Pulse.ng : Stampedes: Nigeria facing hunger epidemic

By Sani Idris

The National Secretary of the Labour Party (LP), Alhaji Umar Ibrahim, has said that the party is petrified over the stampede to death of about 65 Nigerians in the last few days in Oyo, Anambra states and the FCT.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), reports that about 40 children, died during a stampede at a carnival in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital.

20 residents of Okija community in Anambra State, also lost their lives in a similar stampede. On the same day, more than 10 people died following a stampede in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja.

In a statement issued to newsmen on Friday in Kaduna, Ibrahim said the stampedes have become too many, adding that the lost of lives at a time when Nigeria is not facing any natural disaster was a pointer to the fact that hunger could be the worst epidemic a people can face.

The unfortunate incidents occurred in Catholic churches in the FCT while distributing food items to vulnerable persons. The Okija, Anambra state incident happened during a palliative distribution by a notable philanthropist.

Also, the Ibadan, Oyo state was at an event funded by a popular royalty.

Ibrahim, therefore, said the bottomline is that there is hunger in the land.

He said that, according to the World Bank, in 2023, the poverty rate in Nigeria was estimated to be 38.9%, with 87 million Nigerians living below the poverty line. But presently, the poverty rate in Nigeria is estimated to be 40.7%.

This, makes Nigeria the second-largest poor population in the world after India.

"It is only poverty that makes some Nigerians go scooping fuel from accident scenes resulting to inferno which brought about hundreds of casualties. These happened on several occasions in the last one year,"Ibrahim lamented.

Similarly, the National Bureau of Statistics survey revealed that more than 2 million people have been kidnapped in Nigeria in the last one year and Nigerians paid a cumulative $1.42 billion to kidnappers within the same period.

One major reason some people resort to crime is hunger. Nigerians in millions have been subjected to hunger arising from other reasons such as rising inflation and poor economic management. The economic reforms of the Tinubu administration have caused untold hardship to Nigerians.

Hunger is turning into an epidemic and not many people can survive this situation.

The Labour Party, prior to the 2023 general elections warned that unless we change our consumption policies to a productive policy, the economy will be in serious jeopardy.

Ibrahim, therefore called on the government to scale down most of its agenda in 2024 and redirect it's policies towards food production.

Over 70 percent of Nigeria land resources are laying in waste. Aquatic economy is prostrate and the ministries in charge of these sectors should be made to function.

Protection of lives and property is the cardinal purpose of the government.

"But as we can see, life of Nigerians no longer matter that much. While a large number of Nigerians have been wasted by the butcher knife of kidnappers, many simply get killed while trying to survive at all cost. Nothing tangible seems to be done by the government to ameliorate the hunger crisis and check poverty level in Nigeria.

"The government must simply sit up and put their acts together; the statistics is not good, and enough of taking the people for granted,"he lamented.