The High Cost of Food Prizes In Nigeria
Experts are quick to say that the high cost of food prizes in the world today is as a result of the various landslides, earthquakes, and all manner of hurricanes that have bedeviled Asia of lately.
Someone like me sees the irony here. Why would the self-glorifying giant of Africa not be dependent on her self for food security? Nigeria is blessed with abundant human and natural resources that would guarantee her teeming multi-ethnic people literally live in paradise. Every year budget is announced with so much fanfare and every year, the expectations of the people are dashed on the altar of corruption and mismanagement with no one in the corridors of power free of the stain from the single finger with the red oil.
The numerous activist organizations have been clamouring for the probe of the last administration of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo that wasted eight years turning the country on its head. The world is aware of the probe panel instituted by the House of Representatives' committee on Power to find out why the Nigerian government paid for power installations that never was running into millions of dollars. Now I want the world to know that this probe everybody was thanking God for has ran into a serious problem. After so many threats were issued against the lives of the Chairman of the probe panel Ndudi Elumelu, the ruling elites in People' Democratic Party have achieved their aim of not having the result of the probe seeing the light of the day.
Now tell me where the poor masses that have seen forty-eight years of wastefulness and such unbridled brigandage place their hope on? They would toil and till their lands and at the end of the day, government would import massively from the Asian food market where the governments of Asia give support to the local farmers. Most farmers in Nigeria still make use of local implements and hardly dream of a day a government would take them to the land of mechanized farming.
Nigeria's installed food reserve is said to last Nigerians for only one month. This is laughable and unacceptable. Massive importation of such food item like rice without a hoot of support for the Nigerian farmer is like a shot in the leg.
I would like the world to ask the Nigerian ruling elite why they have not started doing anything this farming year to help her local farmers take care of at least twenty percent of Nigerians' food needs. The food shortage and scarcity is a global phenomenon but why are the countries of Europe and the USA not complaining about its rude effect like we do in Nigeria. It is all as a result of corruption, which no one even the laidback government of Shehu Musa Yar'dua is showing lackluster approach to.
The world should know Nigerians are suffering as a result of our leaders' failure to harness the cart behind the horses. Even with an educated president and his vice, we are still a nation at crossroads.
What more can I say? I have to stop here and go look for what to eat. It is 11 a.m. and my stomach is making noises.
