Following the escalating cost of living and food inflation, High Chief Kehinde Kalejaiye, the traditional ruler of the Otumara community in Lagos, has urged President Bola Tinubu to alleviate the suffering of Nigerians and regulate the prices of essential food items.
Kalejaiye’s plea comes in response to a court directive ordering the federal government to set prices for goods and petroleum products within seven days, starting from Wednesday, January 7.
Justice Ambrose Lewis-Allagoa of the Federal High Court in Lagos issued the order after an originating motion was presented and argued by human rights lawyer and Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), Femi Falana.
Expressing his reaction to the court’s decision, Kalejaiye emphasised the insecurity and hunger prevalent among Nigerians, attributing the nation’s challenges to self-inflicted causes.
He said: “There is tension in the land as far as food inflation and insecurity are concerned. The challenges confronting us as a country are self-inflicted. They are caused by politicians and middlemen. They are culpable for the corruption, current economic hardship, and insecurity Nigerians are suffering.
“Sometimes in December 2023, President Bola Tinubu released N2 billion each to federal lawmakers to buy palliative grains for their constituents. This was intended to address food shortage but how many of these lawmakers distribute these grains to their people?
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“Instead, they diverted the money and left the people who voted them into offices hungry. Many of our politicians are selfish, and greedy and are after their pockets. They are frustrating Federal Government efforts to address the challenges of food insecurity with their corrupt and selfish nature.
“Just two days ago, the president directed the special presidential committee on emergency food intervention to release grains from the national food reserve to Nigerians.
“This is to crash food prices in the market. But as noble as this intervention is, it has been defeated before it is even implemented. The situation we are now in the country happens everywhere. It is not peculiar to us but what makes it worse is the attitude of our elected politicians towards solving it.
He added: “It is obvious that this emergency food intervention would not yield any meaningful impact because the grains, as usual, will be diverted by those that are to implement it.
“They won’t get to the target audience who in this case are the poor of the poorest. If President Tinubu is keen on ending food insecurity, he must devise a means to ensure that the grains get to the people that are deserving of them and not in the hands of corrupt politicians and civil servants.”
Kalejaiye also blamed the middlemen for hoarding the commodities and taking undue advantage of the free fall of the Naira to increase prices of food items.
He added: “Our food challenges are not wholly about scarcity, there is food sufficiency in the country but the problem is, the middlemen are hoarding them. For instance, days ago, about 10 trailer loads of rice were deposited at a warehouse in Ilupeju, Lagos. And similar situation exists across major markets and warehouses across the state.
“These traders hoard these commodities to create artificial scarcity which in the end will shoot up the prices and by implication create hunger in the land.
“The government must rise to the occasion and stop blaming the opposition for the scarcity. They need to come up with mechanisms to control prices of food items as at every slightest opportunity traders adjust prices of commodities at will.”