There is nothing stopping Nigeria marketing abula globally the way the Italians have done with pizzas and as the Turks have done with kebabs

By Ayo Akinfe

[1] You know, when you write daily columns, you need regular "lightbulb moments" to inspire you and I got one last weekend when at a Nigerian wedding in London there was an almighty scramble for abula, or what is commonly known in Nigeria as amala. At this event, Gucci-clad, designer-wearing, well dressed middle class, middle aged Nigerian professionals were falling over each other to get a taste of this wonderful delicacy

[2] A video of this scramble for abula has gone viral and if you see it, one would think that it was a food riot in an IDP camp or Almajiri's scrambling for food aid. Clearly, the delicacy was in short supply and everyone was scrambling for a bit if it before supplies ran out. From what I saw, if well marketed, abula can become a global delicacy and I see no reason why we should not aggressively market it to an international audience

[3] Do you know that Domino Pizza alone has an annual turnover of $25bn? Some 3bn pizzas are sold each year in the US alone, representing an average of 46 slices per person. In 1831, Samuel Morse, the inventor of the telegraph described pizza as: "A species of the most nauseating cake, covered over with slices of pomodoro or tomatoes and sprinkled with little fish and black pepper and I know not what other ingredients. It altogether looks like a piece of bread that has been taken reeking out of the sewer." From such humble beginnings, look at where the pizza is today

[4] Now, it took a near riot in London to get me thinking about abula but hey, many of the world's greatest inventions came about through funny circumstances. Penicillin was discovered after a scientist forgot to eat his sandwich and the mouldy bread was found to contain the needed bacteria. Likewise, the cartoon character called Bugs Bunny came about after a cartoonist called Bug drew a picture of a rabbit and left it on his desk. Similarly, the profession of nursing came about after Florence Nightingale took it upon herself to treat soldiers injured during the Crimean War. As a people, we Nigerians need to start looking for opportunities in woes, errors, problems, mistakes and even calamities

[5] Nigeria can mass produce all the ingredients needed to make abula. We are the world's largest producer of yam with an output of about 33m tonnes, accounting for 70% of global output, we are the world's number producer of egusi, responsible for 65% of world output and are the world's third largest ewedu producer behind India and Pakistan. Nothing stops us mass-producing abula and packaging it in takeaway packs like pizza that can then be sold to the rest of the world

[6] Do you know that the Turkish community in the UK sells 1.3m kebabs a year, which generates £2.2bn annually and the British Kebab Awards is one of the most respected gala dinners in London. If we get it right with abula, we can easily outdo them as for starters, there are more Nigerian cab drivers and delivery workers in London than Turks, so we have a readymade distribution network

[7] What particularly excites me about abula is that Nigeria will have a global monopoly. Unlike jollof rice where we face stiff competition from our West African brethren, I do not think our Ghanaian, Sierra Leonean, Senegalese or Gambian brothers can make abula up to the standards required to make it attractive to a global audience

[8] Abula also has an advantage over rival foods as it is lighter than pounded yam, smoother than eba and not as saturated in carbohydrates as ground rice. If it is well marketed, using the video clip from that London scramble, I can see abula becoming an instant hit. I see no reason why we should not aim to match the $25bn generated from pizza sales globally each year

[9] I shall be putting together several proposals to step up the production of abula ingredients in Nigeria and in the UK, I think we should set the ball rolling by maybe organising an event with a catchy theme like Abula Riot to attract mainstream consumers. If we hold this event every year on say either June 12 or October 1, we will attract new converts on an annual basis. We can charge a small fee of about £10 per person and make the event light-hearted, kind of like Tawa Chillout. We can donate say 25% of all proceeds to IDP camps

[10] I ask myself how the turnover of one company Dominos Pizza can be about the same size as Nigeria's annual budget. This tells me that if we market products like abula and we have two or three outlets that generate as much revenue as Dominos Pizza, we could easily quadruple the size of our economy overnight. Nigeria's biggest problems remains that we are a mono-economy living at the mercy of the vagaries of the global crude oil market but abula is one product that offers us an escape route from this prison