Hilda Bassey: Many idle kitchens

The big news last week was that a 26-year-old Nigerian girl of Akwa Ibom extraction had broken the world record in a cooking marathon that lasted over 100 hours. The girl, Hilda Effiong Bassey, also known as Hilda Baci, is a sociology graduate from Madonna University, Okija. She is a chef as well as an actress. The longest cooking record was previously held by an Indian, Lata Tondon who cooked for 87 hours 45 minutes in 2019.

Ms Bassey started her record-breaking attempt, which she called cook-a-thon on May 11, 2023 and by 7:45am of May 15 she had smashed the existing record by doing a little over 100 hours in the kitchen. It is not an exercise that needs culinary skills only. It needs strength, resilience and courage as well.

Besides, you are required to stand up to cook, no sitting down, and you are expected to rest for only five minutes per hour. That means within 24 hours you can rest for only two hours. You are prevented from taking stimulants or energy drinks. It is evidently an endurance test for those who are ready to push their bodies to their elastic limits.

If Bassey did her secondary education in Akwa Ibom State, she must have benefitted from the free education programme that Governor Godswill Akpabio initiated. For most Akwa Ibom youths of that era, that policy proved to be for them a game changer and a life-transforming policy. In espousing some kind of liberation ideology Akpabio said at the time “To eradicate the industry of producing houseboys and housegirls for other part of Nigeria we declared free education in Akwa Ibom.” Many of those free-education children are very successful today.

The logic for free education is unassailable, especially in relation to the houseboyship industry. Even though most of these houseboys and housegirls from Akwa Ibom were much sought after because of their honesty and integrity, the bare fact is that without education, they had no chance of rising to the top even in the hospitality industry. Improving their education had to be the jump-off point to a better life.

That is why men and women in the South-West Nigeria who benefitted from the free education programme initiated by Chief Obafemi Awolowo are many miles ahead of the rest of the country.

When UNICEF did its study on Out-of-School children in Nigeria in 2011, it was obvious that Akwa Ibom State had got immense benefit from its free education programme. For example, in the above-stated study, the worst hit was Borno State which had 73.4% primary school and 69.4% junior secondary school pupils that were out-of-school. That of Yobe State was 63.5% and 64.5% while Jigawa recorded 61.6% and 64.5% for primary and junior secondary schools respectively. The figures for Akwa Ibom were 7.3% for primary and 6.5% for junior secondary schools. Ms Bassey was one of those who embraced the high level of consciousness and awareness among those who were of school going age and went to school.

Something else happened during Akpabio’s term as Governor. At every turn, he made a pitch for excellence. He preached it, he pushed for it. That is why he established a 25, 272-man choral group that broke the world record at a concert in the Uyo township stadium on Saturday, December13, 2014. A Guinness World Records representative was in attendance. The choir beat the record set by a group known as CENTI in Bogota, Colombia, which had a 15, 674 carol singers in December 15, 2013. The new title was achieved by Godswill Akpabio’s Unity Choir. Was Ms Bassey motivated or inspired by this choir next door? I wouldn’t know.

Additionally, at present there is an ennobling philosophy initiated by the Udom Emmanuel Administration in Akwa Ibom State. It is called Dakkada, meaning Rise, rise in your chosen field of study, rise in your chosen profession to a mountain of greatness, climb it, climb several mountains, stretch your capacity, your capability to their elastic limits, show that you are extraordinary, that you are capable of heroic deeds, that you can break boundaries, that you are exceptional, a prodigy. That is the Dakkada message. Did Ms Bassey listen to the Dakkada anthem? I do not know but her heroic performance shows that she has risen to the top of the mountain. She is on Mount Guinness.

Bassey utilised her kitchen very well. That is why we are all applauding her. A number of people ate the food that she cooked. But there is more food to be cooked. It is just that the kitchens are empty. They are lying idle. I am saying that at the macro level, not much is happening in Nigeria’s kitchens. We are only waiting for food largely from one kitchen: the oil industry. We have other kitchens that have remained largely unutilised: solid minerals, agriculture, tourism, ICT, refineries, you name them.

For several decades, we have been preaching the sermon of diversification. That is largely what we have been doing. We make our federal budgets based on the expected volume of crude oil sale and the price. If the price of crude oil goes down, we cry; if one of our crude oil buyers leaves us, we wail; if our oil production goes down we mourn; if oil workers are forced to go on strike we grieve; if the militants stop oil workers from doing their work we mourn; if oil theft which has been happening since time immemorial is brought to our attention we whine. We do this because we have surrendered the life of the nation to oil, and almost oil only. Where is our diversification? Since 1979, we have been diversifying on television. Television largely.

We have huge arable land in the north, east, south and west but little, very little cultivation. Nigeria imports three million tonnes of rice yearly. A few months ago, we saw on television, a huge mountain of rice pyramid displayed in Abuja. Soon after that, the rice vanished and the importers of rice took over the market selling it at cut-throat prices.

Many years ago, in the 50s and 60s we were selling palm oil seedlings to farmers from Malaysia and Indonesia. Today, we import palm oil products worth $500 million a year from these countries. In the 50s and 60s oil palm farming was a key sector of the Nigerian economy. The sector generated 43% of the world’s total production. We not only consumed it locally, we also exported it. Today, Nigeria imports its oil palm products. We now produce less than two per cent of the global output.

Another kitchen that is lying idle is our refineries. All the four refineries are dead. They have been dead for almost 10 years now. Nobody can make a satisfactory explanation why this is so except that we do not bother about the things that ought to matter for our survival.

Other countries, even in Africa, are making big money from ICT, the knowledge economy. A number of young Nigerians living abroad are making a killing from ICT because that is the direction in which the world is moving. They utilise ICT tremendously in manufacturing, health, education, development of infrastructure etc. we are lagging behind, far behind such small countries as Rwanda.

Another Nigerian kitchen that is lying idle, that no serious cooking is going on is solid minerals. Do you know that there are 11 states in Nigeria where gold is buried under our feet? Here they are: Abia, Bauchi, Ebonyi, Kaduna, Kebbi, Kogi, Niger, Osun, Zamfara, Sokoto and Taraba. This golden resource is largely exploited by illegal miners to the discomfiture of Nigerians who should benefit from such God given endowment. Up till today, Nigerians still travel abroad to buy gold while we stand or sit on it in Nigeria.

Nigeria is a blessed country. There must be very few countries that are so richly endowed. That has invariably become a curse, a resource curse. Under our feet we also have bitumen. Infact, we have the second-largest deposit of bitumen in the world yet our roads are as rickety as they are. Other solid minerals that can be found in commercial quantity include uranium, limestone, iron ore, marble, granite, bauxite, asbestos, iron, lead and zinc etc. These solid minerals are available in the 774 local government areas although they are in the Exclusive List of our Constitution.

I have said it several times that a conference of Federal, State and Local Government officials can work out strategies for utilising these minerals and how the products can be shared to the three governments. I expect the incoming government to organise such a conference without too much delay. In the sort of situation in which we are now with a huge load of debt, every asset ought to be utilised as a way of resetting the country.

We can’t continue to keep our various kitchens idle. If Ms Bassey had kept her kitchen idle she would not have broken the world record.

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