All Progressives Congress (APC) chieftain, Mr. Olatunbosun Oyintiloye, has pleaded with President Bola Tinubu to take immediate action to solve the issue of the high cost of food in the nation.
In an interview with reporters on Sunday in Osogbo, Oyintiloye said that the majority of Nigerians were underprivileged and went without food. The APC leader said that because of the severe economic difficulties, a large number of Nigerians were disillusioned and worried about where they would get their next meal.
Additionally, Oyintiloye pleaded with the president not to disregard the UN’s forecast that 82 million Nigerians, or around 64% of the nation’s population, may be hungry by 2030. He stated that the country’s food inflation rate reached a record high of 40.66 percent in May, exceeding the percent increase of the previous month, according to statistics from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
Former APC Presidential Campaign Council (PCC) member Oyintiloye said that price increases were making ordinary household food products unaffordable for the average person.
The APC chieftain noted that despite the Nigerians working hard under different dehumanising working conditions, what they were earning was still not enough to support themselves and their families due to inflation.
According to him, despite the abundance of natural and human resources the country is blessed with, successive governments failed to drive the economy productively.
He said corruption and overdependence on the system of sharing crude oil revenue by the tiers of government were hindering them from running a productive and self-sufficient economy for the benefit of the masses.
Oyintiloye, a former lawmaker who noted that there was no doubt that the president was doing everything possible to salvage the situation through various intervention programmes, said that the impacts of such interventions were far from ameliorating the situation.
He said the prices of basic household items, such as rice, beans, garri, spaghetti, and others, were on the very high side and becoming unaffordable by the masses.
Oyintiloye noted that it was rather unfortunate that, despite all the efforts of the president, prices of food and other essentials had continued to increase.
“I will want to urge the president to, as a matter of urgency, declare a state of emergency on hunger, starvation, and poverty in the country.
“Hunger is a threat to national peace, and that is why the president must act very fast,” he said. Oyintiloye also said that there was a need for the government to put in place a price control mechanism to checkmate the sharp practices of the traders in the market.
He said many of the traders were taking undue advantage of the economy to exploit buyers, adding that there was an urgent need to check their excesses.
Oyintiloye, however, urged the president to consider the reopening of the Benin Republic border for the importation of food to solve the problem of the food crisis in the country.
He said the challenge of insecurity preventing farmers from going to their farms should be addressed, while subsidised farm inputs be given to them and good incentives be made available to agriculture to attract the younger ones.
Oyintiloye urged Nigerians to continue to support the president, adding that with all the various ongoing economic intervention programmes, the country would rise again.
