Peter Obi, the Labour Party presidential candidate in the 2023 elections, has expressed great worry about the terrible occurrence at the Nigerian Customs Service’s Zonal Office in Yaba, Lagos.
Obi addressed the recent stampede that resulted in the deaths of Nigerians attempting to purchase cheap 25kg sacks of rice in a message posted on X.
Obi underlined the country’s appalling levels of suffering, hunger, and malnutrition, adding that the national economy is going through one of its most difficult periods.
He stated that the population classed as multidimensionally poor has dramatically expanded, approaching 80% of the population.
He criticized the government’s allocation of resources, stating that significant amounts have been spent on unnecessary projects while attention to the living conditions of ordinary citizens has been lacking.
Part of the statement read:
”Our food inflation rate is at an all-time high, at over 35 per cent. Similarly, unemployment is galloping, and for a predominantly youthful population, this scenario is dire and frighteningly dangerous.
”For the first time in our peacetime history, stark, undisguised hunger has become a national epidemic, with hundreds of thousands of our people driven into open protests over food scarcity and unaffordability. The hunger protests have united our people across ethnicity, language, region, faith, and location.
”Most distressing is that in all our adversity, our leaders have resorted to spending stupendous amounts of resources on wasteful items like ordering expensive renovations of offices and residences that are already in luxurious conditions.
”We have seen our government spend more money on car parks for politicians than for the running of half of our teaching hospitals. In all this, there has been scanty attention to the living conditions of the ordinary people they were elected to care for.
”The huge amounts of borrowed resources that should have been channeled into production, especially food production, to guarantee an abundant supply of food in the nation, were rather consumed on inanities, rather than invested.
”Today, we are one big nation united by hunger and starvation, to the point of dying to make ends meet.”
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