The 2023 presidential candidate of Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, has reiterated his concern over food insecurity in Nigeria, warning that the country is gradually descending to the level of the survival of the fittest, where, driven by hunger and the quest for survival, one loses every sense of order to do the unthinkable.
Obi said this in a Wednesday statement shared via his X handle.
He said, “I just read on the daily, this morning, about the concerns from stakeholders in our agriculture sector over the worsening food insecurity in Nigeria.
“While I have consistently and publicly voiced my worries over this growing food crisis, which has continued to claim the lives of our fellow Nigerians, I believe that the needed urgency required to address these issues cannot be over emphasised.
“The report this morning reads, in part, “the number of food-insecure Nigerians increased significantly, from 66.2 million in Q1 2023 to 100 million in Q1 2024 (WFP, 2024), with 18.6 million facing acute hunger and 43.7 million Nigerians showing crisis-level or above crisis-level hunger- coping strategies as of March 2024.
“While the above report gives an insight into the present and impending food crisis in the nation, the present realities show that we are already in a worse situation than is presented in the report.
“An earlier similar report by Cadre Harmonise stated that about 31.5 million Nigerians are projected to face acute hunger by June-August of this year.”
Obi said it was now very worrisome that many Nigerians have lost their lives in their quest to find food, reflecting a very acute level of hunger not yet captured in the media.
“We are gradually descending to the level of the survival of the fittest, where, driven by hunger and the quest for survival, one loses every sense of order to do the unthinkable.
“With the recurrent bandits and terror attacks on farmers, many of them have abandoned their farms. It is reported that in a state like Sokoto, farmers have paid an accumulated sum of N3 billion in ransom to bandits.
“Others pay as high as N100,000 each to bandits to gain access to their farmlands. About 165 farmers have reportedly lost their lives to insecurity this year alone.
“It is, therefore, a matter of severe urgency, for the government to give all due attention to the problems of insecurity in the country.
“This will in turn reduce the problems of food insecurity, when farmers safely return to their farms, and thereby solve the economic problem of food inflation.”