High costs of kerosene,cooking gas: Our kitchen nightmares —Housewives

Cooking is numbing Lagos families. Kitchen managers share their grief with BOLA BADMUS, SOLA ADEKOLA, CHUKS OKPARAOCHA, TUNDE DODONDAWA, CHIMA NWOKOJI, AYOMIDE OWONIBI-ODEKANYIN, NAZA OKOLI and KEHINDE AKINSEHINDE-JAYEOBA.

STONE-AGE humanity devised cooking as a survival strategy. Modernity formed it into an art. From using shrubs and tree branches in the past to generating heat for cooking, men have moved into an age of luxury cooking with modernised heat generators like gas and kerosene without totally abandoning the primitive ones like firewood and coal, depending on their pocket, taste and preference. Ironically, a kind of journey back to the past may have begun for many homes and families in Lagos where nature would have to be plundered for them to survive the current cooking nightmare they are experiencing.

Prices of kerosene and cooking gas have gone up. Families of moderate means are no longer privileged to use them.

A housewife who didn’t want her name in print told Saturday Tribune that “this is a period of creativity for us. No matter how rich your husband is, with the current abnormal prices of all cooking materials, you must cut down on everything that appears like waste and even cut down on usage. There is no money and gas, kerosene, coal and firewood are very expensive. Even if you want to use electric stove, there is no light (electricity). It is, indeed, a strange time”.

Reported strange happenings in recent times have truly made cooking a nightmare in Lagos. In large and small groups, at markets and in offices, by the roadsides and on commercial buses, the rising cost of cooking has continued to dominate discussions in the metropolis. While many in other states say they have resorted to the use of firewood, Lagos residents appear stuck.

No doubt, kerosene is the most popular means of cooking in the city. The commodity is sold on virtually every street, into small containers and plastic jerry cans. Even restaurants, particularly those in the low-cost, densely-populated areas, rely almost exclusively on kerosene. In many ways, then, kerosene is the common man’s meal ticket.

To most residents, therefore, the rise in the price of kerosene came as a blow. At the early stage of the crisis, many looked to gas for hope but, as Saturday Tribune’s findings show, the price of gas, perhaps in response to the growing demand for it, also began to rise rapidly.

“Some mothers send their children here to eat breakfast and they also eat lunch here on their way from school.

“It is much cheaper that way than having to spend over N1,000 to prepare a single meal. For example, a small child would eat a meal of N100 and be satisfied while an older child could eat a N150 meal and be satisfied”, she said.

Also speaking with Saturday Tribune, a kerosene seller, Iya Femi, lamented the low sales she had recorded in the last one week. “Before the increase in kerosene price, I used to sell so much that I refilled my tank every other week. Now I have not even sold a quarter of the tank. People have now resorted to using gas and hot plate as they are more economically viable for them”, she said.

A gas plant attendant also spoke to Saturday Tribune. The man, who declined to give his name because he was not the owner of the plant, noted that the number of people buying cooking gas had increased. “As it is, we sell as much gas as your pocket can cope with. We refill 1kg and 3kg as the need demands. I think it’s much better for people this way than refilling the whole 12kg”, he said.

Mischief rules

One angle to the kitchen grief, which is as hilarious as it is mischievous, is Saturday Tribune’s findings about women, particularly career ladies, capitalizing on the hike in the prices of cooking gas and kerosene to stop cooking for their hubbies and then opt for fast food joints for nearly all meals.

Investigations showed that some working class ladies have jettisoned their responsibility of cooking for their families by hiding under the excuse of the hike in the prices of cooking gas and kerosene to now shift to patronising fast food joints. They now buy prepared foods, even soups, to feed their families.

Families have been negatively affected by the patronage of the food joints as it has set many men against their wives.

Mr Segun Atidade, a civil servant who spoke to Saturday Tribune, criticised the idea of women dragging their families to fast food joints, saying such women were not true wives. According to him, no responsible woman would feed her family with junk foods under any guise. He accused husbands of such women of being passive. To him, a good woman will struggle, no matter the situation, to take good care of her husband and children by cooking meals for them, even if just once or twice daily.

A family of four living on Ogunlana Street in Egbeda, Lagos, is said to be faced with the challenge of being forced to eat fast foods by the mother of the house who is a businesswoman on the Island. Now, she is said to be battling to save her marriage as the husband, as a way of opposing the idea of feeding the children with fast foods, has told her to either resume the preparation of normal foods at home for him and the children or quit the marriage.

Besides, many homes, which cannot afford to patronize fast food joints or afford the expensive gas and kerosene, have been forced to adjust their eating formulae as they eat solid foods once while they take slight refreshment that does not require cooking for the two other meals.

Cooking crisis will soon be over  –NLNG

Energy remains the backbone of the Nigerian economy but successive governments have failed to make the most of the all-important commodity. Nigeria is the seventh crude oil producer in the world and the largest oil producer in Africa, yet, it depends on importation of refined petroleum products for its domestic consumption.

Presently, the country is faced with scarcity of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), otherwise called cooking gas, whose price has jumped from an average of N3,000 per 12.5kg cylinder to N6,000.

This negates the principle of law of comparative advantage whereby every nation is expected to focus on its strength and produce commodity at a lower cost. Nigeria, over the years, has not been able to add value to its crude oil which it exported and buy refined products from other oil producing nations that added value to its raw materials before export.

Nigeria has 187 trillion standard cubic feet and it is the sixth nation in the world with largest gas reserves, yet, the citizens are finding it difficult to consume cooking gas which is being sold at exorbitant prices.

Unfortunately, cooking gas, like kerosene, is a deregulated product with little government presence in terms of pricing. Government’s role in LPG is to regulate the quality of the commodity and ensure safety among stakeholders. Market forces are expected to determine the prices of these products but marketers can also create artificial scarcity to jerk up the price.

However, marketers have blamed scarcity of cooking gas on non-availability of single product jetty whereby vessels wanting to discharge cooking gas can go to jetties designed for such vessels only.

Speaking with Saturday Tribune, the President of Nigeria Liquefied Petroleum Gas Association (NLPGA), Mr Dayo Adesina, stated that: “As an association, we are quite mindful of the versatility of LPG price. The reason for the recent hike in LPG price was that a vessel that was meant to discharge on the 29 December, 2016 couldn’t do that until 17 January, 2017. This was due to preference for an ATK (Aviation Turbine Kerosene) vessel that was given preference to discharge instead of LPG vessel. This led to scarcity price hike in LPG.

“If we don’t have hiccups at the jetty, the effect would have been minimal. The moment tank began to dry, there will be panic and people take advantage of it and hike the price. If there is a glut during winter, it would have effect on the price. Constant supply is the solution.

“Though heavy winter also leads to hike in LPG price but it is a temporary setback, things will soon go back to normal once adequate supply is guaranteed. Government is also working to ensure that the challenge of multiple discharge is addressed.”

The spokesman of Nigeria LNG (NLNG), Mr Tony Okonedo, stated that another LPG vessel called Gas Providence was waiting for discharge any moment from now and that the commodity would soon be available in abundance and expectedly, the price of cooking gas would drop.

Dimmed hope?

Even with the promise from gas and kerosene providers that a new day would soon berth in Lagos kitchens, nothing on ground would encourage optimism. Saturday Tribune’s checks revealed that the supply being expected would not possibly end the scarcity and by extension, the hike in cost. An industry person who pleaded anonymity wondered if such promises in the past had ended hardship, adding that as long as any of the two major heat-generating substances is scarce, the other would simply react to the scarcity with price hike.

He noted that even the scarcely patronised commodities like firewood and charcoal would become “king” in such times. As if confirming his projection, Saturday Tribune’s market survey showed a sharp increase in the price of charcoal. A bag hitherto sold for N1,000 is now N1,600. Who will recover the kitchen for the woman?

Perhaps if this development had been recorded a couple of years back, electricity would have offered a measure of relief. As it turns out, however, many parts of the city have been connected to the pre-paid billing system, making the use of electric stoves unrealistic.

What then is the way out? Many of the people, mostly women, who interacted with Saturday Tribune during the week spoke of pain and despair. On Tuesday, for example, a resident, Moshood Oba, said on Facebook that he arrived home after work to find his family eating “raw noodles”. His wife would later explain to him that it was not reasonable to “buy a pack of noodles for N80 and then cook it with N400 worth of kerosene”.

Coping strategies

On how the average Lagos family has been coping with the high price of gas and kerosene, a family man, one Mr Taiwo, said: “I think gas is even better than kerosene both in pricing and the relative cooking capacity of the two products.”

According to Taiwo, whose family live around the Mile 12 area of the state, the strategy being adopted to cope with the current hike in the prices of kerosene and gas is to limit the frequency of cooking with kerosene and rely more on gas and, occasionally, on hot plates when electricity is available.

Taiwo, who said his family rarely cooked nowadays, stated that, “We are managing with electric cookers, the device they call hot plate, each time there is electricity supply to our area in order to reduce cost”.

He mentioned how, on Wednesday, his wife had to warm the soup on the hot plate within a fleeting moment that power was restored to the area.

“It has not been easy spending our hard-earned income on kerosene and gas. We have discovered that gas is even cheaper than kerosene. The kerosene they produce nowadays is like breeze; it evaporates the moment you start using it”, Mr Taiwo said.

For Layiwola, his family will start using gas as soon as the several litres of kerosene kept in reserve finish.

According to the civil servant, about three weeks ago, he mandated his wife to suspend sale of kerosene as soon as the price skyrocketed due to the scarcity of the commodity in order to enable the family convert the remaining stock into family use.

He corroborated Mr Taiwo’s claim that kerosene nowadays evaporates so quickly. “My wife is into kerosene business but about three weeks ago, when I noticed the crisis regarding the product, I asked her to stop selling and save the remaining stock for the family. Once the stock finishes, we will take to gas or charcoal”, Olayiwola said.

Lamentations

Some dealers and buyers of kerosene have continued to lament the scarcity, which is believed to have been caused by inadequate supply of the commodity by the Nigerian Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG).

A resident of the Agbado area of Lagos, Mrs Femi Ayeni, noted that the hike in the price of the commodity was causing hardship for her family. For the past few months, she said, things had been very difficult for her household. “We rely on kerosene to cook our meals because we cannot afford cooking gas. But at the rate of N280-N300, it has become difficult for us to cook more than once in a day,’’ she stated.

Another Lagosian, Seyi Olaomi, decried lack of uniformity in the price of the product at filling stations.

Defending the role of retailers and dealers in the current state of things with kerosene, a dealer in the commodity in Agege, Mrs Kemi Adebiyi, in a chat with Saturday Tribune, said she was selling kerosene for N300 per litre and go further up. She said the increased price was due to inadequate supply of the commodity not just in Lagos but the entire nation. Mrs Adebiyi insisted that marketers were not to blame for the prevailing situation. “It is not our fault that kerosene is selling at N300 per litre. Everything is affected by diverse government directives and policies in the country. Most times, we travel farther than we should to buy the product in order to make it available in the community. When the product is not available, what do you expect?” she said.

Profiting from crisis?

A simple arithmetic of the crisis is making eating out a great option to home cooking. But not all food outlets are affordable in a recession time like the one the country is passing through. While the high-profile outlets like Mr Bigg’s, Sweet Sensation and Tantalizers are, by Saturday Tribune’s survey, also feeling the impact of recession, the local eateries, commonly known as Mama-Put, have seen a rise in patronage, considering that they are deemed affordable.

Families, according to findings, now settle for such local eateries even for dinner, to avoid spending some much on providing for cooking at home.

A formula was worked out for Saturday Tribune by a regular Mama-Put client who has a manageable family. He stated that with N500, a family of four would eat rice-and-beans meal worth N300 and two pieces of fish valued at N200. “Compare that to first having to buy N300 worth of a litre of kerosene before buying raw rice and fish and ingredients to go with it. That means before my family would settle for a decent dinner, about N1,500 would have gone into it, not mentioning the stress of cooking the meal and the time it would consume. Where is the money to be spending such a fortune on a daily basis? And what they call kerosene is now disappearing like spirit”, he said.

The new reality is reportedly getting Mama-Put operators puffy and exploitative. When told that he and other people in the restaurant business might be hiding under the guise of high cost of cooking gas and kerosene to increase the cost of a plate of food, Emeka Joseph, who runs the restaurant business at NNPC, Iyana Ejigbo, said customers were complaining about an additional N100 which was making them now pay N400 for a plate of food they used to get for N300.

“Apart from petroleum products, you know that food items are costly now. We are only managing to remain in business. They think that we are now making more profit but the truth is that many customers have stopped coming, and most times, we don’t sell all our food. That means the remainder is a loss, because there is usually no light to preserve food. Things are really hard”, Joseph said.

Sharing Joseph’s view, finance experts from Lagos-based Financial Derivatives Company (FDC) Limited, in an email response to Saturday Tribune, stated that the rising costs of cooking gas, kerosene and other petroleum products were worsening Nigerians’ misery index.

Misery index is an indicator that is used to determine how economically well-off the citizens of a country are. It is the sum of the unemployment and underemployment rate and the inflation rate of a particular period.

According to the experts, an increase in the misery index signifies economic discomfort and negative consumer sentiment.

The misery index in the fourth quarter (2016), they said, was 53.35. This is 21.05 points higher than the fourth quarter (2014).

“What is of most concern is the trend of Nigeria’s misery index. The index has risen for the last six quarters. If this movement persists, consumers will be hit harder. They will face an even deeper dwindling in purchasing power, as their incomes can only buy less of their usual consumption basket. The poor will become poorer in real terms, and the middle class will thin out.

“Additionally, climbing misery index implies declining economic activity and reduced consumption. This is because unemployed people are underutilized and rising prices will discourage rational consumers from spending. This can cause or complicate an economic slowdown or contraction. There will also be increased debt, as the Federal Government borrows money to increase social support schemes.

In the end, the citizens will be left with high uncertainty and low morale”, the FDC finance experts observed.

It is believed that consecutive rises in the misery index usually lead to a decline in the favourability ratings of the serving administration and could result in a re-election loss for the incumbent. This was the case for United States former Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, whose terms saw the misery index reach all-time highs. Likewise, Nigeria’s 2015 elections reflected this hypothesis, FDC submitted.

Measuring the misery index

Mrs Taiwo Timothy, who recently lost her job at a new generation bank, has been faced with the challenge of cutting down expenses so that the burden of keeping the family together would not be too much on her husband. She has to make sure that the family’s savings are not affected by the expenses incurred to run the house.

Her major concern, however, is her three children, two boys and a girl, aged between one and six. Being a working mother, she had tried to provide for their needs, virtually in excess, so that her absence would not be strongly felt.

With the recent hike in the prices of kerosene and gas and other essential commodities, Mrs Timothy is faced with more challenges in taking care of her household. “Honestly, I didn’t feel the impact of the increase in gas until I tried to write a budget of the household needs. I had to put stringent measures in cutting our use of gas. Now my children really feel the impact of this recession. I had to put a check on the children’s meal. I don’t prepare separate meals for them any longer. They eat what we, their parents, eat. Despite the fact that noodles are the fastest meal for them, I have cut the number of time it is prepared. Even the luxury of taking hot bath twice daily has been reduced to just once and at times when the weather is warm, they use room temperature water”.

Mrs Timothy noted that an attempt to increase her budget, because of the increased price of gas, was felt on other household necessities. Therefore, she decided to cut the excesses. According to her, trying the alternative of using kerosene stove to cook was even worse. “To prepare the meals, which comprise breakfast, lunch and dinner, I would need nothing less than N500 worth of kerosene. That means in a week, I would spend N3,500 on kerosene. This is far more expensive than buying 12.5kg of gas at N5,000, which I usually use in a month. I just pray that the price of gas comes down because, honestly, I don’t know how long we will be able to cope with this situation”.

For Rukayat Alimi, a single mother, the situation is a different case. A petty trader whose income is barely enough to feed herself and her children, Rukayat has resolved to eating and feeding her children with whatever comes her way.

“I don’t even know how to cope with this increase in kerosene price. I have run out of collecting it on debt. Before now, I could manage to cook with half a bottle at N100, but now that the price has doubled, cooking is more difficult. At times, my children and I just buy cooked food. Although it is not satisfactory, we do not go hungry”, she said.

She explained that if she must cook, she made fast meals like eba with okra or vegetable soup, instead of cooking beans or stew.

“Most times, I do my cooking in the shop because leaving my stove in the kitchen I share with neighbours is out of the question. Even before kerosene became expensive, some neighbours were fond of using my stove without permission and without replacing the used kerosene”, she added.

Options

Eating out has now evidently become the option for many Lagosians as the cost of cooking keeps skyrocketing.

A food vendor at Ogudu Ojota who identified herself as Iya Ifeanyi, while sharing her experience, pointed out that many people now depended on her for their three daily meals.