The chasm between Nigerians and their elected or appointed government officials, who live in a different reality, appears to be widening. While ordinary Nigerians, backed by globally validated data, complain about excruciating poverty and dysfunctional infrastructure and institutions, the leadership seems to believe everything is well and the country has never had it so good. The gap will widen further following the president’s rejection of data from multilateral organisations while charging the Economic Advisory Council to generate Nigeria’s own data.
Last week, the disconnect came into sharper focus when the minister of Agriculture, Sabo Nanono, denied the prevalence of hunger in Nigeria, insisting that the country has attained food self-sufficiency and even export to neighbouring countries.
“I think we are producing enough to feed ourselves. I think there is no hunger in Nigeria; there could be inconveniences. When people talk about hunger in this government, I just laugh.” Continuing he denied the reality of food inflation. “In this country, it is fairly cheap to buy food,” Nanono concluded.
Perhaps we need to remind the honourable minister that Nigeria has been rated the poverty capital of the world with over 90 million Nigerians in extreme poverty. Food inflation has been one of the factors pushing many Nigerians into extreme poverty. Food inflation has been at double digits since 2016, reaching a peak of 20.32 percent in September 2017. It currently stands at 13.51 percent according to the National Bureau of Statistics. More so, according to the Central Bank of Nigeria, an average household in Nigeria spends about 73 percent of their income on food and beverages.
This is certainly not a country where there is no hunger and where food is cheap. It shows people struggling to survive and perhaps, the minister also needs to know that the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) data indicate that 37 percent of children under 5 years suffer from severe acute malnutrition and are stunted – the second highest rate of stunted children in the world.
Also, Boko Haram insurgency in the country has led to a large number of displaced people without access to food. It is estimated that about 8.5 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance, especially food, in Nigeria and majority are in the northeastern part of the country.
Worse, beyond the rate of displacement, about 5.1 million Nigerians are malnourished.
In Borno state, for instance, 64.2 percent of households are food insecure. In July 2017, the federal government declared a state of food and nutrition emergency in Borno. There has been absolutely no progress in addressing the problem.
This is not excluding the hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in camps all over the northeast and other parts of the country dying daily of hunger. Added to this, they are being mindlessly exploited (sexually and otherwise) in exchange for a morsel of bread.
But the minister is not alone. It is a trait with this administration. Last time, it was the former minister of health, professor of medicine, Isaac Adewole, who said Nigeria doesn’t have shortage of doctors and that it can’t even train all its doctors, therefore, advising some to take to tailoring, business and politics.
At another time, another medical doctor and minister of labour and productivity denied the obvious shortages of doctors in Nigeria, saying instead that Nigeria does, in fact, have excess supply of doctors and that’s why they are exporting doctors to other countries.
The government cannot continue to peddle and believe its own facts different from what is real and acceptable world-wide. Granted the government is desperate to sell itself and trumpet its achievements, it must be guided by respect for concrete facts and data available .
It must stop the constant embarrassment it causes the country by peddling rumours, half-truths and sometimes outright lies, just to present itself as making progress.
