By Admin
Nigeria is in the grips of an intensely bitter food crisis. Sadly, the myriads of government interventions aimed at lessening the excruciating pains citizens are going through do not appear to be yielding the required results. The tales of woes reported across the federation are testimonies to this bleak reality.
On assumption of office, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu suddenly announced the removal of fuel subsidy, closely followed by the floating of the naira.
The spiraling effects were immediately evident in the free fall of the naira against major world currencies. Only last week, the U.S Dollar exchanged for N1,900 while the British Pound went for N2,000.
The results are the current sky-rocketing costs of goods and services. And life has become unbearable for the common man, coupled with the other existential challenges of today’s living. These range from spiraling costs of transportation, healthcare and cement, amongst others. The high cost of food has been exacerbated by the activities of smugglers who are taking advantage of the nation’s porous borders to smuggle food to neighboring countries.
Unfortunately, these factors have pushed millions of Nigerians into poverty. Today, families are engaged in a constant battle to survive the hardships. Indeed, Nigeria can be likened to the animal kingdom where only the strongest survive. Life has become short, nasty and brutish – even in the midst of Nigeria’s vast natural resources.
The Federal Government’s assurances that the subsidy removal would free up resources to be channeled towards meeting the needs of citizens have largely failed to come through. Rather, the situation is growing grim by the day.
Interestingly, the states put together got a whopping N5 trillion in revenues from the Federation Account Committee (FAC) in eight months.
But from all indications, these new funds have hardly trickled down to the citizens across the 36 states of the federation. This unfortunate situation has sparked protests all over the country, particularly in Kano, Niger and Ondo states. Desperately hungry citizens are drawing governments’ attention to their increasingly deteriorating living conditions.
The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has joined the fray. The workers’ union has mobilized its members across the country to protest the hardships confronting its members and ordinary Nigerians. This should serve as a wake-up call to governments at all levels before the situation gets out of hand.
And although the Federal Government has already declared a state of emergency on food production, the results have not been felt by Nigerians. Therefore, the Tinubu administration must match its words with action by leveraging on the country’s huge agricultural potentials that are simply waiting to be tapped. Each region of the country has a comparative advantage in agricultural endowments. These clusters should be adequately funded and developed so as to make food available and affordable for citizens.
As things currently stand, hunger, penury and want have pushed Nigerians to the brink. The onus is now on governments at the national and sub-national levels to step in to salvage the country from plunging into the abyss.
*(AN EDITORIAL OF THE NIGERIA STANDARD NEWSPAPER, FEBRUARY 28, 2024)
