Soaring demands, flooding and poor storage facilties are the main causes of the skyrocketing price of onions in Nigeria, a PREMIUM TIMES check has revealed.
Households in Nigeria now have to dig deeper into their pockets to buy onions, one of the most commonly consumed vegetables in the country as prices have risen sharply due to a biting shortage.
In the past month, prices have been on a steady rise as scarcity hits markets across the country.
Consumers have taken to social media to trade complaints about the surging prices, comparing price rates in different regions of the country.
The price of a bag of onions has shot up by nearly 200 per cent, according to price checks done by this reporter in markets in at least five states across Nigeria.
Market insight
During a visit at the Olojudo market, Ido Ekiti in Ekiti State, both sellers and buyers who believe the spike is seasonal gave an insight into how onion prices and availability is increasingly becoming a problem.
Prices differ in different regions depending on the availability of onions.
“The price of onions is usually higher this time of the year, November to December because this is the time when farmers grow this crop,” Mallam Dogo, an onion dealer, said.
“A bag of onions sold at the rate N18,000 before is now sold for N58,000,” he said.
Meanwhile, Angela Nwokeforo, a civil servant who was at the market to buy onions, lamented that a N100 worth of onion would no longer be enough to cook a meal for her family due to the hike in price.
“N100 worth of onion is not enough for me to prepare a meal for my family again,” she said. “As you can see now this onion I am holding is N500 but before I can get this quantity at the rate of N100.”
“I think this increase is happening every year. I’ve seen that by the end of the year, onions are disappearing from the market,” she said
Another consumer, Idown Agbaje, said “Government should try to find a solution to this inflation and make the crop available to the people.
“During the ember months, onions are usually very scarce and the ones you can see are always very high and our government is not even making any plans in providing any storage facilities for the produce to be available all year round,” she said.
In Oko market in Asaba, Delta State, dealers attributed the scarcity of onions to a lack of storage facilities resulting in the price hike.
