Stampedes/deaths: FENRAD warns of looming food crisis, demands government action on agriculture

Stanley Ihedigbo

Foundation for Environmental Rights, Advocacy and Development (FENRAD), a prominent civil society organization in Abia State, has expressed profound sorrow over the tragic loss of lives that occurred during recent food, relief, and palliative distributions across Nigeria.

The Foundation sends its heartfelt condolences to the victims of the Ibadan, Okija, and Abuja food stampede.

According to the Executive Director of the group, Comrade Nelson Nnanna Nwafor, it is sad that such an unsystematic distribution resulted in over sixty deaths, including children and women.

The Foundation regrets that governments at the subnational level learned how to plan for safety by coming up with policy statements post-disaster.

While that has been said, the Foundation also believes that it is more important to focus on the lessons that could be learned from these ugly disasters to avoid future occurrences.

“One of such lessons is that hunger has no tribe, and is not alien to humanity. Every human group is affected by hunger which is a global, not even a national or regional, menace.

“The Foundation calls for less spending on frivolous budgetary subheads. It makes no sense that Nigerians die in a struggle to survive or to secure food items at chaotic distribution centres while governments spend hundreds of billions on travels, foods and refreshments. For example, the proposed budget for 2025 is allocating over ₦9 billion to travel and refreshments for the president and vice president in a country where over 25 million people are food insecure according to the 2024 country brief from the World Food Programme, (WFP); and this is what the Foundation considers an irony.

“Even the 2024 budget allocated some ₦344 billion to the National Assembly, being for only 469 federal lawmakers and staff members of the two chambers, while awarding the National Agricultural Development Fund, NADF only ₦102.5 billion. With skewed distributions like this, Nigeria cannot escape nor beat hunger in 2025 or any time soon.

“Nigeria needs to invest more in food production and agricultural productivity, not in executive travels, tours, and entertainment. Nigeria was ranked 110th out of 127 countries with 28.8 points according to the Global Hunger Index release of 2024. It is sad that while less than 7% of Americans are into farming, the country wastes over 20% of its produce in the garbage, whereas Nigeria – with over 20% of its population in agriculture – can hardly feed its teeming population. Also, the need to adjust to climate change problems has become more pressing than ever. Perennial flooding and desert encroachment are fallout from climate change problems. That, to the Foundation, is another area to look at”, he stressed.

The human rights activist further said that while states like Lagos, Kogi, Abia, Anambara, and the rest go ahead with releasing statements, the better thing to do is to ensure that such disasters do not repeat themselves through legislative input.

” Beyond declaring an emergency on food insecurity, governments should ensure effective and healthy wealth distribution in Nigeria. Food insecurity and inflation are beginning to take a toll on Nigerians, and the scenes are beyond Abuja, Ibadan, and Okija. Only transparent food and agricultural intervention programmes can address this issue.

“Once again, the Foundation mourns these deaths and calls for a redistribution in the allocation of the wealth of the nation,” he stated.