Allow Food Importation, Group Urges Tinubu

The national convener of Social Rehabilitation Group, Dr. Marindoti Charles Oludare, has appealed to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to, as a matter of urgency, open the borders and allow food items to come into the country in a bid to solve the food crisis and economic hardship ravaging the country.

The group, which said the step would go a long way to address the immediate needs of the people, noted that “there is no economic, ethnic, religious, forex, political or agricultural justification for hunger.”

In a statement issued by the national president of the group, he attributed the current economic hardship in the country to the current border closure.

Oludare, who hinted that the average dietary consumption for an average Nigerian was grossly inadequate, noted that “children don’t have access to nutritious food, and our power situation means we can’t preserve food, hence wastage adds to the cost.”

According to him, “It is imperative that we let the food come into the country, subsidize our farmers, and cover their losses should they record any losses.”

He said, “While it is a thing of pride to say we grow the food we eat, we must first eat the food to be able to grow food. I will say food security trumps food productivity.

“This is why the president should allow food to come into the country. We can allow food importation and still support our farmers at the same time. Both actions are not mutually exclusive.

“The president has said food importation enables rent seekers to perpetrate fraud, I will argue to the contrary that food protectionism enables domestic producers to limit competition, and inflate prices thereby increasing their profit without adding value or volume.

“Countries that practice food protectionism do so because their cost of labour is high and they don’t want cheaper food from poor countries to overtake their market share. The situation is not the same in Nigeria, our labour is cheap, our demand is meager and our supply is short.

“If we want to counter hoarding and price gouging, we must encourage open market competition that takes away the incentives for such unscrupulous acts.

“What we need to do is subsidize our farmers in multiple ways, the government can subsidize their transport cost in a verifiable manner using technologies, the government can subsidize their diesel cost, continue the subsidies on fertilizers, seedlings, and other farm supplies while investing in better infrastructure like farm to market roads, railways, cargo air flight, etc that will ensure food transportation is faster and cheaper and under best practices.

“However, food is a must-have, we must do everything to relieve this pain in the immediate term. While aligning our strategies to achieve food sufficiency in the long term.

“America is the largest producer of meat and also the second largest importer of meat after China. America is the largest producer of oil and its biggest importer. We can walk and chew gum, allow food importation while improving food productivity, and continue our match towards infrastructural sufficiency.”