THE STATE OF EMERGENCY ON FOOD SECURITY
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ecently, the federal government announced a state of emergency on food security in the country. This is a heartwarming and cheering policy initiative especially coming at a time when Nigerians are grappling with unexpected hardship occasioned by the shocking news of the removal of fuel subsidy and the subsequent hike in transportation fares.
The presidential spokesman, Mr Dele Alake, who dropped the hint went, further to provide insights as to what the policy entails. According to him, though President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is not unmindful of the rising cost of food prices in the country, the key factors of that policy is to influence food value chain and make food items available, which he claimed is not a problem. He added that the teething factor of affordability has been discovered to be the hindrance.
He went further to announce plans by the federal government to set up national commodity boards that would be saddled with the responsibility of reviewing and assessing prices of food. as well as maintaining strategic food reserves expected to serve as price stabilisation mechanism. On the surface, the policy sounds laudable, but what is the guarantee that, in practice, we are not likely to discover on the long run the usual Nigerian factor of government is no man's business. Would such attitude not jeopardize the good intentions of government? Experience has shown that there is no policy initiative by government that was not well-intentioned, but those implementing these policies have always employed the Nigerian factor to constitute themselves into an undesirable cog in the wheel of progress.
A ready example can also be drawn from the former President Muhammadu Buhari school feeding program that came up as a result of the insistence by the German government to the effect that for Nigeria to assess the late Abacha loot domiciled in their banks, the Nigerian government must show convincing evidence of how the funds would be utilised to the benefits of the vulnerable. It did not take long when unpalatable piece of information filtered out that the hawks in the system have cornered the program in complete denial of those it was meant for.
A case in point is the Cross River state example where the number of food vendors contracted to feed the school children out numbered the number of public schools in the entire state and all efforts by federal government inspectors to unravel the mystery proved abortive. The subsequent effect of such bare-face robbery was the untimely suspension of the school feeding program in the state,
Equally of note is the sad experience of the startling revelations that characterised the unfortunate and avoidable #EndSARS protest in the state, where to the chagrin of the unsuspecting members of the public, loads of federal government donated food items like bags of garri, rice, maize, onions and uncountable tubers of yams were discovered in warehouses traceable to government connivance, while the needy and the vulnerable in our midst whom the food items were meant for were allowed to starve to death.
In the light of the above, what is the guarantee that President Tinubu’s food security program would not go the same way as other similar government programs before now. Would the Presidency have the balls to implement the policy where the middle men and party loyalists would not be allowed to hijack it to the detriment of Nigerians who need it most.
This paper is of the view that the present Tinubu-led administration should study why past government policies failed and come up with a sustainable blue print on how government policies and people-oriented programmes should be implemented.
