Olatunbosun Oyintiloye, a chieftain of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), has appealed to President Bola Tinubu to urgently address the issue of hunger and starvation ravaging the country to save the masses and provide them a decent living.
Oyintiloye, while speaking with newsmen on Sunday in Osogbo, said that Nigerians are hungry and living below the poverty line.
The APC chieftain said that due to the prevailing harsh economy in the country, many households were finding it difficult to have three square meals.
Oyintiloye also urged the president not to ignore the United Nations’ prediction that 82 million Nigerians, which is about 64% of the country’s population, might go hungry by 2030.
He further said that the National Bureau of Statistics(NBS) data revealed that the food inflation rate in the country hit a record high 40.66% in May, surpassing the previous month’s inflationary rate of 40.53%.
Oyintiloye, a former member of the defunct APC Presidential Campaign Council (PCC), also said the common household food items were getting out of the reach of the common man due to the hike in prices.
The APC chieftain noted that despite the fact that Nigerians were working hard under different dehumanising conditions, what they were earning was still not enough to sustain them and their families due to inflation.
According to him, despite the abundance in natural and human resources the country is blessed with, successive governments have failed to drive the economy productively.
He said corruption and over dependence on the system of sharing crude oil revenue by the tiers of government was hindering them from running a productive and self-sufficient economy for the benefit of the masses.
Oyintiloye, a former lawmaker, who noted that there was no doubt that the president was doing everything possible to salvage the situation through various intervention programmes, he however said that the impacts of such interventions were far from ameliorating the situation.
He said prices of basic households food items such as rice, beans, garri, spaghetti, and host others were on a high side and becoming unaffordable by the masses.
Oyintiloye noted that it was rather unfortunate that with all the efforts of the president, prices of food and other essentials had continued to be on the increase.
“I will want to urge the president to, as a matter of urgency, declare a state of emergency on hunger, starvation, and poverty in the country. Hunger is a threat to national peace, and that is why the president must act very fast,” he said.
Oyintiloye also said there was a need for the government to put in place the price control mechanism to checkmate the sharp practices by the traders in the market.
He said many of the traders were taking undue advantage of the economy to exploit buyers , adding that there is an urgent need to check their excesses.
Oyintiloye, however, urged the president to consider the reopening of the Benin Republic border for the importation of food to solve the problem of food crisis in the country.
He also said that issue of inadequate farm inputs and that of insecurity must also be addressed for farmers to cultivate in their various farmland, while good incentives should be made available to agriculture to attract the younger ones.
Oyintiloye also appealed to Nigerians to continue to support the president, adding that things with all the various ongoing economic intervention programmes, the country would rise again.
