I journey house very often. Once I travelled in April for my secondary faculty reunion occasion, planting was attending to its peak, however the months of Could and June turned a revelation with regard to what’s achievable with an intentional, well-thought-out coverage strategy to agriculture growth in Enugu State and plenty of components of Nigeria.
A revolution is happening within the Nsukka axis of Enugu State. The individuals arose to a name from nature to take their destinies in their very own fingers; they took to tomato farming and are making an enormous success of it.
Tomato, on this article, would possibly function a metaphor for a few of the “unusual” crops which are thriving commercially in Nsukka now. The individuals, by self-help and impressed by the will to outlive, started, just a few years in the past, to experiment with crops like watermelon, cucumber, tomatoes, and bell peppers.
Nsukka was significantly better identified for the extremely sought-after yellow pepper, extra popularly often called “ose Nsukka,” which grew to industrial heights and was shipped to all cities within the nation.
Many households skilled their kids in class from the proceeds of Ose Nsukka farming. Those that had been on the lookout for routes to lift capital for different companies too turned to the planting of this number of pepper and raised the capital that began them off.
Again within the day, the idea was that tomatoes wouldn’t thrive within the space referred to as Nsukka. As a toddler rising up, my late mom had a small farm by the nook of our modest house in Nsukka. She planted all kinds of greens there, from ugu and pepper to Occimum gratissium (scent leaves) and sometimes tomatoes.
However the tomatoes had been merely propagated absent-mindedly, and we picked one or two balls at one of the best of instances every season. I don’t recall any time in these days after we ever picked sufficient to make a pot of stew for our Sunday rice. All consideration was on different crops. The pepper flourished, and neighbours got here to have their picks after they wanted to make a meal. The identical was true of the scent leaf plant.
No neighbour was loopy sufficient to choose any of the tomatoes then, as a result of they had been uncommon. It was categorised as stealing to choose from that one, despite the fact that it was rising in the identical backyard (as we referred to as it then) as the opposite greens.
Our locality was distinctive. Everyone lived for everyone. You’ll be able to stroll into your neighbour’s farm and decide stuff corresponding to pepper, bitter leaf, ugu, and all kinds of greens if the aim is to cook dinner the meals you and your loved ones would eat. You needn’t ask for permission. Such was the maturity of our communalism.
However any one that harvests one other particular person’s yam, cocoyam, cassava, and a few of these larger crops is taken into account a thief and handled as one.
Tomatoes fell into the upper crop class. You needed to be grasping and well-off to afford rice, and so that you can steal its accompaniment, the individuals noticed this as not pushed by starvation however by different intentions that aren’t linked to day by day bread.
So, the few tomato balls that ripened in my mom’s backyard again then had been protected. We feared solely the birds and some bugs.
Quick ahead to a couple years in the past, when just a few individuals started to experiment with cucumber and watermelon in Nsukka. Earlier than this experiment began, 100% of the cucumbers and watermelons consumed within the huge group of Nsukka, comprising seven native authorities areas, had been introduced down from the northern components of the nation.
Sure, I cannot overlook backyard eggs. This was one in every of them, and it’s nonetheless offering earnings to the farmers of Nsukka, who linked to the proverb of the individuals, which says that “it’s the soiled fingers that translate to oily mouths.”
Maybe inspired by the outcomes from cucumber, backyard egg, and watermelon planting, the individuals began the experiment with tomatoes. They sought out improved varieties and those who had been adaptable to the climate situations of Nsukka.
There was a significant downside—water. The Nsukka space has no irrigation facility to water the crops throughout these dry months between February and April. A decided individuals, they dove into it headfirst, daring each danger. These planting round native streams dug plastic pipes and hoses to their small unit farms, and that was how water was supplied. Others purchased water reservoir tanks and visited their farms twice every day to manually give their crops water.
Supporting this revolution was one other quiet revolution happening within the space. The a whole lot of smallholder poultry and piggery farms sprouting all around the space supplied some degree of natural manure for the hard-working farmers. Graduates who couldn’t safe paid employment began the smallholder poultry, and whereas taking advantage of egg and rooster gross sales, additionally they earned further earnings from the sale of their rooster and pig droppings, natural fertiliser that the brand new crops wanted to thrive.
Quick ahead to June 2025, and Nsukka has change into a internet exporter of tomatoes to many components of the nation. Vans come day by day to ferry Nsukka tomatoes to markets in Abuja, Owerri, Onitsha, Port Harcourt, Enugu, Lagos, and different industrial centres.
The farmers are making extra money, if I had been to paraphrase President Bola Tinubu throughout his marketing campaign for the presidency of Nigeria, however my persons are reaching what they’ve achieved with no single authorities enter, assist, or encouragement.
Whenever you go to Nsukka and listen to anybody saying “tomato Jos,” know instantly the particular person is a stranger and unaware that the lingo has modified to “Tomato Nsukka.” This isn’t a boast. The tomatoes harvested from the soils of Nsukka are stunning, alluring, and wholesome sufficient to instigate the brand new lingo of tomato Nsukka as an outline of pure pure magnificence.
The tomato economic system in Nsukka has additionally given rise to what the younger individuals driving this new economic system name “ego cash” (tomato cash).
Ego tomato, is a parody derived from the frequent lingo, blood cash. It means that younger males who drive good vehicles, construct respectable houses, and pop costly drinks at golf equipment made their cash truthfully from tomato farming.
These younger women and men are making good cash from trustworthy work. They begin farming round March to April, and after three months, they start their harvests, the fruits of which leaves sums starting from N10 million to N30 million of their financial institution accounts. This sum is conservative, contemplating that those that plant bigger acreages realise greater than the said numbers.
The tomato economic system is empowering households, offering livelihoods to graduates, and offering aspect hustles for poorly paid civil servants, lecturers, and merchants. Contained in the communities, the individuals have devised intelligent methods of maximising the worth. There are offtakers in lots of communities, and the love among the many individuals ensures that farmers take their harvests to those offtakers, who save them the time and drudgery of going to the open market with out dishonest them—they nonetheless pay them the going market charges. There are those that assist the offtakers to grade and bundle the tomatoes, and those that load them in buses and vehicles, and these are values that present earnings for the individuals.
The Nsukka tomato economic system is big. It could possibly get greater if the federal government has eyes for growth. Who would set off the considering to make all of it season? Who will consider infrastructure that will make this crop roll across the yr, regardless of the seasonal adjustments?
Developments to make this a straightforward chance have began creeping in. I’ve begun to see individuals offering coaching applications on greenhouse farming and hydroponics. Organising greenhouse amenities would require some sizable capital outlay. Right here, the feudal state and native governments ought to step in to allow the individuals to benefit from these alternatives and maximise the advantages.
The federal government ought to consider how finest to deepen the penetration of such alternatives every time they occur. The extra the individuals make investments themselves in such alternatives, the extra the federal government features by way of taxation, employment technology, safety, and different points of life.
The Ose Nsukka economic system empowered a whole lot of individuals. However it’s plateauing with out the maximisation of its full advantages, corresponding to processing and storage. I used to be in Enugu someday in 2018, throughout an exhibition at Okpara Sq.. Some individuals got here with proposals on the processing and packaging of that distinctive pepper.
I nonetheless recall the then governor, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, instructing me to choose all their brochures and flyers and complimentary playing cards to allow additional exploration of the chance. However that was the final I heard of that undertaking.
The tomato economic system is upon us once more in Nsukka. It’ll linger for lengthy, if the dexterity of Nsukka individuals needs to be an indicator. The following farming season will probably be greater, as conversations of the Nsukka diaspora group investing within the new economic system are gathering gear.
If this growth occurs, then the problem could be highway infrastructure, transportation, and processing/storage points.
That’s one other problem the federal government ought to cope with. Within the quest for attracting funding, this space is necessary due to its direct impression on the common particular person and households.
There’s no person who earns N15 million in 5 months of labor that would depart the agricultural space for any golden fleece within the city space. If the incentives for all-season planting are supplied, the chance doubles, enriching the agricultural communities and making certain that the human useful resource depletion of our rural communities immediately abates.
Our political leaders ought to perceive that growth doesn’t start and finish with built-up areas. Urbanisation shouldn’t be the identical as growth. Actions and actions designed to create entry to facilities that enhance the standard of life, corresponding to monetary companies, telephony, roads, clear water, safety, and financial actions, are the true growth indicators.
The individuals didn’t sit on their fingers, ready to be spoonfed by the federal government. They sought the options to their financial challenges and had been capable of propagate crops that had been regarded as not possible to propagate of their space and make a big industrial alternative out of it.
The federal government thus owes them the assist to take this additional, by planting pipelines that will expose the doable layers of values alongside the chain to widen the nets of alternatives and produce extra individuals into the security of the wealth inside the universe of the potential values.
Ikem Okuhu, a author and model strategist, lives in Lagos.
