The African Democratic Congress (ADC) has described the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) report that more than 17 million Nigerians, including infants and young children, are facing acute hunger as a growing humanitarian disaster, and said it is an indication of President Bola Tinubu‘s administration’s incompetence, misplaced priorities and failed policies.
ADC, in a statement by the National Publicity Secretary, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, attributed the growing humanitarian crisis in the country to the failure of the All Progressives Congress (APC) to contain the banditry and terrorism that have displaced farming communities and pushed food beyond the reach of millions of Nigerians.
The party stated that the WFP report, which identified Nigeria’s nine conflict-affected northern states facing catastrophic levels of food insecurity, confirmed that Nigeria is now facing one of its worst food security emergencies in almost a decade.
“This represents an increase of almost two million people from previous projections,” ADC noted.
It was observed that the WFP report noted that the combined figure for Borno, Adamawa and Yobe has risen to 6.2 million people, with Borno State alone having more than three million people facing acute food insecurity.
“These are not opposition figures. They are not campaign slogans. They are the findings of the world’s leading humanitarian agency on hunger,” ADC said.
The party stated that the hunger confronting millions of Nigerians today is not a natural disaster, but an APC-inspired government-created humanitarian disaster.
“This humanitarian crisis is also the predictable outcome of a government that has failed to secure Nigerian lives, failed to protect Nigerian farmers and failed to address the cost-of-living crisis that it has created.
“For three years, the Tinubu government has repeatedly told Nigerians that the pain that we are experiencing is temporary.
“The WFP has now confirmed what Nigerians have been saying all along: insecurity is spreading, agricultural production is declining, food inflation is worsening, and millions of us, the Nigerian people, are being pushed deeper into hunger,” the party stated.
ADC added that what makes the crisis even more painful is that it has unfolded under a government whose priorities have been fundamentally misplaced.
According to the party, while millions of Nigerian families are struggling to eat even one meal a day and parents are forced to decide which child eats first, the Tinubu administration has kept its head in the clouds.
It recalled that a spokesman for the administration had denied that there is acute hunger in the country.
The party told the Federal Government that Nigeria’s food crisis cannot be solved by speeches, palliatives or reactive interventions, but a coherent national strategy that treats food security as an issue of national survival.
ADC said this is the reason why its manifesto places food security and agriculture at the centre of national security and economic policy.
The party assured that its government would place food security permanently on the agenda of the National Security Council and coordinate a unified national response across the federal, state and local governments.
“Our manifesto commits to placing smallholder farmers at the centre of agricultural policy through investments in improved inputs, mechanisation, extension services and market access because Nigeria cannot defeat inflation without dramatically increasing food production.
“We will immediately activate the country’s 264 abandoned dams to support year-round irrigation, reduce dependence on seasonal rainfall and expand agricultural productivity.
“We will also invest in aggregation centres, warehouses, cold-chain infrastructure and strategic grain reserves to reduce post-harvest losses, stabilise food prices and protect Nigerian households during periods of economic distress.
“These are not policies invented in response to today’s headlines. They are already contained in the ADC manifesto because we recognised long ago that insecurity, food inflation and unemployment are not separate crises.
“They are different consequences of the same failure of governance.
“The WFP has now confirmed what millions of Nigerians already know from painful daily experience: hunger is spreading, insecurity is winning and this government has no plan,” ADC stated.
