It was a confusing din. A melee in a sultry weather. A cacophony of voices yelled and bellowed. A medley of folks, from children to the young and fairly old, pushed and shoved, in an unsuccessful attempt to heed an instruction for them to queue up properly.
The scene was set in a dingy backstreet of Lagos Island. Some guys, in a somewhat magisterial exaction, mercilessly beat some of the unruly people, like Fulani shepherds would whip their stubborn herds of cattle into line. The people bore all the execrable and quite unfair treatment with equanimity, amid the scorn and vitriols being poured on them by some guys from a particular tribe, just to get their own share of the free N100 loaves of bread being distributed!
The scene described above, as incredulous and tear-inducing as it is, aptly exemplifies the depth of misery now stalking the land due to the escalating rise in the costs of living. It is the gradual erosion of the quality of life, resulting from the economic quagmire simmering since the last decade, that has peaked into the mesh we now find ourselves.
The sudden withdrawal of subsidy on fuel, which was akin to sloshing petrol on an inferno, came to exacerbate an already precarious economic situation. Inflation responded almost immediately and rose steeply. The naira did a summersault and began a dangerous descent. It has been hovering around over N1,400 and N1,500 to US dollar. And like actors taking prods from the backstage, prices of goods, including staple food items, too began a daily spiral.
The latest report of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) says inflation has surged to 29.9 % by December, 2023, up from 28.9% recorded in November. Food inflation is now 35.41% as at December, 2023, up from the 30.64% recorded in October. The galloping increase is attributed to the steep rise in food prices.
According to the Nigerian Prices (NP), a body that periodically monitors food prices, a 50kg bag of parboiled rice cost between N60,000 and N70,000 as at February 5, this year, when the last market survey was conducted, depending on the particular location.
The same size of beans, according to NP, cost the same price as rice. These were two staple food items that were being sold for N6,000 the same size some years back.
NP says a tuber of the popular ‘Abuja yam’ sold for between N500 and N3,000 as at February 5. For garri (cassava flakes), a 50kg bag cost between N22,000 and N26,000 about the same period, depending on the brand and quality.
The daily increase in prices of goods, especially food items, has tended to shoot up those supposed staple items beyond the rich of the average Nigerian, foisting pangs of hunger and deprivations on the wider population.
As a matter of fact, the mood in town now is quite tetchy. As poverty deepens and hunger bites harder, many Nigerians are easily riled up by inconsequential arguments or altercations of exiguous nature. And it is a merciless whirlwind that knows no class because the rich are also crying!
President Tinubu himself got the whiff of the people’s exasperation in Lagos, his stronghold, when he went home in December for the Christmas break. As his convoy of sleek automobiles slid through the popular Idumota market in Lagos Island, the president, who had expected his people to wave at him in an exhilarating gesture of welcome, got a short shrift instead.
‘E bi n pa wa o!'(We’re hungry!), they crooned repeatedly as the vehicles drove past them. He was non-plussed, to say the least.
The first concrete protest, however, began in Kano on Friday February 2, 2024 when some women, who were said to be bakers of a local bread known in local parlance as ‘Gurasa’ bread, trooped out and marched through Chediyar Yangurasa in Dala Local Government Area of the state. They were protesting the prohibitive cost of flour. According to them, the brand of flour they patronized had been increased from N26,000 per 50kg bag to N43,000.
A larger protest was staged in Kano a week later, precisely Thursday, February 8, 2024, this time by the residents who were protesting the high costs of living. They staged the peaceful protest around Kurna, Rigiyar, Lemu and Bachirawa areas along the popular Katsina Road.
They lamented that the hardship had become unbearable to them as they could no longer feed well. “People can’t eat three square meals again; even the one meal is now becoming difficult as a bag of rice which used to sell for N25,000 is now N70,000,” one of the protesters, Usman Bello, lamented.
In between, precisely Monday, February 5, 2024, the gale of protests moved to Minna, Niger State. It was started by some women who blocked the Minna-Bida Road at the popular Kpakungu Roundabout and began to lament the pains they were going through as a result of the worsening economic hardship in the country.
They pleaded with the state and federal governments to save them from hunger. They were later joined by men and youths. The latter escalated an otherwise peaceful protest when they began to stop and attack vehicles. Policemen moved in, dispersed the protesters and arrested about 25 of them. They have since been released.
The food protests have since been replicated in Abuja, Osun, Lagos and Ogun States. Ota, Ogun State residents staged their own protest last Thursday when they blocked the major roads linking Ota town with Lagos.
They marched in their numbers, clutching placards conveying their displeasure with the hunger ravaging the country. Commuters were stranded for hours as the protesters completely took over the major roads forcing traffic into a standstill.
However, give it to President Tinubu; he is not at all unfeeling about public sensibilities. He has been responsive, unlike his predecessor, former President Muhammudu Buhari, who was always unfazed by public outcries and would do nothing until things had deteriorated.
Tinubu, in prompt response to the hoopla about food crisis, has been holding a rash of meetings with stakeholders, ruminating on how best to tackle the challenge. Two of those meetings stood out. The first was the one he held penultimate Friday in Aso Villa with the Presidential Committee on Food Emergency (PCFE) and the one he held at the same venue last Thursday with the 36 state governors and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Minister, Nyesom Wike.
The following decisions emanated from the two meetings:
*About 102 metric tonnes of rice and maize were ordered to be released to Nigerians to cushion the pangs of hunger and escalating food prices.
*Government may resort to importation to augment whatever shortfalls experienced in the distribution of the grains released.
*The President assured that “food will be available whatever it takes”. And food prices may fall in a matter of days, government envisaged.
*Stringent measures will be put in place to check unscrupulous commodity merchants creating artificial scarcity by hoarding for profiteering. Inspector General of Police, National Security Adviser, Directorate of State Security are to constantly monitor warehouses to specifically check hoarding and profiteering.
*The regular police will be strengthened by recruitment of more personnel. The federal and state governments will work with the National Assembly to set modalities in motion for setting up state police to take over from vigilantes tackling insecurity in states.
*Federal and state governments to collaborate to increase food production.
*The President, however, advised against food import and price control since local food producers would be encouraged to produce more food.
*Governors urged to take advantage of the increase in their monthly allocations to clear all arrears of salaries to workers and pay gratuities to retired workers as well as pensioners as a way of putting money in the hands of people.
*Governors implored to create more economic opportunities for youths in their states to keep them productively engaged.
These are significant and commendable steps towards ameliorating the food crisis in the land. We, however, urge the authorities to go beyond the cosmetic approach of just releasing grains from the nation’s strategic reserves because it is not only an interim measure, it amounts to merely scratching the problem on the surface.
In the first place, how effective can managing the distribution of the grains released be? How are we sure unscrupulous, wicked and soulless government officials or politicians will not sabotage it by hoarding a substantial portion of the consignments to sell later or corner them for their cronies?
We all saw what happened during the COVID-19 lockdown when malevolent government officials and politicians in most states hoarded most of the consignments of the palliatives procured for immediate distribution, and shared only a fraction to their cronies. While this was going on, many people, especially among the vulnerable population literally quarantined in their homes for a whole month, were dying in droves of starvation!
We believe the best way to tackle the food crisis is to work at a price control or a form of regulation that will permanently crash food prices and within the shortest possible time make food items available to all, including the vulnerable population who are not likely to benefit from the grains released by the government.
In this case, President Tinubu must change his position on price control because that is the way to go. We may need to revisit the Price Control Act, 1977 and review it to suit the present-day realities. That law will establish a Price Control Board, which will enforce regulations and prosecute offenders like hoarders and profiteers.
Secondly, like we admonished in an earlier editorial, the military and other security agencies should scale up their war against bandits and kidnappers and allow farmers, especially in the strategic food belt of the North, to resume full-scale food production.
Thirdly, let something drastic be done to save the naira from further descent. It is not good to leave the naira to “float” in the market. No nation completely leaves its currency to sail precariously on the dangerous ocean of market forces of demand and supply.
Yes, we are an import-dependent nation that relies only on oil as our main source of foreign exchange, which is our major undoing, we can still help find a way to help the naira to firm up. Even the advanced democracies who are highly productive still safeguard their currencies through some deft regulations.
Lastly, let the authorities bring down the prices of petroleum products by fast-tracking their plan to stop importation of refined fuel within the first quarter of this year. This can be done by making the Port Harcourt refinery currently test running to start producing. Let one or two other refineries be repaired to start running too. Hopefully, the Dangote refinery will also come on stream soon.
With these running simultaneously, they should be able to meet local demand of petroleum products, so we could stop further importation of refined products and conserve forex, with the concomitant positive impacts on the costs of living.
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