Professor Usman Yusuf, a former CEO of the National Health Insurance Scheme [NHIS], has claimed that Nigeria cannot afford to wait until the country’s next food harvest to address the hunger crisis. He disapproved of the discussion in Abuja about providing fertilizers to farmers and advocated for a practical solution to the food situation.
He claimed that in order to supply food and flood the market, the federal and state governments needed to use their treasuries. He suggested that the main way to combat the economic issues that have caused inflation is to oversupply food on the market. He emphasized how urgent the situation is by pointing out that millions of Nigerians will go to bed hungry. As per his statement,
He said in an interview with Channels TV, ”We cannot wait till next harvest season before we feed our people. People are dying now. In the hospital, we have seen admissions of Children with malnutrition and kwashiorkor. Many families and many parents that I know have stopped taking their blood pressure and diabetes medicines because they can not afford them.
That’s how much difficulty people are in. These Abuja guys keep talking about fertilizers, they are out of touch with the realities of our people. There is hunger in the land. The state and the federal government must open the treasury and buy food and flood the market. That’s the only way you can bring down the price. The managers of our economy have lost control of this inflation; you have to flood the market and feed our people. We are going into a fasting period, millions of people in Nigeria go to bed hungry predominantly women and Children.”
