At a period when the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) says about 9.8 million people in 16 northern states of Nigeria are currently facing acute food shortage, a non-political organisation, African Youth for Change Forum (AYFCF), has said that this figure is conservative considering the population of Nigerians which cannot afford three square meals per day.

“I find it hard to believe that we can be experience this hardship in the land when God has given us all resources both natural and human to be self sufficient,” President of African Youth for Change Forum, Prince Hammed Olanrewaju Mohammed, said during a media parley in Lagos on Monday.

“If we look at our disposition to agriculture in Nigeria, it is very unfortunate. Governments and individuals have relegated agriculture to the background. We have dumped agriculture which supposed to be the mainstream of our life sustenance. It is so sad.

“I read what some leaders in the southwest said during their meeting in Lagos at the weekend that the federal government should open our borders. For what purpose will President Muhammadu Buhari now open the borders?

“We all see the positive effects the closed borders have on our economy, our rice producers who have found their hitherto deplorable business turned to goldmine, and how the closed borders have changed the businesses of some of our local entrepreneurs. How long are we going to depend on importation in this country? For a country with a population of over 200 million people still depending on importation of toothpicks, matches and other items we can easily produce locally, I think something is wrong with us as a people,” said Prince Mohammed, whose AYFCF members are present in almost all nations in Africa.

Prince Mohammed, who is also the Vice President of Current World Wrestling Federation (CWWF) headquartered in Vienna, Austria, noted that urgent action is needed to beef up food security in Nigeria as majority of Nigerian families are going through hunger because of the high costs of agricultural products.

He said: “Few Nigerians are into farming and the demands for food items are on the increase on daily basis. We can no longer produce what we can eat not to talk of producing for storage or exporting. How can we explain that a whole nation like Nigeria will depend on foreign rice; we are only good at enriching other nation’s economy than developing our own. That is why I faulted the calls of the leaders in the southwest telling President Buhari to considering opening the closed borders so that we can have influx of foreign goods and continue to inflict avoidable damage to our own fragile economy. It doesn’t make sense at all.”

Experts recently said that it would be impossible for Nigeria to achieve food security or GDP growth when more than 74% of her small-scale farmers were financially excluded. Prince Mohammed posited that serious action is needed from all stakeholders to avert imminent danger.

“We should stop playing lip service to development of agriculture. What has been the budget on agriculture in the past few years by the federal government and other state governments? We need to focus more on agriculture with sustainable policies. We need to mechanise our agriculture because farming has gone beyond the routines of what we used to do here in Nigeria. As big as the nation of China is, the country is feeding her citizens and at the same time import a lot to the world,” he said.

Prince Mohammed reasoned that the outbreak of COVID-19 is a major blow as it has affected 2020 farming season, adding that the country should be expecting adverse effect of this in the coming months.

“The few people who are into farming are facing one problem or the other. Are we going to reap where we don’t sow? The African Youth for Change Forum is warning Nigerian nation that hunger is imminent and we are all to be blame when this happens,” Mohammed said.

The President of the AYFCF wants Nigerian government to provide interest free loan to genuine famers in the country. This loan, according to him, must be properly monitored to give a kind of financial succour to the stakeholders in Nigerian agriculture. He warned who be beneficiaries of this loan to judiciously use it for what it is meant for.

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