It was not funny watching Imo state governor, Senator Hope Uzodimma, in needless frenzy, in Abuja, last Tuesday. Uzodimma, the Chairman of the Progressives Governors Forum (PGF), was on a tall task, labouring without success, to convince Nigerians that his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) had performed well for them. To fortify the claims, he argued that the current economic crisis in the country, is a global phenomenon, not the making of the Bola Tinubu administration.
“Politically speaking, we don’t need to over flog the horse. The truth of the matter is that the APC has done very well in Nigeria. What is happening currently, is a global economic problem”, he stated, while speaking at the party’s National Secretariat where he led some members of the forum on a visit to the party’s leadership.
The governor added that the President Tinubu was putting in place policies to address the country’s current economic challenges, given the kind of situation he met on assumption of office.
While Uzodimma preached on the largely utopian feats of the government, his party man, the Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Abubakar Kyari, was busy elsewhere, dramatizing the benevolence of the president in approving a 150-day duty-free window for importation of some staple food items to mitigate the hunger in the land.
He said; “We have heard the cries of Nigeria over the prices of food items and condiments, with some now describing tomato as gold and proposing a variety of recipes to prepare soups and dishes with some of the overly priced food items.
“As a government under the leadership of President Tinubu, members of the Federal Executive Council and indeed all other operatives in the MDAs are fully aware of the hardship occasioned by the high cost of food items in our country”.
The entire drama is to sell the impression of the government working hard, for which it deserves a good measure of gratitude from the people. But that is where it ends. Everything is a farce, in fact, a charade or as better explained in street lingo, ‘movement without motion’ or ‘the more you look, the less you see’. A mumbo-jumbo arrangement of sort! Take your eyes off the white lies by government officials and you are confronted with the stark realities of the day. Nigerians are hungry. And acutely so!
The Igbo have a saying that the blind can only be deceived on the presence of oil in a meal but not if it contains salt. It is for the tongue to decipher that. The facts are clear at al times.
Have you noticed that almost all the failed portions of internal roads in major cities, are being taken over by colony of women, at times with children, begging for money or food? In Lagos, the sordid sight is becoming the norm. But there is another disturbing dimension to the trend that involves men, gathering in clusters, brandishing banners with such inscriptions, as “Ebin pa wa”, which according to a friend with better understanding of Yoruba language, translates to “we are very hungry”.
In the East, at motor parks, presence of various bands of beggars is becoming ubiquitous. Such scenarios hardly existed in the southern parts of the country, before now. But as it is, no section is spared the embarrassment. The out-of-school syndrome that had been associated with certain sections of the country, is spreading in all the states. Poverty and hunger have become the unifying factors among Nigerians. In any system where such is the situation, danger looms.
In 2022, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) classified 133 million Nigerians as multidimensionally poor. The figure represented 63 per cent of the nation’s population. The poverty level ranged from a low of 27 per cent in Ondo to a high of 91 per cent in Sokoto. The report added that over half of the population who were poor cooked with dung, wood or charcoal, rather than cleaner energy.
The situation must have degenerated further with heightened insecurity, sudden removal of subsidy on petroleum products and merger of the foreign exchange market which accounts for the free fall of the national currency, the Naira.
The two policies – fuel subsidy removal and floating the naira, announced by President Tinubu on his inauguration, led to increase in the prices of basic food, with 50kg of rice increasing from about N30,000 to over N90,000 between 2023 and 2024. By the last count, the country’s food inflation was estimated at 40.66 per cent. This is unsustainable and unacceptable.
Something must give in before the people completely lose faith in the system and resort to self-help. The uncertain developments in Kenya must give the government some reasons to think. It must be restated that the essence of government is the provision of welfare and security to the people and their property. Any government that fails in this basic function, lacks any claim to legitimacy.
This is the reason why the 150-day duty-free window for importation of food items as advertised by the government must be matched with relevant actions. The package in the offer includes suspension of duties, tariffs and taxes for the importation of certain food commodities (through land and sea borders). The commodities covered in the window include maize, husked brown rice, wheat and cowpeas. Under the arrangement, imported food commodities will be subjected to a recommended retail price.
In addition, according to the agriculture minister, the “Federal Government will import 250,000MT of wheat and 250,000MT of maize. The imported food commodities in their semi-processed state will target supplies to the small-scale processors and millers across the country.”
This, on the surface, is one piece of news that should gladden the hearts. It is a pronouncement which if faithfully implemented, will go a long way in making food items available and reducing their prices, subject to the foreign exchange regime. What it simply means is that the commodities covered under the window can be imported into the country through the seas and land borders without any hinderance.
Let the government ensure that this policy is followed through. The problem with the APC and its administration is the tendency to lie on every issue and make propaganda of it. It is not a government that one can take its pronouncements to the bank. From the deceptive Muhammadu Buhari administration to the present dubious Tinubu era, the APC-led government has lived a life of lies and denials, pooling the wools over the eyes of the people and shifting blames to the next person.
Starting with its touted conditional cash-transfer initiative to the multiple bogus palliative packages, none has been pushed through convincingly. That is the fear many have with the 150-day duty-free window on basic staples. That, by extension, explains why the end may not be in sight on the Tinubu’s republic of hunger.
