Nigerian market women and house wives are the happiest with the influx of fresh tomatoes to the markets. For the past months, tomatoes were very hard to find in the market while the few available ones were very expensive due to pestilence that ravaged many tomatoes plantations in the northern part of Nigeria.

According to ENCOMIUM,  fresh tomatoes are gradually coming back to the market again. Though said to be the local northern tomatoes, market women and housewives have heaved a sigh of relief with this development.

The price is just slightly different from what it was a month back. It has been widely accepted by women who have missed fresh tomatoes to make stew.

Starting from N100 and above, women can now savour the fresh taste and aroma it gives to food.

Nigerian women had to look for alternatives when fresh tomatoes were scarce. Some women didn’t make a pot of stew for over a month and more because they couldn’t get fresh tomatoes. While some took solace in dry tomatoes which many complained that it made stew black. Some women took to other discoveries like using carrot to make stew, while some families lived on soups that could be made without fresh tomatoes. Canned tomato puree came to the rescue but it’s taste couldn’t be compared with fresh tomatoes.

When the scarcity was at its peak, two pieces of fresh tomatoes was sold for N200. A big basket full at the local market was sold for N35,000 instead of N7 – N10,000.

Now that it is returning to the market, a big basket is sold for N25,000 and one could get a handful at N100.

Market women attributed the scarcity to the tomatoes ebola that ravaged the northern part of the country where tomato is predominantly grown.  Some blame the scarcity on the present administration because they are not paying attention to the agriculture sector like their predecessor. Some people are of the opinion that Boko Haram insurgency in a north contributed to scarcity.

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