Can home gardens reduce food scarcity in Nigeria?

These are tough times, I know. What with the planned #EndBadGovernance protest by Nigerian youths set to begin next week Thursday on August 1. As usual, in response, there are rumours of plans by the powers that be to ensure the protest fails. Some people are said to have been financially enabled to cause confusion for as low as one thousand naira (about 63 cents). Which is unsurprising considering that there’s so much hunger in the land, some would collect anything, if they can eat one meal. Speaking of which, a friend was of the opinion that the protest should’ve been tagged #EndHunger or something along those lines. Who can fault there’s famine and hunger in the land? No lies detected as they say.

If you live in Lagos, there are rumours that the dreaded Oro festival is also going to start on August and last for several days. I’m not sure how true this is considering the report that the festival already took place in May this year.  During the Oro festival, women are mandated to stay indoors as the activities can’t be witnessed by women and perhaps non-indigenes. However, something like this happened last year during the general elections, one of the many plots to intimidate and threaten potential opposition voters.

It’s against this backdrop that I take our minds back to the ongoing “Every Home A Garden” competition. On July 6, Nigeria’s first lady Senator Oluremi Tinubu kicked off the competition run by the Renewed Hope Initiative, RHI, an NGO. Every Home A Garden, according to the first lady “aims to inculcate the habit of farming and food production into the society right from the family unit and promote eating healthy foods.” As an added bonus, there’s a N20 million-naira prize money to be won. Also to show that she walks her talk, Mrs. Tinubu invited the whole nation to her “personal vegetable garden” at the state house via a TV crew to show off her okro and other vegetable plants. The offscreen voiceover told viewers that she personally tends her garden. I bet she wasn’t personally responsible for the green-white-green painting of the concrete slabs around the vegetable beds. But let’s not quibble.

More seriously, the idea of people growing some of their food to supplement food from other sources is commendable. I’m just beginning to take that seriously myself. On my porch all the way in Canada, I have scent leaf, bitter leaf, garden egg, pepper, thyme, oregano, spearmint (I now enjoy my virgin mojitos), even herbs I’m not familiar with and don’t know how I’m going to use like tarragon and lemon verbena. My inspiration is Ronke Edoho, 9ja Foodie and creator of Lose It Nigerian, Canadian based health and fitness entrepreneur who grows Nigerian vegetables in her garden, plus a communal patch. She also holds workshops to teach others how to do this. For instance, the other day she said she hasn’t bought pepper (atarodo) in a year. Can you imagine what that means when (3 pieces) pepper in Nigeria  was selling for 200 naira at one time? All of that to buttress how good the idea of home vegetable gardens is.