President Tinubu’s Claim of Decline in food prices amidst mass hunger and sufferings is Fallacious
Only economy and agricultural system run on the basis of needs and not profits through massive state investments can guarantee food security
FFRC calls on farmers, market men /women and all suffering Nigerians to organize and demand an end to hunger and cost of living crises
The attention of the Food and Farmers’ Rights Campaign (FFRC) has been drawn to a remark by the President Bola Tinubu, that his anti-poor neo-liberal capitalist economic policies have reduced the soaring prices of food items and brought reliefs to the fasting Muslim community and indeed Nigerians at large.
According to media reports, President Tinubu made this remark in a message to the Muslim community on Friday, February 28th, 2025. He was quoted as saying “the once-soaring prices of essential food items are now trending downward, providing much-needed relief to our fasting population and Nigerians”!
He went further by saying that “as the wet season approaches, we remain steadfast in boosting agricultural productivity. We are determined to enhance food production and ensure food security for all Nigerians”.
The FFRC wishes to note that contrary to President Tinubu’s claims, his pro-rich anti-poor economic policies as prescribed by the IMF/World bank, rather than brings reliefs, have brought untold and unprecedented hardships and sufferings of unimaginable proportions on the mass of poor suffering and fasting Muslim population. The policies have also made the vast majority of poor and working masses starved, and go hungry without food. Therefore, the claim of relief by President Tinubu is an insult to the sensitivity of poor suffering Nigerians, and also at the best a figment of his imagination!
Admittedly, FFRC notes that there are indeed marginal reductions in some prices of essential food items like rice, beans and garri. However these decreases fizzle into thin air and amount to nothingness when juxtaposed with the soaring cost of other food items like pepper, tomatoes, yam, egg, beef, dairy products, etc which have currently skyrocketed. In addition, the increments in fees across tertiary institutions nationwide; the current prohibitive house rents across cities; high cost of drugs and treatments in both public and private health institutions among others have made nonsense of President Tinubu’s touted ‘downward trends’ of soaring food prices.
So what the APC-led Tinubu’s government is doing is dishing out propaganda and gaslighting the general public in vain attempts at understating the deleterious and iniquitous effects of it fuel subsidy removal and the devaluation of the Naira for the suffering majority. The FFRC wishes to put on record that while the poor and working masses continue to gasp for breath under the choking anti-poor policies of the Tinubu government, the ruling elites, both the public office holders and big business bosses continue to corruptly fish in the socioeconomic and political murky waters.
The Tinubu government also claimed that “as the wet season approaches, we remain steadfast in boosting agricultural productivity. We are determined to enhance food production and ensure food security for all Nigerians”! The FFRC wishes to state without mincing words, that this would amount to sheer rhetoric and grandstanding, unless a determined struggle is waged to demand that government at all levels invest public funds in social services like affordable housing, electricity , education, healthcare system, agricultural productivity etc, placing same under democratic management and control, so as to meet the needs of the suffering majority and not profit for a few rich. With this it is possible to begin to guarantee food security and reduce cost of living crises. Any thing short of these would remain a mirage.
The FFRC also urges farmers’ market men and women, workers and the poor majority who are barely surviving, to come together and organize to demand that government reverse fuel subsidy removal, devaluation of the Naira, increase in electricity tariff, and other anti-poor policies which largely account for the current suffering and hardship.
Eko John Nicholas
National Coordinator
Food and Farmers’ Rights Campaign (FFRC)