State of emergency on food stuff

The mounting agitations, the wailings, the lamentations, and the trumpetous hullabaloos about the terrible state of the economy is summed up in two words “NO FOOD.”

There is severe hunger in the whole land. In almost every home, the children wait on their parents with anxiety expecting to eat at the time they used to eat but they don’t have it. They just have to wait longer and when the food eventually comes, the rations are abysmally slashed. They ravenously devour the meagre meals with the hope of having more as was the case in days gone by, but alas! When they present the tongue-licked plates to their parents for more, the plates are no more returned for there is no more. They stand and stare at their parents with pare faces and kick and weep thinking weeping will help but the parents are helpless themselves.

The children are hungry, the Civil Servants are hungry, the businessmen are hungry, the old people who are mostly dependents are hungry, the artisans are hungry because they have no work to do, the labourers are hungry because there is nobody to hire them, needless to say anything about the unemployed youth. There is high and alarming increase in the level of ill health in the land, the principal cause of which is hunger. People’s hearts are failing for loss of hope as things go from bad to worse day after day.

While the hungry farmers are experiencing low production on their farms because of despair and discouragement, the city industries are closing shop because of frustrations rendering many jobless again. The state Civil Servants whose salaries are not paid for months are indirectly programmed or conditioned, if you like it, to be negatively productive. What does all these portend? Nothing but more HUNGER.

Unfortunately, the hard is that, a hungry man is an angry man, a hungry man is a dangerous man, a hungry man is an unproductive man, a hungry man is a destructive man, a hungry man is a disarmed man, a hungry man is an unreasonable man, a hungry man is a disabled man, a hungry man is an uncoordinated man, a hungry man is a powerless man, a hungry man is a frustrated and hopeless man.

God, the creator of Heaven and Earth, the creator of man, the greatest economist and administrator knows that when people are hopelessly frustrated, the best and the first thing to do is to give them food to restore their hope and life.

When Prophet Elijah the Tishbite was so frustrated and hopeless that contemplated suicide and told God to kill him, the first thing God did was to solve his immediate need by giving him food. He gave him food again until he ate and his heart was settled and thought of suicide no more.

It is very important at this point to inform the President and the managers of the economy very frankly that, the nation is fast drifting and sliding down the hill into a state of hopelessness and depression.

A similar hopelessness that occurred in America in 1939 which President Herbert Hoover was not able to manage properly and the situation degenerated and snowballed into The Great Depression upon which Adolf Hitler capitalised to cause the Second World War. The Second World War witnessed one of the greatest loss of human lives since the world began. But if President Herbert Hoover had only done what God did, instead of listening and adopting empty economic theories, this world monumental catastrophe would have been clearly avoided.

What the President need to do now as a matter of urgency is to suspend all bogus economic theories and policies and apply common sense to give food to Nigerians.It was Professor Sam Aluko, an eminent Nigerian and one of the greatest economists of all times who defined economics as “common sense made difficult.” Everybody with common sense knows that the only economic policy that would make sense to Nigerians at this moment is that which will give us food so that we and our children die not.

We are not opposed to encouraging the growth of our local food industries by way of restricting the importation of food items for local industries to thrive and earn foreign exchange for the economy to pick up as being advocated by Harvard trained economic scholars.

However, at this critical and volatile moment, this policy will spell doom for the nation as already being experienced. The only practical solution and clear direction is for the President to declare a state of emergency in the food industry. Our president should suspend all economic theories and policies, open up the Borders and make the importation of all food items duty free, especially Rice which is the stable food for all Nigerians, give local food industries incentivizing tax reliefs and exemptions. This will make food to be readily available on the tables of Nigerians and stop the hunger from killing the people as it has fiercely begun.

It is only then that Nigerians will eat and become revived, our hope will be restored, then we shall become strong, courageous, coordinated, articulate and work diligently and productively with ground breaking result that will make us to take our place of pride in the committee of nations as a country with one of the best economies of the world.