Nigerian diasporans in the US need to ask themselves why they have not cashed in on Thanksgiving the way Caucasians do at say Halloween, Easter and Christmas. Why are these products not being sold in the mass market


Ayo Akinfe

(1) Thanksgiving egusi and okra soup
(2) Thanksgiving jollof rice
(3) Husband and wife Thanksgiving anko attires
(4) African Thanksgiving chocolate bars
(5) Thanksgiving pounded yam
(6) Special Thanksgiving palm wine
(7) Thanksgiving head ties
(8) Special Thanksgiving kolanuts
(9) A special CD compilation of African Thanksgiving songs
(10) Special Thanksgiving holiday packages allowing Americans to visit Africa at discounted rates

My point is simple here. We have got to get away from being eternal consumers and get into the habit of being producers and suppliers too.

When I look at the way Christmas is packaged and sold to us, I ask if my people are blind to this. In the run-up to festivals like Easter, Halloween, Ramadan, etc, the rest of the world sells all their products to us aggressively and we cough up top dollar for these goodies.

This is one of the reasons why Nigeria needs a national conglomerate with a food division. When I look at San Miguel in the Philippines or Nestle in Switzerland, it is clear that we need one national food company to market our products on the international stage.

If we had a Nigerian National Food Company (NNFC) that sold packaged jollof rice, assorted soups, pounded yam, moi-moi, suya, etc, by now, it would have mastered storage, delivery and transportation techniques. These items should be widely available in retail stores worldwide and there should be special packages for occasions like Christmas, Sallah, Easter, Ramadan, Halloween, Thanksgiving, etc.

Such a company needs to be a private sector venture and if you ask me, those best placed to float such a conglomerate are the Nigerian evangelical churches. Historically, food companies worldwide including Kelloggs, Quaker Oats, Rowntree, Cadbury, etc have all been created by religious groups averse to producing alcohol but who saw food production as safe.

Nigeria’s evangelical churches have the deep pockets so I am perplexed as to why they have not considered pooling their resources together to create a multinational food conglomerate. With the way Nigerians are scrambling for palliatives at the moment, it is easy to see that the need for a NNFC is there.

Why does Nigeria not have a food giant of the statute of Mars, Nestle, Cadbury, San Miguel, Kellogg, etc? We need to ask ourselves some hard questions. These companies are not state-run, so nobody can blame the Nigerian government for this one!

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