Thieves now target restaurants, canteens to cart away food as hunger bites harder

IT was a hot afternoon. At a restaurant in Victoria Island, Lagos State, two members of staff of the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), sat to eat their favourite meal for lunch when a man in suit walked to their table. He took a seat opposite them and dragged the plate in front of one of them towards himself and began to eat voraciously. The two friends were taken aback, but soon composed themselves.

Without saying a word, the man in suit consumed the rice, beans and dodo meal to the last morsel. The two friends kept quiet, waiting for what could happen next.

“I thought the guy was mad. There are many mad people in Lagos wearing suits, my brother. I winked at my friend that he should not do anything but watch.

“After the guy finished eating, he apologised and said he had not eaten a good meal for three days and could have fainted if he didn’t put anything in his tummy. He apologised further, saying that if he had started begging us for support when he came in, he was not likely to be taken seriously. I gave him N1,000. My friend didn’t say anything, he just ordered for another plate of food for himself and a takeaway for the guy,” 

This event was just a trending narrative of the situation in the country as hunger, occasioned by the economic recession, continues to bite harder. It is no news that prices of foodstuffs have risen, just as some people are now midnight raiders of restaurants and canteens, stealing foodstuffs, pepper, fish and meat, which the owners had prepared for sale the following morning.

Carol, also known as “Iya Ropo,” is a very popular canteen operator in Araromi area of Sango in Ogun State. Between January and now, her shop had been burgled twice by yet-to-be identified people who went away with her foodstuffs and other items.

Ope, one of the attendants at the canteen, who spoke with Sunday Tribune, said that her boss had decided to be taking her foodstuffs home when it became clear that the perpetrators might come back.

‘Since I came here last year, our shop had been burgled thrice. I heard that they did that even before I came. The first one since I came was the worst. They took our raw rice, stew, fried meat and even our disposable plates,” Ope stated.

Source: Tribune