Nigeria And The Politics Of Hunger

 By Sunny Awhefeada 

My generation's first experience of hunger and its attendant crises was in the mid-1980s. My genera­tion here refers to Nigerians born after the civil war and attained teenagehood from 1983 onwards. We have read in history books of how starvation was one of the major tools that was deployed to fight the Nigerian civil war of 1967-1970.

Pictures abound of chil­dren, youths and older people who suffered from the affliction of hunger. Not even the efforts of humanitarian agencies that tried to alleviate the hunger in the refugee camps that littered the secessionist enclave of Biafra alleviated the crisis. Hunger engendered dis­eases which in turn yielded deaths. Many still believe that starvation more than bullets and bombs was what made Biafra to capitulate when it did.

That experience depicts hunger as a destructive force in the affairs of humanity. After the war, things seemed to have returned to normal and life went on uninterrupted for ordinary Nigerians. As children, we never thought of hunger as a lasting or permanent phenomenon. Food or something to throw into the mouth, chew and swallow was always available. Whether one was living in the town or village, hunger merely existed as a word and not experienced. The economy was strong, agriculture was thriving and the population was yet to explode.

The foregoing changed around 1984, that year again! The soldiers had just overthrown the civilian government of President Shehu Shagari in what was termed their second com­ing, the first coming being 1966. As children, we heard stories of misrule and mismanage­ment by the Shagari government. The soldiers branded their clique as a corrective regime. There appears to be excitement in the air, but that was not to last for long.

Soon, some of the food items we took for granted and ate with childish abandon began to vanish from homes. Beverages took flight, bread disappeared from the table, rice vanished from the kitchen and food, which had predominantly become eba and soup and may be beans and garri soaked in water (sokis), became something to be rationed at home. It was at that point that hunger made many of us reasonable (get sense) and realized that life was not easy. We heard our parents talking about essential commodities and eco­nomic hardship which they called austerity. In no time a new regime emerged promising it was going to salvage Nigeria.

The new regime which set out to correct the ills of the corrective regime was to engage aca­demics, especially social scientists, in its bid to transform Nigeria. Many of the ills bedeviling Nigeria were identified and mentioned. There were rigorous debates and the media which was vibrant and alive to their responsibilities of informing and educating the citizenry did so well. The government evolved policies that worked elsewhere except in Nigeria.

There was the Second Tier Foreign Exchange Market (SFEM), there was the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) and the debate about the International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan. The government instituted other policies and pro­grammes like the Mass Mobilization for Social Justice and Economic Recovery (MAMSER), the Directorate of Foods Roads and Rural In­frastructure (DFFRI) as well as the reigning first lady’s “Better Life for Rural Women” programme. Sadly and painfully, these poli­cies and programmes didn’t help Nigerians. Poverty and hunger deepened and took their places in Nigeria.

Two governments, the Babangida regime (1985-1993) and the Obasanjo administration (1999-2007), despite the Machiavellian charac­ter of the two men who embodied those gov­ernments, remain the most inventive and cre­ative in terms of formulating policies aimed at addressing the Nigerian crises. Unfortunately, both men were innately selfish and lacked the will, courage and benevolence of heart to drive home those programmes for the good of Nige­ria.

That was why despite coopting some of the nation’s most brilliant minds into government and committing so much funds into the affairs of state, nothing good came out and we are where we are today afflicted by “multi-dimen­sional poverty” and languishing as the world’s poverty capital.

General Ibrahim Babangida, sometime in 1992 confronted with the reality of running a wastrel government, in an un­guarded moment, told the African Concord that he had no solutions to Nigeria’s economic problems as his economists had failed him and that Nigeria’s economic problems had defied solutions. Attempt to retrieve that statement failed and a season of state repression was un­leashed on the magazine. Babangida it was that failed and not the economists and the policies. When SAP failed and Babangida had a new daughter, the Nigerian students aptly named her Sapiratu.

Over the years, the economic condition of Nigerians has been the typical case of from “frying pan to fire”. Poverty continues to deep­en and hunger became a permanent feature. Successive governments knew what to do, but they refused to. The Nigerian situation got so bad that the country was declared the poverty capital of the world in 2016.

That should have sounded the alarm in the brain of those who rule us, but it didn’t. Only a few days ago, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reported that 63% of Nigerians that is about 133 mil­lion out of the nation’s 200 million people are suffering from multi-dimensional poverty. Multi-dimensional poverty index is configured around monetary poverty, education and basic infrastructure. That is to say that 133 million Nigerians are acutely poor without money, lack access to education and do not enjoy basic infrastructure. Nigerians already knew this and also know that the figure given by the NBS is far less than what the real figure should be.

A major problem remains the menace of bad leadership which has afflicted Nigeria for too long. Government has not been able to nip in the bud the tendencies that brought us here. Faced with the reality of our dilemma, government is also unable to act in a decisive and convincing manner. It looks as if things will only get worse.

Poverty and hunger in contemporary world is all about politics, es­pecially bad politics. War which is a harbinger of hunger and death is caused by bad politics. Nigeria is at war with terrorists and bandits. The insurgency arising thereof has killed and displaced many people and ruptured existence. Farming communities have been sacked and left desolate. The outcome of this is poverty induced by insecurity.

The number of out of school children increases daily because of terrorism and banditry. The intractable prob­lem of corruption occasioned by the greed of those in government is another cause of pov­erty and hunger. With a teeming population, subsistence farming ought to have given way to mechanized agriculture.

But larcenous of­ficials of the ministries of agriculture at both federal and state levels would rather steal the money meant for agriculture than invest it in the sector. Galloping inflation daily com­pounds the issues.

Unprecedented massive unemployment is staring Nigeria in the face. With the collapse of the energy sector and near wiping out of industrialization, employment opportunities continue to decrease for Nigerians. Poverty, hunger and lack of access to the basic things of life are bound to follow. Climate change is another factor that has unleashed poverty and hunger on Nigerians.

While governments else­where anticipated the disruptive essence of climate change, Nigerian governments em­barked on owambe and never bothered to act. The story has been told of the circumstances that led to the construction of the Lagdo dam in Cameroon. The governments of Nigeria and Cameroon had an agreement in 1977 to build a dam each to receive water in time of flooding. Cameroon completed the Lagdo dam in 1982, but Nigeria never constructed hers.

The Lagdo dam has so far been able to receive water and stave off flooding in Cam­eroon. Whenever it was full and it releases the water there is no dam in Nigeria to receive it as our governments refused to build one. What follows is the uncontrollable flooding that now devastates us annually. This is followed by dis­placement, death, loss of farmlands and other means of livelihood leading to poverty and acute hunger. 

Good life enhanced by the welfare and se­curity of the people is the cumulative effect of good governance which has eluded Nigeria. Nations evolve and the people make up their minds at certain points to continue to endure an oppressive and unjust order or intervene decisively to change it so that their country can attain her manifest destiny. In that case the people and not the leaders become the pointers of the direction their country should go while the leaders merely navigate. Has Nigeria not reached that stage of national evolution?

*Awhefeada, a Professor of English, is a commentator on public issues