Tinubu Has Undermined Nigeria’s Food Security – Babachir Lawal
A former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Mr. Babachir Lawal, has criticised President Bola Tinubu’s policies on agriculture, which he said have undermined the country’s food security potentials.
Featuring on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Monday, Lawal said the reversal of the ban on importation of food items has done more harm than good to the country’s economy.
Stressing that Nigeria had achieved a level of food sufficiency with the No-Food-Import policy, the former SGF noted that the choices of the present administration have inflicted more hardship on the citizenry rather than improve their lives.
His words, “I started criticising the government when he appointed the CBN governor, and the man started removing restrictions on certain inputs, which I considered important to the masses of the country. I cannot understand why he will remove those policies. Now you can import rice, you can import food items, which the whole idea to me is against Buhari’s policy of food security and food sufficiency.
“At the time Buhari was in government, we had become a net exporter of rice, producing the grains that we consume in some excess, which we export to West African countries. I had said for a long time that the policy of this government was going to crash the farming industry, and it did.
“You get food inflation when you import; pay for transportation, customs duties and other expenses associated with importing. If you produce locally, you will remove those cost elements. So, I don’t see anything right with that decision.
“That has always been the issue. It is not because Bola is not tall like me or something; it is the economy. It is hurting me and hurting everybody I come across.
“As I have just told you, by the time they took over, we were self-sufficient with food. We had reached a level of sufficiency with food. We were exporting rice because of the agric programmes of that government (Buhari). We were producing most of the food we were eating.
“If the policies that this government are putting in place are good and are going to yield fruits in twenty to thirty years, the child might have been starved to death. Or of what use are those policies to the child then?” Lawal stressed.
Sodiq Yusuf is a trained media practitioner and journalist with considerable years of experience in print, broadcast, and digital journalism. His interests cover a wide range of causes in politics, governance, sports, community development, and good governance.
