlikely and tentative romance, defying the prejudices of Nigerian society. But as they grow closer, revelations from the past threaten theirrelationship and both Abike and the hawker must decide where their loyalties lie.

6, On Black Sisters Street
About the Author: Chika Unigwe is a Nigerian-born author of fiction, poetry and articles based in Belgium who writes in both English and Dutch. In April 2014 she was selected for the Hay Festival's Africa39 list of 39 Sub-Saharan African writers aged under 40 with potential and talent to define future trends in African literature.

About the Book: Four very different women have made their way from Africa to Brussels. They have come to claim for themselves the riches they believe Europe promises but when Sisi, the most enigmatic of the women, is murdered, their already fragile world is shattered. Drawn together by tragedy, the remaining three women - Joyce, a great beauty whose life has been destroyed by war; Ama, whose dark moods manifest a past injustice; Efe, whose efforts to earn her keep are motivated by a particular zeal - slowly begin to share their stories.

7, Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria
About the Author: Noo Saro-Wiwa was born in Nigeria in 1976 and raised in
England. She attended King's College London and Columbia University in New York and has written travel guides for Rough Guide and Lonely Planet. She currently lives in London. Her first book Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria was published by Granta in January 2012 to brilliant reviews and was chosen by the Financial Times Life & Arts as one of the best books of the year, and by The Sunday Times as Travel Book of the Year 2012.

About the Book: Noo Saro-Wiwa was brought up in England, but every summershe was dragged back to Nigeria - a country she viewed as an annoying parallel universe where she had to relinquish all her creature comforts. Then her father, activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, was murdered there, and she didn't return for 10 years. Recently, she decided to come to terms with the country her father loved. She travelled from the exuberant chaos of Lagos to the calm beauty of the eastern mountains; from the eccentricity of a Nigerian dog show to the empty Transwonderland Amusement Park. Looking for Transwonderland is an engaging portrait of a country whose beauty and variety few of us will experience, depicted with wit and insight by a refreshing new voice in contemporary travel writing.

8, when silence becomes too loud
About the Author: Chidera Nneoma Okolie is a graduate of Law from the University of Nigeria Enugu Campus. When silence becomes too loud is her first published book.

About The Book:  Philip believed he was unsurpassed at what he does. He had worked hard and wasn't going to let himself feel otherwise. But something about the Mabanugo murders made him qualm. Just when he thinks he has the murderer, a lacuna appears to smite all to smithereens. He was after all the best may be, just may be he underestimated them.

Laura Ikeji is pregnant

Style enthusiast, fashion blogger and younger sister to Linda Ikeji.Laura Ikeji is said to be pregnant for her beau Ogbonna Nwankwo who is the younger brother of ace footballer Kanu Nwankwo. According to my source Laura who is said to be in the last stages of her first trimester is ecstatic and beyond thrilled that she is soon going to be a mum. She has also left cues here and there for her loyal followers on Instagram as her way of sharing the good news.

Cues like this one where she proudly calls her self a Mom( spot the tiny bump?)

She's also been posting quotes such as this one. Yea you right Laura Stretch marks and the likes are some of the many beautiful transformations you will be experiencing in the next 5 months or less.

And last but not list is this picture of Laura in all her pregnant glory, with a very visible baby bump. Well well, congratulations Laura and Happy Mothers day you are going to be one very interesting baby mama.