My father traded grain for 35 years. He saw this American beef thing coming before anybody.

My father was a grain merchant. He sat in that Kano market for 35 years, buying from farmers and selling to distributors. He knew the price of maize before the sun came up. He could tell you which farmer was honest by the way the man tied his sack.

I remember one evening in 2019, he came home tired and sat outside without eating. My mother asked him what happened. He said, "They are opening our markets to everybody. One day foreign food will enter here and our farmers will have nothing." I was busy with my own company then, I did not take him seriously. Wallahi, I should have listened.

Now Sanusi is saying American beef will wipe out our livestock. My father could not read the news online but he saw it coming from that market stool. The reality is nobody protects the small man who wakes at 4am to move cattle. Nobody. And when the cattle finish, what will we tell our children we did?