The Lagos State government said it recorded N918 million in sales within 40 market days of its premier food hub in the Mushin area.

The Commissioner for Agriculture and Food Systems, Abisola Olusanya, disclosed this at a news conference on Wednesday.

The briefing was organised to enlighten residents on the initiatives introduced by the state government to ameliorate the current food crisis.

Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu inaugurated the newly constructed middle-level food agro-hub in Idi-Oro, Mushin, in December 2023.

It was introduced to offer a new way of distributing food in the state, tackle rising food costs, and address post-harvest losses.

According to the commissioner, the impact of the Mushin food hub is still being felt as a means of discounting food items by the state government.

Ms Olusanya said, “The Mushin food hub is one of many that we should have in the state. The impact of the hub is still being felt up to now. We started off with only Saturdays as the market days, and subsequently, in the month of March, we added Wednesdays. We have 339 registered vendors working with us on multiple food items. In these 40 days of the market’s operation, we have recorded food transactions of almost N1 billion—precisely, N918 million—at the Mushin hub with the 339 vendors.’’

She said that over 180,000 kg of rice had been sold within the period.

“Over 26,000 kg of garri, over 18,318 kilos of poultry meats, and over 55,000 crates of eggs have been sold in this one facility, as well as many other food items, but these are just the ones we felt were critically important not to mention.

“And considering the fact that the Lagos State government has not charged any vendor to operate in this vicinity, in the last six months no vendor has been charged.

“When you consider the volume of transactions and scale of what is happening at the hub, it is a form of subsidising food prices for Lagos residents. You can only imagine what it costs to keep the hub running, but due to our role in ensuring that food prices stabilise and are kept down, we can continue the operations of the hub.

“The Mushin Food Hub is just one of many; as you can see, for the first time, we can give data around the quantity of specific food items coming into the market,” Ms Olusanya said.

She also noted that the food hub gives an opportunity to get data on the food pricing system and cushion the costs of prices.

“We can tell you who is going to be selling; we can give you the price at which we are selling. This actually helps in addressing a lot of the challenges we see across the board when it comes to food quality and food prices. When you have a controlled market space, you can easily give back to the people in a way that can be measured. We can measure what is coming in and see what is going out, have adequate data and be able to manage. It also helps in streamlining a lot of waste, which is part of what we see affecting food pricing. For that reason we are developing more food hubs,” she said.

(NAN)