Food Insecurity: Emefiele’s Naira Redesign Ran Farmers Aground, Says FG

The Federal Government, yesterday, lamented that the naira re-design policy carried out by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) from December 15, 2022, to early February this year, when the Supreme Court ruled against it, ran farmers bankrupt.

In a similar lamentation, federal lawmakers declared that the rate of hunger and famine in the land is causing death of the poor in rural areas.The issue came to the front burner during the budget defence session when the Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Abubakar Kyari, spoke to the National Assembly Joint Committee on Agriculture.

In his presentation before the joint committee, chaired by Senator Saliu Mustapha All Progressives Congress (APC), Kwara Central, the minister said the focus of the 2024 budgetary proposals for the sector is to achieve food security in the country.

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According to him, several factors like insecurity and naira re -design policy carried out about a year ago, impoverished farmers, thereby threatening food security in the country.

Kyari said: “The cash crunch, caused by the naira re-design, forced most of the farmers to sell their farm produce at give-away prices for survival, since buyers couldn’t access cash to buy the produce from them.

“The policy, which coincided with harvest season, rendered the farmers empty financially.” In their separate remarks at the session, Dahiru Ismaila Haruna from Toro Federal Constituency, in Bauchi State, and Ademorin Kuye from Shomolu Federal Constituency, Lagos State, raised the alarm on urgent need by the Federal Government to address the high rate of hunger in the country largely caused by insecurity.

Haruna, in his remarks, said: “There is a pathetic picture of people dying of hunger on a daily basis, while the majority of those surviving feed once a day.

“Making it worrisome is the fact that even people from neighbouring countries like Chad, Niger, Benin Republic and Central Africa are trooping in to mop up the little food signaling total famine in the area if not urgently addressed by stockpiling the silos.”

Ademorin, in his remarks wrote off the silos by telling the minister that most of the silos built by President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration were alleged to be concessioned for N20 million each.

The minister, however, in his response, assured the lawmakers that all issues raised are being addressed decisively in the 2024 fiscal year.