But apart from the perishable items the market is known for, other dry food spices fill the gap needed by different hierarchy of food sellers and homes, giving a booming business to food spices like ginger, dry pepper among others.
Perhaps one of the dominant food spices that many homes and restaurants find difficult to ignore is the ginger which the Iddo market serves as supply depot in Eko.
The chunk of foodstuff, especially grains, originate from the northern part of the country, so also is the ginger which is found year round from the Northwest state of Kaduna, according to the chairman of ginger traders at Iddo market, Murtala Muhammad
“The bulk of the ginger you see in Nigeria comes from places like Kachia, Kwai and Kafanchan in Kaduna State, those are the places they farm the product in commercial quantity,” said Muhammed.
According to him, truckloads of ginger arrive Iddo, Oyingbo, Mile 12 and other foodstuff markets in Lagos where they are eventually distributed at different levels right up to the final consumer.
He said traders from neighbouring countries such as Benin Republic, Togo and Ghana come to Lagos to buy ginger brought from the hinterland in commercial quantity.
Indeed it is not the countries that don’t farm the product that are the reason they have to find their way to Lagos, but that “they do farm ginger too, but it is not as good and strong as the one produced in Nigeria. There was this time when one of our customers from Benin Republic brought a sample of their ginger and by mere observation it was not as palatable and strong as the one we get from Kaduna, and that is why they still have to come to Nigeria to get the best,” the chairman said.
He, however said most of their major customers from the aforementioned countries have stopped branching into Lagos. “Most of them now go direct to Kaduna that is those that have stable capital.”
But the ginger traders have strong faith in their Lagos customer base which they have built over many decades, according to the Secretary of the Lagos ginger traders, Attahir Musa Kofa.
“Many people use ginger here in the South and the market is always moving especially for those that make beverages in companies and at home, therefore even at the local level the business is good,” Kofa said.
Ginger demand, according to Kofa has no season as people come for it on daily basis even though in the South more preference is given to the fresh ginger than the dry one.
A bag of dry ginger goes for N15,000 while a bag of the fresh one goes for N4,500. “You know the dry ginger is compressed. You will need to dry like 3 bags of fresh ginger to get one bag of dry ginger,” Kofa said. But at retail level, one can get ginger for as low as N20, our correspondent gathered.
“We sell at different prices depending on the quantity the customer wants. We give for as low as N20,” said Malam Mahama who sells ginger at Oyingbo market.
The business is not, however devoid of its own peculiar challenges as outlined by the secretary of the traders association, Kofa. “The habit of bush burning in places where ginger is farmed is one of the problems bedeviling ginger farming which affects its marketing too. You know sometimes some people will go and set fire in the bush not knowing that ginger is buried somewhere as a form of preservation thereby damaging everything.”
He said farmers use burying preservation method to allow a steady or all year round supply of the product but that bush burning serves as huge hindrance to that.
The chairman of the traders association, Muhammad also said, “bad roads are some of the impediments to ginger trading. A truckload of ginger is not supposed to spend more than two days on transit else it will rot on the way. So many times you will find out that due to bad roads, the trucks spend more days on the way thereby leading to the product wasting away.”
He added that there are other natural causes such as intense heat or too much rain fall that can also affect harvested ginger if good preservation methods are not taken.
Now considered as one of the world’s healthiest foods, ginger has been in existence for time memorial and is believed to be an antidote for many health complications and enjoys comfortable notch in food ratings across the globe.
