Senate Urges Nigerian Government to Address Looming Food Insecurity Now

The Senate has urged the Federal Government to, as a matter of urgency, initiate measures to tackle the impending food insecurity in the country.

It also urged the government to outline measures put in place to combat the situation and address Nigerians on it.

The Senate’s resolution followed the adoption of a motion on the urgent need to address food insecurity and market exploitation of consumables in Nigeria at plenary.

The motion was sponsored by Senator Sunday Karimi (APC- Kogi) and Senator Ali Ndume (APC-Borno).

Leading the debate, Karimi said in the last few months, the price of goods and household consumables in Nigeria had been on an all-time high.

According to him, this was leading to a high rate of inflation, weakening purchasing power and affecting the living conditions of the vast majority of Nigerians.

He said the latest data by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed that food inflation in the country skyrocketed to 40.66 per cent on a year-on-year basis, representing a significant increase from the 24.82 per cent recorded in May 2023.

Karimi said the current market price of food items such as beans, maize, rice paddy, yam, tomatoes, and onions which initially rose by about 40 per cent after the removal of petroleum subsidy had increased to between 100 per cent and 300 per cent with no attributable reason for the increase in prices.

He said insecurity in food-producing regions, bad roads, increase in cost of transportation, depreciation of the value of Naira had been identified as possible factors contributing to increase in price of food items and other consumables.

He, however ,said that a greater percentage of the increase in prices of food items and consumables were not only responsible for the factors, rather the greed of merchants, traders, and retailers to make supernormal profits.

“Note that there is a general attitude of get rich quickly or get rich by all means.

“This is leading many Nigerians to jettison being their brother’s keeper and exploiting one another to make abnormal profits.

“This attitude has been justified on the basis that many members of the political class, technocrats, and corporate elites have helped themselves with public funds without any repercussions in law.

”Nigerian traders have thus resorted to price overcharging to maximize profits,” he said.