Fearing an attack and possible uprising from the country’s famished and enraged populace, the Nigerian Senate had a panicked discussion on Tuesday about the country’s hunger and hardships.

The motion, which was co-sponsored by Senator Ali Ndume Mohammed of Borno South Senatorial District and Senator Sunday Karimi Steve of Kogi West Senatorial District, with the title “Urgent Need to address Food Insecurity and Market Exploitation of Consumables in Nigeria,” set the stage for the debate.

Senator Kaimi voiced the concern that rising costs, inflation, and the ongoing depreciation of the currency, along with the resulting worsening of living conditions, were making food and consumable prices intolerable for citizens.

He used recent data from the Bureau of Statistics to bolster his case, indicating that “food inflation in the country skyrocketed to 40.66% on a year-on-year basis, a significant increase from the 24.82% recorded in May 2023.”

According to Karimi, the market price of food products such beans, maize, rice paddies, yams, tomatoes, and onions jumped by over 100% to 300% without any discernible cause once the petroleum subsidy was removed, up from an initial increase of roughly 40%.

Adding to the downward trend, the lawmaker stated: “There is a general attitude of get rich quickly or get rich by all means, leading to many Nigerians to jettison being their brother’s keepers 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 elite have helped themselves with public funds without any repercussions in law, Nigerian traders have thus resorted to price gouging to maximize profits.”

Co-sponsor of the bill Senator Ali Ndume stressed that the upper legislative chamber should examine the proposal carefully, pointing out that Nigeria has been included for the first time among African nations likely to experience a food crisis.

Ndume, who is a senator from Borno South Senatorial District, brought up a study from Action Against Hunger World Food Programme to the upper house. According to the research which indicated, “that over 32 million people are expected to face critical hunger crises and emerging levels between June and August in Nigeria.

“I don’t know about some other countries, but there in the north, or here in the north, we have started seeing it visibly. People are hungry, very, very hungry.

“Many cannot go to their farms. All of us know this. In the North Central, the North East, and the North West. Even in the South East, we still have crises among the farmers and the herdsmen.

“Even in the South West, we still have this crisis. As it is now, a bag of rice is selling at about 100,000. A bag of maize, the same thing. Even prices of tomatoes, onions, and other basic food are high”

Former Senate President Ahmed Lawan, who praised the motion’s sponsor, said that because of extreme hunger, Nigerians had had enough and would turn on them if nothing was done quickly.

“Let me commend the mover of this motion and also add here that patience, and tolerance are both elastic but they are not eternally elastic.

Real, genuine rage is being felt by our constituents. Last week, I visited two states, mostly in the north, where I witnessed firsthand the hardships, conflicts, and daily struggles individuals have just to get food, especially those who do not work in the civil service or any other type of business.

“Under normal circumstances, Mr. President, in the rainy season, from maybe June up to September or October, when there will be harvests of new foodstuff, prices of foodstuff are not expected to escalate, now we don’t even have that truth.”

“If you come and tell us, they will distribute foodstuff from our silos. The silos are empty, Mr. President. So it means we have to import food. And if we have to import, it means we need foreign exchange.

“And that is because we have to engage with the administration. We have to help the administration. Mr. President, we are the most vulnerable in the leadership arrangements of this country.

“Members of the National Assembly, everybody looks up to Senators or members of the House of Representatives. In fact, people see Senators as Messiahs. Any problem, they say, go for your Senator.

“So if we don’t take immediate action, we will lose the power and our citizens under the situation of increased fuel price, increased electricity price, increased everything and we are yet to get the right measures to provide questions for our constituents.

“We wouldn’t like the kind of thing that we see in our streets and it is time that we take every possible action to get out of the arms of the government to ensure that food floods our country, the right food.

Senator Godswill Akpabio reacted by claiming that the current disaster was caused by herders’ attacks on farmers in the North Central region, bandits in the North West region, and Boko Haram in the North East region, which has been ongoing for the past nine years.

“My opinion was that there was calamity when herders were pursuing people from their farms in the North Central; when bandits were pursuing people in Katsina and all over the North West zone and after the attack the people were moved to IDP camp and abandoned there. In the South there was insecurity and this has been for the past nine years and that is why there is scarcity of food in the country.

“Nigeria is now included among the countries that will experience acute food shortage. There is no doubt that the government must rise to the occasion”, he stated.

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