A former Kaduna Central Senator, Shehu Sani has expressed concerns over Nigeria’s escalating food security crisis, highlighting the severe impact of ongoing terrorist attacks and bandit activities on farming communities across the country.
This comes on the heels of President Bola Tinubu’s declaration of a state of emergence on food security in the country.
Reacting, Shehu Sani criticized the Bola Tinubu-led government’s approach to ensuring food security.
According to him, there cannot be food security if Nigeria’s security is not addressed by government across all levels.
“You cannot have food security in a country where farmers are slaughtered by terrorists and farming communities are forced to pay levies to bandits,” he wrote on Twitter.
The Senator’s remarks followed the government’s declaration of a state of emergency on food security
According to Sani, this emergency declaration “exposed the deception about those rice pyramids and the futility of closing the land borders,” a policy which was previously touted as a step towards achieving food independence.
Senator Sani’s comments have shed light on the increasingly precarious situation for farmers, many of whom have been forced to abandon their lands due to the heightened insecurity.
The decline in agricultural production threatens not only the food supply chain but also has led to increased food prices nationwide.
The Senator also challenged the portrayal of symbolic rice pyramids and the closure of land borders as measures of success in local agriculture, citing them as ineffective in the face of the escalating violence targeted at the farming sector.
The Senator’s call for action places further pressure on the federal government to address these security issues, particularly in the northeastern and northwestern parts of the country where terrorist activities and banditry are most rampant.
