PUNCH
Prices of tomatoes and pepper in the North have continued to soar despite the items being in their season, Arewa PUNCH reports.
The development has reached an alarming level such that residents say their prices have stripped them to bare bones.
Most of the residents further groan that the prices of pepper and tomatoes in particular have further hit the roof just a few days after the Muslim festival of Eid-il-kabir.
Checks by Arewa PUNCH correspondents who went out to monitor the situation across some major markets in the northern part of the country that includes Kaduna, Gombe, Nasarawa, Kogi, Adamawa, Taraba, Benue, and Sokoto, indicated that rather than the prices of these perishable commodities abate even after the Sallah celebration they are rising uncontrollably.
For instance, in Lafiya, the Nasarawa State capital, residents lamented over the cost of tomatoes and peppers urging the Federal Government to take proactive measures to arrest the situation.
Halima Musa, a housewife, told our correspondent that a big basket of tomatoes, which cost N17,000 early January, now sells for N65,000, while a bag of pepper that sold for N10,000 now goes for N52,000.
According to her, the government must urgently intervene into the situation and deliberately crash prices of good in the markets with a view to regulating them.
For Joy Abraham, another housewife and mother of three, she said she had since stopped cooking with either fresh tomatoes or pepper as the prices have continued to skyrocket beyond her reach.
“I decided to go back to using sachet tomatoes because the price of fresh tomatoes has refused to come down anytime soon.
“A small painter bucket of tomatoes which used to be sold for between N1,000 to N1,500 now sells for N8,000 to N10,000, while a small painter bucket of pepper which sold for N600 now sells for N4,000,” she added.
Yakubu Ibrahim, a trader at the Lafiya market dealing in tomatoes and peppers, absolved his colleagues from the soaring prices of the commodities.
Speaking in the Hausa language he explained to Arewa PUNCH, “So many people are saying that it is our fault that the prices of tomatoes and pepper are increasing, but it is not so.
“We buy most of these cooking ingredients from Plateau State and other states in the North Central region. And we sell almost at the same amount we buy the items because we are also considering the suffering of our fellow citizens,” Ibrahim said.
In Lokoja, Kogi State, our correspondent noted that a dustbin basket of tomatoes sells for N11,000 while one big basket sells for between N100,000 and N120,000.
