By Kingston Magare
Following incidents of scramble for free food items leading to deaths in Ibadan, Abuja and Okijia the Federal government has been called upon to boost food production in the country to make commodities affordable.
According to All Progressives Congress (APC) chieftain and President Bola Tinubu’s ally Jesutega Onokpasa the Federal Government has failed to curtail food security which he said has led to the stampedes times as victims try to lay their hands on whatever they can to ease their hunger and suffering.
“I think the real problem is that we (APC) have failed woefully in producing food for our citizens,” said Mr. Onokpasa on Tuesday’s edition of Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily.
“When we were campaigning for this administration, people were calling us ‘Agbadorians’ because our President [Tinubu] was always talking about producing food but unfortunately, we don’t seem to be producing food and we just have to accept, that’s our fault.
“The good thing about agriculture is that you can just plant a crop today and harvest in three months or six months or one year and try to convince our president to concentrate on food production. Even if we cannot reduce the price of fuel, let our people have food to eat,”
Labour Party National Secretary Umar Farouk Ibrahim, in a similar vein said in a statement that the recent stampedes were due to the high cost of living.
“The bottom line is that there is hunger in the land. It is only poverty that made some Nigerians go scooping fuel from accident scenes, resulting in an inferno that brought about hundreds of casualties.
“This happened on several occasions in the last year.
“One major reason why people resort to crime is due to hunger. Nigerians in their millions have been subjected to hunger arising from other reasons such as rising inflation and poor economic management.
“The economic reforms of the Tinubu administration have caused untold hardship to Nigerians. Hunger is turning into an epidemic, and not many people can survive this situation,” he said.
However, speaking Monday President Tinubu blamed the stampedes which claimed the lives of about 60 persons in all incidents on Nigerians’ lack of decorum in public spheres.
“It is very sad that people are not well-organised. We just have to be more disciplined in our society.
“I have been giving out foodstuffs, commodities, clothing and envelopes for the past 25 years. I’ve never experienced this kind of incident because we are organised.
“We have to be disciplined as a country. If you don’t have enough to give, don’t attempt to even give or publicise it.
“Every society, even in America and Britain, they have food banks. They have hungry people. They have warehouses, but they are organised; they take tokens to be on the line to collect,” he said.
“It is very sad, but it is an opportunity to learn from our mistakes.
“To me, I see this as a very grave error on the part of the organisers. But things are improving. It doesn’t kill our happiness for this season,” Mr Tinubu said.
