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By Merit Ibe
The Market Traders Association of Nigeria (MATAN), has refuted the claim by the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC), that market associations are to be blamed for excessive food price hike in the country .
The Executive Vice Chairman of FCCPC, Mr. Babatunde Irukera, had threatened to proceed against market associations that have formed themselves into illegal cartels for orchestrating upward manipulation of food prices.
Irukera issued the threat during the, “Fair Food Prices in Nigeria, Multi-stakeholder Workshop,” which was organised by the FCCPC in collaboration with Consumer International.
He said: “It is associations, whether in input supplies in fertilizer or market traders’ association that constitute cartels that are increasing food prices.”
Reacting in a letter by the principal consultant of MATAN, Burke-Frazier Consulting Firm Ltd, the Managing Director, Ayo Abiola, noted that the firm received the brief by MATAN to immediately correct the assumptions of FCCPC that heaped all the blames of the woes of the escalating food prices in Nigeria on members of the association.
The letter entitled: “We are not to blame for the high food price hikes in Nigeria,” the traders association noted that while
not absolving the bad eggs in the association for unwholesome pricing, the National Secretary of the association that is also the chairman of the Project Implementation
Steering Committee, market Traders Integrated Revenue Management System, Ambassador (Dr) Olakunle Moses Johnson, has re-emphasised without prejudice that ‘multiple-taxation and extortion’ at the food gateways (Ports), Federal and local routes to traditional markets and unchecked activities of illegal tax collectors with yet
to be refuted claims of government backing around markets are the economic and social menace hiding under other known reasons for the sky-rocketing food price in Nigeria, “if spade would be called spade and not a farm working tool.”
He is however happy that MATAN now has the listening ears of the Federal government through their various Ministries and agencies which included;Federal inland Revenue Service and the Joint Tax board that have stoutly responded with responses that would address the issue. We trust that the new government of President Bola Tinubu is positively in tune with the clarion call of traders over the years on multiple taxation and extortion going by the recent moves of his new administration to the effect.
Bisi williams, National PRO, Implementation Steering Committee on MATAN VAT Direct Initiative (VDI), emphasized that cartels have their advantages and normal in business to protect and ensure fair dealings for their members.
Williams said it is an aberration to blame the hike in food prices in Nigeria on MATAN .
“As traders, it is what you buy that you sell. There are indices or parameters that influence cost of price of goods and services. It is dynamic and universal.
He noted that the removal of the fuel subsidy and the equality of the exchange rate are the parameters that have caused increase in the prices in recent times, adding that high cost has been there but in recent times it is beyond the reach of the masses.
“On the removal of the fuel subsidy the perspective was that once it’s removed ,the market forces will be applied and force the prices down.
“Certain factors were supposed to have been considered before the removal.
The removal has led to a geometric progression in the cost of living.
Traders should not be blamed it is the policy somersault of the government.” He called on government to come up with proactive system to help alleviate the suffering of Nigerians.
Speaking from the Lagos office at Egbeda, the sanity still witnessed both in the traditional and open markets are products of cartels who placed checks on activities of member.
According to him , Nigeria is a member of OPEC, an international cartel of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
“We at Burke-Frazier are also of the opinion that many intervening variables are being overlooked in the issue of food price hikes in Nigeria despite the awareness of the hash realities now being experienced as part of the process of economic structures
deconstruction to reconstruct the economy by the new administration of President Tinubu.
“What we have as represented in the galloping inflation in food pricing is an aftermath of insecurity in the food belt of Nigeria. Farmers are yet to develop the full confidence for scale-up farming capable of diluting effects of profiteering cartels as claimed by FCCPC as majority of the farmers have been killed, displaced from their
farm lands or as a result of their disabilities caused by the attacks on them on their farms and villages.
“Most of the agricultural inputs, such as seedlings, yield enhancing products and engineering work tools are products of imports directly influenced by
foreign exchange. The bulk of the produce in the Nigerian markets are foreign agricultural products from the neighbouring countries to such an unbelievable level of raw tomato, coconut, pepper and others that have to pass through unhealthy channels for human consumption why highly exposed to unwholesome taxation and
extortion on the routes to markets.
What we have today is an after effect of the untamed monsters that only the Federal Government could tame.
We however recommend that the New government of President Tinubu should go ahead with the economic reconstruction reforms. The new committee on tax should pay due attention to details of taxes at our ports, at the states and local governments.
Government must develop interest in structures of dues being charged by the
different associations as the effects would finally be passed to the consumers.
The Federal Government must enforce laws and executive assertions and not pay lip service to feedbacks from people they are supposed to protect and not the few pockets that damage the reputations of government and their good policies because perpetrators are not smart alec from the wind. Savings from economic deconstruction
should go into Agricultural production and non-fuel transportation of people: they are the immediate areas that the government of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu could achieve the quick-wins capable of dousing the tension in the country.
