And here we were, thinking a pest with the scientific name Tuta absoluta is the reason why 4 pieces of miserable looking tomatoes now sell for N450 in the market.
Not entirely correct, says information minister Lai Mohammed, whose comments were parsed from a ChannelsTV interview by TheCable.
“People talk about the price of tomato but they forget one thing; they forget that the price of tomato today is a direct result of the fact that we have lost two years harvest to Boko Haram insurgency,” he said.
“Most of the people you see riding Okada (motorcycles) in Lagos are people who would have been in the farm to produce consumable items.”
When asked if he was convinced that the tomato scarcity could be attributed to insurgency, he said: “Absolutely! Do you farm where there is war? We have lost two seasons of harvest. In addition, we have had very poor rainfall last year and this year. These are the combined factors responsible for the scarcity of tomato. Go and ask economists and agriculturists, they will tell you.”
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