12m millet grains in a sack
Like many other people, I thought it was a senseless waste of time when I first read about the millet counters of Yauri, in my native Kebbi State. According to them, an argument started among the young men when one of them asked if there are more grains in a millet sack than there are […]
Like many other people, I thought it was a senseless waste of time when I first read about the millet counters of Yauri, in my native Kebbi State. According to them, an argument started among the young men when one of them asked if there are more grains in a millet sack than there are people in Nigeria. Most probably he got his inspiration from the old primary school English textbook in which a European king asked a wise man to say how many grains of sand are there on the seashore. The man said there are as many grains on the seashore as there are birds in the sky, which the king accepted as a wise answer. Personally, I don’t think so. The number of birds in the sky must be pinpricks compared to the number of sand grains on the seashore, even of a small sea like the Dead Sea.
However the Yauri men got their inspiration, they proceeded to form groups of counters, checkers and supervisors, and they sat down for many weeks and counted all the grains in a millet sack, which one of them donated. They were so meticulous that they had a team that picked up the grains that fell out of the sack during transportation. Even though the local sack [called buhu] is finely woven, millet grains are so small that many fall out of it. Seeds of guinea corn, maize, beans, rice and wheat are bigger than those of millet and fewer of them fall out of the sack, unless it is torn. Any of these would have been fewer in a sack and easier to count but the Yauri boys chose to count millet, which was more difficult.
The final result was declared at an elaborate ceremony in Yauri on Saturday. Emir of Yauri Dr. Mohammed Zayyanu Abdullahi presided over the occasion, which he said had brought world-wide attention to Yauri, as indeed it did. The returning officer, Prof Aliyu Bunza, announced that 11,979,868 grains were counted in the sack. That answered the immediate question; there are only one-twentieth as many grains in a millet sack as there are people in Nigeria. If anyone of us happens to visit a local market soon, he should please go to the grains section. If he sees twenty millet sacks piled up in one corner, he can confidently state that there are as many grains in there as there are people in Nigeria.
The Kebbi State Government also sweetened matters when it bought the sack of counted millet grains, which was displayed at the occasion, for 500,000 naira. I promptly embarked on a calculation of my own of the cost of the fura that will be made from that millet. It will be so expensive that the Kebbi State Commissioner of Information, who bought the sack on behalf of the state government, may not be able to afford it. Most probably he will have to take the sack to the Government House. The fura made from it is befitting of Governor Abubakar Atiku Bagudu, who might drink it together with a plate of LaKe rice.
Since grains counting put Yauri on the national and world tourism maps, youths in other towns must be cracking their heads and thinking of what exotic things they can do in order to put their hometowns on the tourism map too. Which youth is there in the North who will not like to count something that will be unveiled at the Emir’s palace? Some youths are bound to ask, how many grains are there in sacks of rice, guinea corn, maize and beans? Before you know it, folks in other Kebbi towns and in towns all over Hausaland will be busy counting grains in sacks of different food crops. The only youths I can vouch for not to get involved in this exercise are those of my hometown, Jega. Those ones will not sit down to count any grains. They are too busy counting naira notes.
Many copycat things are likely to arise from the Yauri millet counting exercise. The millet counter’s spokesman told Daily Trust’s reporter that he received phone calls from Europe, China, Middle East and other African countries seeking to know the counting’s final tally. Flush with excitement from this success, the Yauri youths are likely to undertake a census of all the fish in River Niger, on whose bank Yauri smugly sits. The fish in that huge river were counted in the 1950s by British ichthyologists Holden and Reed. They did not round up all the fish and count them; they used a scientific sampling method.
Let me give all aspiring grain counters a free piece of advice. In journalism and in academics, we use the short cut method in our counting. For example, when an editor tells you to write an article of no more than 1,000 words, he is not going to count every word in the article to see if you have exceeded the limit. Instead, he will count the number of words in one average line, and then multiply it by the number of lines in the article. Some lazy editors will not even do that; they will make the estimate for one paragraph and then multiply it by the number of paragraphs in the article. Finish!
If anyone is going to pick up where the Yauri youths stopped and count the number of grains in a rice sack, he should simplify matters by counting the number of grains in a standard measure called mudu, and then multiply it by the number of mudus in the sack. Any scientific establishment will accept that estimate. Incidentally, the Emir of Yauri is a scientist who bagged his Ph.D in Kansas. He is a microbiologist who, while working at the National Veterinary Research Institute, Vom and later at Usman Danfodio University, worked with bacteria, which is infinitely smaller than millet grains. If only they had consulted him before the tedious exercise began, he would have advised them on the scientific method of counting.
These days, you often see figures issued by park authorities about the number of elephants, lions, buffaloes or giraffes left in the wild. Maybe they can count every single elephant in the wild because these are big animals. But when you see a figure that there are 100 million salmons in Canadian rivers or 100 billion sardines in the Atlantic Ocean, for example, you know it is an estimate because no one can round up all the salmon and sardines and count them. Scientists can even give you an estimate of the number of sand grains in the Sahara Desert, but it could be from a sample as small as a pinhead, multiplied by the size and depth of the desert sand.
My only fear now is that youths in some towns may undertake to count, for example, how many spines there are on the back of a hedgehog, or how many ticks are there on the skin of a camel. There are however some things that if only we can count them, it will seriously help our socio-economic and security planning. For example, will youths in Talata Mafara kindly count how many bandits there are in Zamfara State? I don’t think the state’s Police Commissioner or the Commander of Operation Harbin Kunama have a reliable figure, so such a count will be of immense benefit to the state security council.
Many years ago, Reader’s Digest published an article titled “The sport of getting into Guinness.” It was about the crazy things that people do in order to make it into the Guinness Book of World Records. For example, an Indian man stood on one leg and clapped non-stop for three days. If the Yauri millet counters ever make it into the Guinness Book of Records, this country will soon be awash with copycat counters.