By Bolanle Bolawole, turnpot@gmail.com, 705 263 1058
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Decades ago, I remember reading a piece by a writer lamenting the sudden but astronomical shooting up in the price of “garri”, which used to be the staple food of poor and down-trodden Nigerians. For reasons which need not detain us here, “garri” shrugged off its beggarly position in the hierarchy of staple foods and began to rub shoulders with the likes of rice, beans and yam flour. So, the writer, alarmed at what he described as the effrontery of garri and its audacity to join the league of the elites, screamed: “See me, see garri o!” Unruffled, “garri” has not looked back ever since! On the contrary, it has been helped by the lacklustre and wanton-destroyer Muhammadu Buhari administration to firmly book its place amongst the elite club of foodstuffs in Nigeria.
Since the coming of Buhari, no staple foodstuff has been cheap again in Nigeria. The steep devaluation of the Naira, leading to its dwindling purchasing power – and this coupled with receding opportunities on all fronts – has meant that every essential commodity has become priced beyond the reach of most Nigerians. Bread, which used to come to the rescue as ready-made food for the commoner, now attracts a princely price. It is the rich and affluent who eat bread these days! For Buhari to think, in the midst of all of these, that he has done well, is mind-boggling, to say the least.
Does the president live in this country? Is he aware of happenings around him or is he like Rome’s King Nero? And so did Nero fiddle while his country was on fire! Of all the issues confronting this country and sending it to an early and untimely grave, as it were, it is “ponmon” that the Buhari administration is flexing muscles over! Insecurity is there; inflation or stagflation is there; unemployment is there; ASUU strike is there; derelict infrastructure is there; crude oil theft is there; humongous oil subsidy scam is there; high cost of living is there; soaring cost of foodstuffs is there; skyrocketing house rent is there; crushing indebtedness is there; and crippling transportation cost is also there – despite all of these, ponmon lo kan, if we may borrow the expression, which has now become a cliche, from the APC presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu!
The Buhari administration is said to be proposing a law to ban the consumption of “ponmon”! For a very long time, beef and other forms of meat have wriggled out of the reach of the common man; following suit, fish has zoomed past the common man; and taking a cue from these two, frozen chicken has said the common man must not mention its name again! Egg, at between N2200 and N2500 per crate of 30 eggs, has joined the bandwagon to say bye-bye to the common man! “Ponmon”, the last hope of the common man, is now under siege! From whence, then, will the common man source his animal protein when all available doors appear shut in his face? And it is not as if “ponmon” at all comes cheap these days anyway; it is just that it is still a shade more affordable than the other sources of protein or a semblance of the same. We have even been told that “ponmon” has no nutritional value but it confers a semblance of respectability to have a form of “meat” perch gingerly on your food or sit pretty in your soup or stew!
In the South, the South-west, especially, “ponmon” has also attracted the status of a delicacy; so banning it will attract similar opprobrium as banning stockfish (Okporoko) and fairly used wears (Okrika) in the South-east. Remember, promising to ban these items for being injurious to the people’s health and well-being were some of the “sins” the Igbo refused to forgive Chief Obafemi Awolowo for! So, if the proposed ban on “ponmon” flies everywhere, I am sure it will fail spectacularly in the South-west whose trade mark “owambe” parties will be incomplete without the delectable “gbegiri”, “egusi”, “efo riro”, “ila asepo” soups garnished with “orisirisi” and “ponmon kika”! Let no Buhari dare us!
One conspiracy theory says the focus on “ponmon” or hides and skins is another smart plot to divert the country’s resources in the direction of the North that produces the hides and skins in the same manner the Raw Materials Research Council has done with “Kilishi” while serious issues are left unattended to by the Northerners/Muslims and, possibly, Fulani, who head these organisations and the
Buhari presidency. Each day and with each policy, these folks give us additional reasons to scream “To your tents, O Israel!”/SHARE THIS