By Kazeem Akintunde
“Hunger is the cry of a god and two gods do the humans worship – the head and the stomach …We know the body will survive without head Sustenance, but the Stomach, the god that rumbles and thunders when sacrifice is late, this God cannot be slighted” – Wole Soyinka
Grace Udeme Emmanuel, at 22 years of age, is already a mother of four children. She got pregnant at the age of 16 while in SS1 and typical of most angry parents, she was sent away. She took up residence with the man that got her pregnant. Inadvertently, she became a wife and a mother at a very tender age and started giving birth to children she could barely take care of. Her plight worsens when the so-called husband was caught stealing potato and was beaten to death.
With four mouths to feed, Grace was forced to look for work and got employed as a farm hand in a poultry farm where she got paid N15,000 monthly. The farm owner also allowed her and her kids to sleep inside the farm. But to feed those children with her monthly salary became a herculean task and she had to resort to feeding them with poultry feeds gotten from her place of work.
Her pathetic story changed when the daughter of the farm owner saw her feeding those children with poultry feed. She made a video of her sordid condition which was uploaded on social media.
The wife of the Akwa Ibom State Governor, Mrs. Patience Eno, got to know of her plight and immediately sent N500,000 to her through the lady that posted the video on social media. She also directed her friends and other well-wishers to do the same. Encouraged by the response from the First Lady, the young woman has now generated over N2 million from Nigerians for the upkeep of Grace and her children.
Now, a room has been rented for her, stocked with food items that would last for the next three months. The sum of N20,000 has been added to her N15,000 monthly salary for their monthly upkeep, while plans are underway to ensure that she learns a vocation and if she is still interested, she would be enrolled in a school to complete her secondary school education. Her grass to grace dream is becoming a reality. Indeed, God’s grace has finally met Grace.
While Grace is lucky to be alive with her children, Alhaqatu Abdulkarim isn’t. A mother of five children and resident of Kano State, Abdulkarim and her five children died after consuming cassava, suspected to have been mixed with pesticide meant for farming. The 35-year-old mother was left to fend for herself and her children following her husband’s death. With no reasonable means of livelihood, Alhaqatu and her children had to search and beg for food on a daily basis. And with the economy not smiling on most Nigerians, those that used to give are also not finding it funny. In street lingo, ‘the street is red!’ Although they were all rushed to a nearby General Hospital after they became unconscious from consuming the poisoned food, they all died one after the other.
In Sokoto State few days ago, the state government was forced to set up a panel to investigate the circumstances surrounding the death of seven family members following their consumption of food unfit for human consumption. Samples of the meal they had, cooking utensils, and the ingredients have all been collected and sent to the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) for laboratory analysis to determine what went wrong. The family ate dambu and lalo, a local cuisine made from cassava and vegetable, for dinner. Not Cassava again! Out of a family of 12, only five are currently alive, while sadly, the father, mother and five children died as a result of the food poisoning.
Death from suspected food poisoning has also been reported in Nasarawa State, where five children have died after eating food from the farm. All the children, between the ages of five and 15, died in Gidinye Community in Obi Local Government area of the state. They all died within 24 hours after consuming what is suspected to be poisonous food.
There are several deaths already recorded in the last few months attributed to the consumption of poisonous food which some Nigerians are now eating due to their inability to afford and eat proper meals.
The statement of Umaru Dikko, Nigeria’s former Minister of Transport during the Shehu Shagari era between 1979 and 1983, who said that Nigerians are not yet eating from dustbins has now become a reality. Dikko, as the Chairman of a committee charged with the distribution of rice to Nigerians after series of complaints that there was hunger in the land had retorted that he had not seen anywhere in the country where people were picking food from dustbins.
Dikko died in London 10 years ago in the same city where the government that took over from the Shagari administration under which he was de-facto number two had plotted to kidnap and crate him back to Nigeria to face justice for what the government did while in power. Were he to be alive today, he would have seen that some Nigerians are not only picking food from dustbins, but are actually living there.
All over Nigeria now, there are makeshift apartments at dumping sites where able-bodied men and women live. They pick whatever they can resell from the waste dump and return to their shanties to sleep at night. And that is how they survive. Many of those that are not living on waste dump sites are surviving through the grace of God and that was why the #EndBadGovernance protest was more pronounced in most of the Northern States.
Due to religious and cultural practices and failed leadership, many Northerners give birth to children they cannot adequately cater for, and who end up on the streets. Tagged ‘Almajiri children’, they roam from one part of the city to the other, looking for what to eat. With the middle class completely wiped out in Nigeria, many can no longer take care of their own children, which explains the violent nature the protests took in the North.
The twin policy of fuel subsidy removal and the floating of the naira introduced by President Bola Tinubu last year exacerbated an already bad situation and prices of food items have blown off the roof, leaving basic food items beyond the reach of most Nigerians.
The World Food Programme (WFP) now estimates that 31.8m Nigerians face acute hunger as food prices have risen by 262.98% in the last one year. Of the 31.8 million Nigerians facing acute hunger, women and children constitute the largest vulnerable group in the country. I almost shed tears last week when Aljazeerah did a report on hungry and malnourished children and women in Nigeria.
There is enough evidence from official data and everyday experiences to underscore the crisis of food prices in the country. According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), food inflation was 33.93% in December 2023, compared to 26.98%, when the president declared a state of emergency on food security. Now, it is above 40 per cent.
Recently, the NBS released the Cost of Healthy Diet (CoHD) report for December 2023. The basket of food items used for the calculation, according to the NBS, represents “the cheapest possible” and “the least expensive combination of foods that meets the daily requirements for a healthy diet for an adult.” In a way, this cost is the barest minimum, as the NBS adds that “to be able to afford a healthy diet, an individual must have a food budget that is greater than or equal to the Cost of a Healthy Diet.”
In December 2023, the cost of the healthy diet for an adult in Nigeria increased to N786. As expected, there will be zonal differences, with the lowest cost in the Northwest be8ng N663 and the highest in the Southwest being N920. This means that to eat basic healthy meal daily, an adult in Nigeria needs a food budget higher than, or equal to N24,366 for the month of December 2023, while her compatriots in the Northwest and the Southwest would need N20,553 and N28,520 respectively.
But it was not as if those in government are not aware of the crisis situation we have on our hands. As far back as July last year, Tinubu had in fact, foreseen the food crisis that the country was likely to face. He declared food insecurity a national emergency, set up a Committee on Food Emergency, and moved the assignment to his office and the office of the National Security Adviser. This was understandable as food inflation was rising. Farmers could not access their farms. The country’s Food Belt had become a theatre of terror and insurgency.
As the harvest of hunger became real, protests showed up in parts of the country, with the people of Lagos even directly confronting the President screaming: “Ebi n pa wa” (“We are Hungry”). The Emergency Committee on Food Insecurity met, and the people were told at the end of the deliberations that the Federal Government would provide 102, 000 metric tonnes of grains – 42, 000 from the National Grains Reserve and another 60, 000 to be provided by big farmers. Too little. Too late.
At one point, we were told by the Vice President, Kashim Shettima, that the government will introduce a Commodities Exchange Board. Tinubu countered it to say that there will be no Commodities Board and that his government will not control prices, nor will it import food. Confusion galore! Now, a window of six months has been created for the importation of some essential food items.
Many of the states, notably Lagos, Ogun, Borno, Adamawa and Edo have introduced palliative measures to help their people. These are welcome interventions. The Federal Government cannot do it alone. But until we tackle the problem in the energy sector, we would be moving in circles.
On his first day and against the advice of his aides, Tinubu announced with glee that fuel subsidy is gone. Fuel price rose from N190 per litre and now hovering at N1,000 per litre with most marketers except NNPC, which sells at N586 per litre. With that, prices of food items rose significantly beyond the reach of the common man. Now, hunger, malnutrition and death seem to be shadowing the citizenry. Yet, Nigeria is not at war.
It is time for Tinubu to lock himself inside his room and think deeply at some of the economic policies he took when he assumed office. His one number priority is the welfare of the people of Nigeria. If those policies are making life difficult for the people, there is nothing wrong if he reverses them. Already, it is clear to all that subsidy is back as confirmed by the NNPC. If not, there is no way fuel will be sold at N586 at NNPC filling stations alone. Reverse some of these polices and allowed poor Nigerians to breathe!
See you next week…
