Agricultural product prices continue to surge across Nigeria, as per a Nairametrics survey, despite the conclusion of December’s festive season.
January typically witnesses reduced demand post-yuletide, leading to lower prices. However, 2024 has seen an unexpected defiance of this trend in food prices.
The survey, covering Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt, and Maiduguri, reveals increased prices for garri, beans, yams, corn, bread, and cooking gas. Rice prices range between N65,000 and N68,000 per bag, while tomatoes’ prices have decreased in Lagos.
Prices for cooking gas and charcoal are steadily rising, the survey shows. Dupe, a garri seller in Orile Market, notes a significant increase in paint rubber garri prices from N650 to N850 since December. In the same market, a Derica (tomato can) of beans, which sold for N600 in December, now sells for N750.
At face value, the size of yams that cost N1,400 in December has increased to N1,600. The same is true with the price of bread in the Orile area of Lagos. Compared to Iyana Ipaja Market on the outskirts of Lagos, the differences in the prices of agricultural products above are negligible.
In Maiduguri, two residents Uche Ojemba and Halima Mohammed, a housewife confirm that increased food prices in December have remained high in January, with only tomatoes showing a decrease.
Uche claims that as a bachelor, he goes to the market every other week, and could vouch that there is no difference between food prices in December and January.
Angela Dressman, a civil servant in Port Harcourt affirmed that she has not seen any difference in the prices of food items except for tomatoes and a marginal decrease for chicken. She averred that compared to December, the price of rice had remained relatively the same, while the prices of beans, garri, and yams had increased by more than N200 per unit.
In Utako Market, in Abuja, Joy, a retail rice seller, said there is no big difference between the December and January prices of the product. While acceding that there are different grades of rice, she said there had been no appreciable drop in the price of the product. She agreed, however, that the prices of tomatoes and chicken had fallen.
However, Idriss Bello, who trades beans and yams, stated that the prices of the two products are still rising in January, despite the end of the festival month. He said yams and beans are now costlier from the source than in previous years. But there is more to the high cost of food.
Most of the traders who spoke with Nairametrics ascribed the sustained hike in agricultural products to the high cost of transportation and illegal taxation on the roads.
Taiye, a charcoal seller in Ojo Local Government Area, noted that she buys a bag of charcoal in nearby Ogun State at the price of N1,500 but it costs her an extra N2,000 per bag to cover her transportation cost and illegal levies on the roads. Hence, her landing cost is N3,500. Then she must add her margins, which makes the product expensive.
Adamu, who is a beans wholesaler, agreed. He said since the price of fuel increased in June 2023, the cost of transporting agricultural products from the north to Lagos has risen by almost three times. According to him, there are many places on the road where various agencies of government and other non-state actors extort money from traders. He stressed that in Lagos alone there are several checkpoints manned by thugs that must be settled for each trip of agricultural goods.
The National Bureau of Statistics announced on Monday that the country’s annual inflation rate rose to 28.92 percent in December 2023 from 28.20% in November with food prices a key contributor.
Recently, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said the food inflation rate in December 2023 rose to 33.93% on a year-on-year basis, 10.18% points higher than the rate recorded in December 2022 (23.75%).
The NBS attributes this rise in headline inflation to elevated prices of essential food items such as bread and cereals, oil and fat, yams, and meat. Additionally, the food inflation rate for December 2023 experienced a month-on-month uptick, reaching 2.72 percent, a 0.30 percentage point rise from the 2.42 percent recorded in November 2023.
