Somehow, the easing of the lockdown has brought about the scarcity and increase in the prices of food items in the market. Food crops and other food items were expensive during the lockdown, but everyone attributed that to the cost of bringing in goods and agricultural produce from farms and states, where they were produced. Before the reopening of interstate borders, security agents and “youths” of different communities made it difficult and expensive to transport food items from one state or town to another. But right now, people move freely so the price increase and scarcity can no longer be attributed to lockdown, at least, not directly.

I thought this problem was peculiar to Enugu until I spoke with people from different parts of the country and realised that the case is almost the same everywhere. One cannot help but wonder the cause of this price increase.

Some people have attributed the increase in prices of some food crops and food items to the season of the year. For instance, crops such as tomatoes and yams are out of season and are therefore scarce. Rainy season has also prevented or disturbed the availability of dry food items that need the sun for preservation. Example of food that belongs to this group is abacha. This truly shows that the high cost of some items is as a result of the season of the year. But how does that explain the high cost of other items such as vegetable oil, palm oil, fish, tomato puree (tin tomato) among others? Besides, this is the season of fresh corn, but that one is not just expensive but scarce too. This finally means that the season of the year is not the cause of price increase of food items.

Some people said the sudden increase in the price of fuel is the cause. According to people that belong to this group, increase in fuel pump price brought about the increase in transportation cost, which led to the unavoidable increase in prices of goods, including that of agricultural produce. Hence the sudden increase in the fuel pump price from N121 to N143 has caused a chain reaction that suddenly increased the price of things in the market. This theory would have been logical if the price of petrol before the lockdown was not N145.

The third theory is what gives me concern. According to some traders, there is unavailability of some food items, even in the farms. They claim that they have ordered for those items but are yet to get them. Some claim that middlemen find it more difficult to penetrate the interior parts of the country, where they buy some of these items. The reasons for this include insurgencies in the parts of the country that produce the majority of the staple foods that serve the nation. According to one of the stories surrounding this theory, insurgents have made roads unsafe and impassable. They kidnap, kill and maim many road users and even destroy or hijack their wares. This discourages people from carrying out any transactions that will take them to those volatile areas.

Another story surrounding the unavailability of food crops in the market is that farmers are afraid of going to farms because their farms have been made unsafe by insurgents, kidnappers and killers. You can imagine when bandits are attacking the North-West, Boko Haram is paralysing the North-East and Fulani Herdsmen have made North-Central unsafe, how then can Nigeria survive when these areas are the chief producers of food crops?

The way I’m seeing our food market today, I can tell you that a food crisis is looming. I don’t know what is happening but it is no longer funny. Our farmers need to be encouraged. If they missed this planting season because of the lockdown or insecurity, the government should consider lifting the ban on the importation of staple food items such as rice, tomato and maize, until things stabilise. If nothing is done, and done quickly, food scarcity will seize the country in no distant time.

Chinese Chipmaker, Cambricon Technologies, recorded a 358% surge from its IPO to stay at 295 yuan at the Star Market, on Monday.

Cambricon, backed by Alibaba Group Holding among others, is the second high-profile chip maker to list on the domestic market in less than a week. China’s biggest chip manufacturer, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC), listed Thursday on Star with 53 billion yuan ($7.58 billion), marking the biggest IPO in China in a decade according to SCMP.

Cambricon Technologies Corporation Limited develops and distributes software products. The Company produces terminal intelligent processors, cloud intelligent chips, accelerator cards, intelligent computing cluster systems, and other products. Cambricon Technologies also produces computer peripheral products.

Cambricon’s gain on Monday puts its capitalization 85 billion yuan, while SMIC has a capitalization of 587.1 billion yuan. The duo are pushing to bring Chinese semiconductor industry to the fore in the wake of a trade war between the United States and China that has impacted the global growth of Chinese telecom companies.

Cambricon was founded in 2016 by two brothers, Chen Yunji, 37, and Chen Tianshi 35, to produce AI chips for smartphones. The company has since become a big name in the semiconductor industry, producing chips used in millions of smartphones.

Huawei and Alibaba are its major clients, spurring the company to a potential competition with SMIC.

But analysts believe the growth is expected to slow in the near future due to increasing research and production cost. Yan Fan, an analyst at China Merchant Securities, said expenditure will erode the company’s earnings in three years.

According to the brokerage, it is expected that the chipmaker will lose about 482 million this year and 380 million yuan in 2021. It posted a 1.18 billion yuan loss in 2019, according to the IPO prospectus. But that was before the recent push by the Chinese government for more semiconductor manufacturing.

The US trade relationship with China has deteriorated that companies from the South Asian country have been denied rights to purchase US made chips.

Huawei, which leads the global 5G rollout was ousted from the United States last year on national security concerns. Against the backdrop, the Chinese company had the capacity to lead other companies in the business of 5G deployment until the United States government announced in May, that semiconductors in the US, including TSMC will no longer sell chips to Huawei.

The development is leading many countries who initially had stood up to the US pressure to boycott Huawei to reconsider their stand. It is also paving the way for Sweden’s Ericsson and Finland’s Nokia to lead the way in 5G technology.

On Tuesday last week, the UK government announced that it is dropping Huawei from its 5G plans, citing the US ‘chips ban.’ Without access to the US semiconductor market, it will be difficult for the company to live up to its 5G obligation.

The Chinese government has been working to minimize its dependence on foreign semiconductors, and to limit the impact such bans would have on its telcos. At the wake of the ban by the United States, Huawei employees had gone to produce alternatives to the American semiconductor parts. But that has not yielded the needed result because the semiconductor manufacturing takes time, and the US is ahead in the industry.

Christopher Ford, Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and non-proliferation, told reporters in May: “If one wants to be working in the area of the very best chips, the chips that have the most computing power packed into smallest space, it is necessary to use US design tools right now because we have a commanding comparative advantage in that area.”

Chinese companies could no longer use US design tools due to the trade agreement the two countries signed earlier in the year, which forbids China from stealing technology ideas from the US. Therefore, the situation has left Huawei’s survival hanging on the ability of China’s semiconductor companies to produce enough of the 5G infrastructural components.

China has a $1.4 trillion New Infrastructure initiative, designed to see a Chinese company lead globally in 5G roll out, and Huawei is at the center of it.

Recent apathy toward China sees the initiative falling apart and Huawei has been at the center of the controversy. As the US pressures its Western allies to cripple China’s 5G global leadership, as it would impact Western influence around the world, Huawei may find success in developing countries if the Chinese semiconductor industry ups its game.

Sometime in June, I put up a post on my WhatsApp status, advising my male contacts to beware of breaking up relationships that could land them in hot soup. I used the case of a viral false rape allegation, which was cooked up by a female Twitter influencer to get back at a man that turned down her sexual advances. I made it known that many women are using false rape allegations to get back at men, for some wrong doings, or to blackmail them.

To tell you that, that post didn’t go down well with most of my feminist friends will be the greatest understatement of the year. Some told me I was insensitive to women affairs. Others told me I forgot that I am a woman and should always stand by women irrespective of the situation. There are then those that blocked me and the ones that muted my status.

Well, I have one answer for them, and that is, “I am a human before I became a woman.”

For now, I don’t want to go into how feminism is destroying humanity. Maybe soon, I will address that and maybe also give reasons why the movement is misdirected. But for now, let’s focus on the causes and effects of false rape allegations.

The major reason for the increase in false rape allegation is feminism. Sorry to say this, feminists do not believe that women are wrong in any way. The movement seems to be more interested in men’s extermination than in women empowerment. Feminists cannot wait to hear another woman shout, “rape” before they pounce on the accused. They don’t listen to reasons nor hear the accused side of the story. As far as they are concerned, the accused is guilty.

Let’s forget about what causes this rampant false rape accusations and focus on effects it has on the victims.

You must have heard about the story of Izu Madubueze, who committed suicide recently because he was falsely accused of rape. Late young and vibrant Izu and other young men were accused by a Twitter influencer, Nanichi Anese, as rapists. Izu reached out privately to Nanichi to find out who he raped but the lady insisted that his ‘victim’ wants to remain anonymous. She made the allegation more public and even revealed that Izu is disturbing her to reveal his accuser. Well, when this young man could not bear with the pain and the judgment of people, he took his own life.

The death of this young man aroused suspicion and people started digging deep. Izu’s phone was checked and old chats in his phone revealed that Nanichi has asked him out before but he declined. More digging revealed that Nanichi claimed that his accuser called the rape “non-physical sexual assault”. But then damages have been done.

The case of Izu is just one in many. Some fight it out with legal battles but not many could handle that. Some falsely accused persons have lost their jobs, faces and integrity. These malicious accusers have really killed more than we can count.

Another major problem that can arise from all these false allegations is that we may be unable to know and help true rape victims. The way it is going now, very soon all rape allegations will be treated as false. The complaints of true victims may be treated as hoaxes. This means that what these feminists are doing today will backfire on women in the near future. Funny enough, they don’t know the damages they’re causing us.

Let us advise our sisters, daughters, wives and mothers. Let women stop using rape allegations as weapons to fight men. It kills not just men, but all humanities. Besides, if anyone is raped, the person should understand that going to the media to announce it will not bring him or her justice (remember the Dakolo vs Fatoyinbo case).

Finally, it’s high time justice is given to people who were falsely accused of anything – be it rape, witchcraft, fraud, misappropriation of fund, etc. Most of the time, cases like this are waved off and people expect those affected to heal and let go. But I believe those that accused people wrongly should be made to dance to the tune of the music they have been beating.