Food Crisis: Nigeria Becoming Survival Of The Fittest

The National leader of the Labour Party Mr Peter Obi said Nigeria is gradually descending to the level of the survival of the fittest, due to the increasing hunger in the land.

Obi on his X handle on Wednesday, blamed it on the rising insecurity in the land.

He stated that with the recurring bandits and terror attacks on farmers, many of them have abandoned their farms.

The former presidential candidate of the Labour Party noted that the latest report by an international publication said the number of food-insecure Nigerians rose from 66.2 million in the first quarter of 2023 to 100 million in the first quarter of 2024.

Obi quoted the report as stating that about 18.6 million are facing acute hunger, while 43.7 million others are showing crisis-level or above crisis-level hunger, as of March 2024.

He recalled that an earlier publication by Cadre Harmonise projected that about 31.5 million Nigerians would face acute hunger by June-August of this year.

“While the above report gives an understanding of the present and impending food crisis looming large on the nation, the present realities show that we are already in a worse situation than is presented in the report.

“What is now very worrisome is that many Nigerians have lost their lives in their quest to find food, reflecting a very acute level of hunger not yet captured in the media,” he said.

According to him, it was reported that in a state like Sokoto, farmers paid an accumulated sum of N3 billion in ransom to bandits, while about 165 farmers have reportedly lost their lives to insecurity this year alone.

Obi therefore, called on the Federal Government to urgently tackle the spate of insecurity in the country, to solve the problem of food crisis besetting the nation.