PDP Asks Buhari To Deal with the Food Insecurity Facing Nigeria
PDP asks Buhari to deal with the food insecurity facing Nigeria presently due to the fact that a lot of Nigerians are starving.
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) calls on President Muhammadu Buhari and the All Progressives Congress (APC) led Federal Government to put an end to the lack of empathy and take urgent steps to deal with the food insecurity the country is facing.
On Sunday, a statement by the National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, the party claimed that under the current administration, more than 82.9 million Nigerians are unable to afford their daily meals due to the failure of the government to take practical steps to improve and protect the food sector.
Based on that context, this has led to major food scarcity with prices escalating beyond the capacity of the people, it stated that Nigeria ranked 98 out of 107 in Global Hunger Index.
According to the PDP, this comes with a terrible shortage of food, collapsed purchasing power, 33.3 percent unemployment, 22.95 food inflation rates, as well as increased morbidity and death rates.
“Today, under the APC, a bag of rice which sold for N8,000 under the PDP now sells for N30,000; a measure of garri and beans which sold for N150 and N250 now sells for N500 and N800 respectively; a measure of maize and guinea corn which sold for about N150 now sells for N400; while a kilo of meat which sold for about N800 now sells for about N2,300.
“Our party notes that the current food crisis is occasioned by the failure of the APC administration to recalibrate our agricultural sector, as well as to take decisive steps to address the violence, terrorism, and banditry in food production areas,” the statement said.
In addition, “Nigerians recall how the APC administration had remained insensitive to calls by our party and well-meaning Nigerians asking it to address the escalated violent attacks and killing of farmers as well as livestock producers by bandits, terrorists, and criminal herders resulting in the desertion of farms in various parts of our country.”
Furthermore, the party complained that farmers now reside in Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps while their fields and farmhouses have been raided and taken over by bandits and terrorists.
The drastic increase in insecurity on the highways is also due to the federal government’s inability to take action on matters affecting the nation.
The PDP, therefore, asked President Buhari to take urgent steps to address the urgent issue of hunger by opening storehouses to reduce the effects of the situation and reduce the prices of food items.
It also asked the government to make available more security in food production areas so that farmers can return to their farmland.
The party said, “The PDP also believes that the time has come for President Buhari to provide direct stimuli to small businesses as an incentive to pay salaries, revamp production and boost purchasing power,”
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