Senate Urges Federal Government to Address Growing Food Insecurity.

The Federal Government has been pushed by the Senate to act immediately to address the nation's growing food insecurity. Additionally, it encouraged the government to inform Nigerians about the steps taken to confront the crisis.

The motion on the urgent need to address food insecurity and market exploitation of consumables in Nigeria was adopted at the plenary before the Senate's resolution. Senators Sunday Karimi (APC-Kogi) and Ali Ndume (APC-Borno) sponsored the motion.

Karimi, who was the debate leader, stated that prices for products and home necessities in Nigeria had reached an all-time high in the previous few months. He claimed that this was causing a high rate of inflation, which was impairing the purchasing power of the vast majority of Nigerians and their standard of living.

According to him, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) recently released data indicating that food inflation in the nation surged to 40.66 percent annually, a notable rise from the 24.82 percent reported in May 2023. As noted by Karimi, the market price of food products like beans, maize, rice paddies, yams, tomatoes, and onions has increased to between 100 and 300 percent with no discernible cause for the increase in price, from an initial increase of roughly 40 percent following the removal of petroleum subsidies.

According to him, issues such as poor roads, rising transportation costs, devaluation of the Naira, and insecurity in areas that produce food have been cited as potential causes of rising food and other consumable prices. But he added that the desire of retailers, traders, and merchants to make extraordinary profits was more likely to be the cause of the rise in food and consumable prices than any other aspect.

“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.