Nigerians ‘face hardship and starvation’
DESPERATE Nigerians have been protesting against soaring food prices as an economic crisis forces people to skip meals and eat poor-grade rice used as fish food.
To feed their children, women in northern Nigeria have even resorted to digging up anthills in search of grain stored by the insects, according to videos shown on social media.
Since coming to office last year President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has ended a fuel subsidy and currency controls, leading to a tripling of petrol prices and a spike in living costs as the naira slides against the dollar.
Nigeria’s inflation rate hit a three-decade high above 28% in December, according to the national bureau of statistics.
Dire conditions have sparked protests in several northern cities including Suleja near the capital Abuja, Minna in Niger State, and the economic hub of Kano.
On Monday, the influential traditional emir of Kano Aminu Ado Bayero warned that Nigerians faced “economic hardships, hunger and starvation” and called on the president to take urgent action.
Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf said this month he would ask the president “to intervene and check the prevailing hunger situation in Kano State, so as to save our people from starvation.”
“We know that other parts of the country are experiencing the same thing,” he said.
At least 63% of Nigeria’s 220 million population lives in extreme poverty, the statistics bureau says.
Many poor Nigerians have had to give up products considered a luxury, such as meat, eggs, milk and potato.
In Kano, residents have turned to cheap “afafata” rice. The word means “let’s slug it out” in the Hausa language and refers to its use in hard times.
In 2015 Nigeria banned the import of rice in a drive to boost domestic production. But the price of locally-produced rice has spiralled, pushing the staple out of reach for many.
The cost of maize flour, millet and sorghum has also shot up. Eighty percent of Nigeria’s grain is produced in the northwest and northeast, but violence in these regions has increased pressure on supplies.
Deadly raids and kidnapping for ransom by criminal gangs in the northwest and a jihadist conflict in the northeast have displaced many farming communities.
In a report this month the World Bank warned of acute food shortages in seven states due to the violence.
Nigeria has also shut its northern border with Niger following a military coup that toppled President Mohamed Bazoum last year, preventing millet and cowpea from reaching northern Nigerian markets.
Nigerian authorities face increasing pressure to ease the hardship.
On Monday agriculture minister Abubakar Kyari told parliament national food security had suffered since the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 and devastating floods the following year.