Frank Edima

There was a time I genuinely considered stopping beans because something didn’t feel right anymore.

The smell was off. The texture sef was worse. And it refuses to get soft no matter how long you cook.

So I quietly decided I was going to reduce my love for beans.

This has been on for about a year until a friend convinced me to buy from a direct supplier (farm to home kind of) from Nasarawa.

The direct supplier is a farmer sef. So, no preservatives, no chemicals no long storage.

Ah! I enjoyed the beans. I could cook it any time of the day and not be afraid of the time it would take.

I am sticking to this supplier or no beans for me.

Food shouldn’t only be about availability. It should also be about whether it’s safe, reliable, and worthy of consumption.

This is how we protect our health, and our communities.

We are what we eat mbok biko jare don-Allah

FE

Something is not adding up.

Your community produces palm in abundance, month after month, season after season.

Yet the value does not stay with you.

Strangers come in, buy in bulk, take it away, process it elsewhere, and sell it back into the economy at a higher value.

And everyone carries on as if this is normal.

In your head, you have not thought of how to build wealth around your community resources as a way of giving back to your community. Yeah.

In a place where palm is this abundant, there should be functional processing mills, structured aggregation systems, small-scale factories producing oil, soap, and other derivatives.

All of these in a commercial scale, not at subsistence level.

Yet what exists instead?

Informal buying and a cycle that keeps the community at the lowest end of the value chain.

Then young men, full of energy and potential, stand on the road with sticks, stopping vehicles for ₦200.

Every day.

Dah!!!

This is not about blaming people.
It is about confronting a pattern.

Because the real issue is not lack of resources.

The resource is there.
The volume is there.
The opportunity is there.

What is missing is thinking in systems.

No serious economy grows by exporting raw value and importing finished products.

No community builds wealth by remaining at the point of extraction.

Transformation is where wealth is created.

Processing is where jobs are created.

Structure is what sustains both.

The next time you see resources leaving your community, stop and ask yourself, what value can I add so my community benefits first?

That’s how Community CEOs think. That’s one big way to give back to your community.

I do not teach what I have not experimented. I teach with proof. I have consistently used this model for Bakassi Fish Festival for 5 years and counting.

I will be teaching this inside the Community CEOs Academy. Announcement is coming on May 1. Keep a date with me.

If this sounds like what you’ve been waiting for, droll ‘GIVE BACK’ in the comments.

FE

“Shout it aloud, do not hold back.
Raise your voice like a trumpet.
Declare to my people their rebellion
and to the descendants of Jacob their sins.

For day after day they seek me out;
they seem eager to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that does what is right
and has not forsaken the commands of its God.
They ask me for just decisions
and seem eager for God to come near them.

‘Why have we fasted,’ they say,
‘and you have not seen it?
Why have we humbled ourselves,
and you have not noticed?’
“Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please
and exploit all your workers.

Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife,
and in striking each other with wicked fists.
You cannot fast as you do today
and expect your voice to be heard on high.

Is this the kind of fast I have chosen,
only a day for people to humble themselves?
Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed
and for lying in sackcloth and ashes?
Is that what you call a fast,
a day acceptable to the Lord?

“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?

Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe them,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness[a] will go before you,
and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.

Then you will call, and the Lord will answer;
you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.
“If you do away with the yoke of oppression,
with the pointing finger and malicious talk,

and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
then your light will rise in the darkness,
and your night will become like the noonday.

The Lord will guide you always;
he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land
and will strengthen your frame.
You will be like a well-watered garden,
like a spring whose waters never fail.

Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins
and will raise up the age-old foundations;
you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls,
Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.

“If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath
and from doing as you please on my holy day,
if you call the Sabbath a delight
and the Lord’s holy day honorable,
and if you honor it by not going your own way
and not doing as you please or speaking idle words,

then you will find your joy in the Lord,
and I will cause you to ride in triumph on the heights of the land
and to feast on the inheritance of your father Jacob.”
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

FE