Encomium
Women cry over the scarcity and high cost of tomatoes in the market which they said had lingered too long. Due to the scarcity and rising cost, many women have resorted to using sachet and canned tomatoes for their cooking instead of the fresh ones, while many have stopped preparing stew. Instead they make vegetable soup and other soups that require little or no tomatoes.
encomium.ng on Tuesday, May 17, 2016, sampled opinions of food vendors, tomatoes sellers and house wives on how they are coping with the scarcity of tomatoes due to the skyrocketing prices.
MRS. SHEMILORE (Housewife)
Yes, it has increased. Since tomatoes became scarce, I have not been making stew in my house because N1000 tomatoes cannot even take care of my family now and that is what I use before to make a pot of stew and still have enough leftovers for other things.
MRS. ALUKO (Housewife)
Yes. As at last week, 1 big tomato cost N100 in the market and before it used to be 4 pieces of tomatoes for N200. So, I have to move to tomato paste to make stew and the smallest sachet of that tomatoes paste is N70 and it used to be N35 or N40 before.
I don’t know how long we are going to suffer this hardship.
MRS. CHIZOBA (Housewife)
Yes, it has. I cannot even remember the last time I made stew for the family. I keep cooking vegetable, egusi, fried pepper and palm oil, egg stew to eat rice so they will not be eating only yam and beans with eba every time.
This is really a bad condition and I hope God will see us through in these hard times.
IYA ABOSEDE
Yes. I was at the market last week Saturday and in the whole Ile-Epo market, there were no tomatoes. And the one I saw, a basket of tomatoes was N22,000 and before a basket was N8,000. The smallest bucket of tomatoes was N1,000 and it is even up to N500 tomatoes, so I had to buy pepper and vegetables to sell.
MRS. OLATUNI (Housewife)
I have not been making stew because tomatoes of N1000 cannot make a pot of stew that will take care of my family. This is unlike before when I can use N22 or N300 to make enough and good stew although we understand that tomatoes are really scarce and expensive during raining season but it is to bad this year.
MAMA FAITH (Food vendor)
Tomatoes is very expensive now. Before I can make a pot of stew with N1,300 worth of tomatoes to serve rice and beans where I sell food but now, I can hardly get the quantity of stew I want from tomatoes. In fact, I am considering stopping the sale of food until the situation gets better.
– GLORY OSIGWE for encomium.ng
