It depends on the way you look at it. You may think that no scarcity of a commodity is a blessing and that the question does not arise. We can damn politics and concentrate on bread and butter issues. Jonathan Swift wrote that “bread is the staff of life” and how right has he been proved over the ages! The recent brief scarcity of bread shocked us into the awareness that the worth of a thing is best known by the want of it. For far too long we have been taking the availability of bread for granted.
With religious reference Christians have been taught to pray for the provision of their daily bread when bread is taken to mean the means of existence or money. In our present consideration we are talking or ruminating about the impact on our lives of the absence of bread.
Whenever there is a monopoly we are quick to think of substitutes though they may not be as desirable as the substituted. Bread can be subjected to a quick fix solution and may be eaten in its dry crust condition when push comes to shove. For the common man bread is usually eaten with what we term in our local parlance as fry-fry with gravy and so in the brief shortage of bread customers were nonplussed for substitutes. Unlike bread and other condiments that need no receptacles, substitutes like garri and sugar need some, which the customer without a kitchen cannot afford in a hurry. The next best things are cakes which are also produced from flour. And talking about flour it is said that flour could be produced not only from wheat but also from cassava. If that is true the government could explore the possibility of growing more cassava not only for its consumption and garri but also for flour.
It is not surprising that opposition parties always look for opportunities to pillory the government in power and they have accused it of making bread dear knowing very well that the ruling government reduced the tax on flour from 20 percent to 10 percent. That was most disingenuous.
Turning to the question as to whether the shortage of bread was a blessing it can be answered in the affirmative if we as a people on the whole endeavour to make a paradigm shift in our eating habits. This change should not be confined to bread but also to our penchant for rice, our staple food, to the exclusion of other foodstuff.