Food Blockage: We’d rather lose than transport our goods to Southern Nigeria — Northern traders vow

The Amalgamated Union of Foodstuff and Cattle Dealers of Nigeria (AUFCDN) says it prefers that farm produce goes to waste rather than tolerate “continued attacks” on its members in the South.

Awwalu Aliyu, an official of the union, who spoke to TheCable in Kano on Tuesday, March 2, said the decision not to supply food to the south was not to starve southerners but to protest attacks on their members.

Aliyu restated the group’s claim that northerners were killed and lost properties, especially during the #EndSARS protests and the recent Shasha market crisis in Ibadan, Oyo State.

When asked if members of the union were not concerned about food items locked up inside trucks in Jebba going bad and leading to losses, he said, “It would be better to lose the food items than to lose lives. You’re talking about losing goods; which one is better, to lose a life or to lose property? Losing property is better than losing a life.

We prefer and our people will prefer to lose those farm items or goods than to continue losing their lives. If you are alive, you can plant another thing, you can rear another cattle. But if you’re dead, you can’t do that again. Only the living can go to the farm.

We do not want to destroy anybody. We do not want to kill anybody. The number of Yorubas and Ibos that reside in Kano and Kaduna alone is far more than the number of northerners in the entire South-West, South-South and South-East.

Also, the investments of Yorubas and Igbos in Kano and Kaduna, running into billions of naira are more than the entire investments of northerners in the South-West, South-East and South-South if you remove Aliko Dangote. Our people are only petty traders, ‘shoe shiners’ (cobblers), fingernail cutters, wheelbarrow pushers, okada riders and so on.

Our people in the South don’t have what southerners have in the North. They have farmlands, buildings and a lot of properties that run into billions of naira. We do not intend to destroy anybody’s property. What we want is to have our people protected from being killed.”