The president may be angry, but we’re hungry, By Ahmed Aminu-Ramatu Yusuf

Nigerians are hungry. But who will tell our President? Who will dare convey such treasonable tale to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, especially when he is so busy seeking investors for us? Which of his throng of information couriers and propaganda merchants would jeopardise their juicy positions by bearing such information?  Anyone who dares may in fact be an agent of the opposition.

I respect the Presidency. And fear his powers. Didn’t the African wise man counsel that we the commoners should be as close to the king as a thousand metres and be as far away from him as two thousand metres?

Count me out of those who will tell the President that the people he is presiding over have become dirt, poor and hungry.

Rather than engage in such misadventure and be accused of carrying Russian flags, I will confine myself to revealing a state secret. The National Bureau of Statistics has revealed this week that 62.4 per cent of us, or some 140 million Nigerians did not have enough food to eat in 2023. The figure is likely to be higher this year as the situation has gotten worse.

The crisis of poverty has resulted in the inability of the vast majority of the working people to make ends meet, take care of their traditional responsibilities to the extended family, or to be their neighbour’s keeper.

The truth, which we can only whisper is yes, we are facing hunger, the worst  type in our history.  Not even during slave trade or colonialism, during in the First and Second World Wars, or our Civil War, had our populace been subjected to this level of poverty, deprivation or hunger.

Many are simply unable to feed themselves and their families. We are suffering and in pain. All these are seriously revolting our body chemistry.

Skyrocketing inflation, especially in the prices of foodstuff and medicine, have rendered our income extremely insufficient, making them almost irrelevant. Marriages are increasingly coming under strain, and some are breaking down. Children are forced by hunger to work for their own survival.

Others have become like professional beggars. Youths are delaying marriage. Suicide rates are increasing as never before. People are just dying before their “time” due to wahala (problems), especially hunger.

The World Bank (WB), one of the forefront drivers of Nigeria’s multidimensional poverty, revealed that over 129 million Nigerians now live below the national poverty line.

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu (PMB) may after all not be unaware of our dilemma. This I assume is why he and his team are pleading with the people to bear any economic suffocation and hunger in the interest of  democracy and tomorrow’s prosperity.

But how can a man, a Nigerian for that matter, tell his wife and children to tolerate hunger for democracy and tomorrow’s greatness? If the wife understands, definitely the children will not.

For those in power, at the Federal, State and Local levels, at the civil and customary levels, in the executive and legislature, in elected and appointed positions, let them know nobody has successfully preached tolerance and patience to the hungry. Hunger knows no sex, ethnicity, religion, or ism. It knows not, and respects no, geopolitical divide. It humbles the religious, the bravest and the strictest.

But to be fair to President Tinubu, hunger has been part of our history. In his book, Silent Violence: Food, Famine & Peasantry in Northern Nigeria, Michael Watts gave a detailed account and analysis of hunger during World War II, particularly in Hausa land. The Talakawa or commoners called the hunger of the era as: “Baban Yunwa” (Great Hunger), which they attributed to “akin mutum” – as the handiwork of (government) people.

Just as today’s hunger is compounded by external forces like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (WB) – in collaboration with their Nigerian allies, so was the Great Hunger of the 1940s caused by the British imperialist forces working hand-in-hand with the traditional rulers.

The Great Hunger was triggered by government’s war time policies of excessive increase in taxation and tariffs, compulsory production of export crops, forceful conscription of people into army and mines, and obligatory grains requisitioning.

Today’s hunger is triggered by the IMF-WB dictated policies, implemented by this not too reflective administration. Policies which included excessive increase in petroleum product prices, high increase in electricity tariffs, unwarranted increases in taxation, huge devaluation of the naira, and the refusal to make salary and wage increases to correspond with the cost of living.

Just as the Great Hunger deepened the antagonism between the state and society, so does today’s hunger. But while the civil society groups in the 1940s were well organised, vibrant, critical and supported by the nationalist politicians, the reverse is the case today. Besides, liberal democracy flourished and flowered from the late 1940s to January 15,1966, when the degenerate military adventurists began to starve and empty it of its content.

All the major political parties today are fixated on power not the people. They concentrate on primitive accumulation and monopolistic acquisition, not in democracy and development.

Yesterday, political parties offered the populace alternatives. Today, there are none as all the major parties are neoliberal-driven and anti-people. This is the problem. But the problem is a big challenge. It is a crisis.

Crisis is a critical state; a turning point; a crucial and decisive moment; a difficult and distress period; a period in-between life and death; an era in-between of decomposition and regeneration. Which is why the German-American sociologist, economic historian and Latin Americanist, Andrea Gunder Frank, argued that crisis: “is a decisive turning point, filled with danger and anxiety, possibly meaning life or death for a diseased person, a social system or historical process. The outcome need to necessarily be death but, could be a new life, if in our case the economic, social and political body is able to adopt and to undergo a regenerative transformation during the crisis.”

If the hunger of the 1940s and the struggles against it is anything to go by, it means civil society groups have to organise against poverty and hunger. It means that the present race of politicians cannot be relied upon, as their agenda is power, not the people; and in primitive accumulation and monopolistic acquisition.

The situation in the country does not call for lamentation, rather, it demands action, or what the anti-colonialist nationalists used to call ‘Positive Action.’ That was also what Fela Anikulapo-Kuti meant in his ‘Army Arrangement’ album when he sang: “My condition don reach make I act.”

Therefore, in the same way the Great Hunger of the 1940s contributed immensely in paving the way for the attainment of the first independence, so today’s hunger is crying for the emergence of a Second Independence Movement (SIM), which will usher in a new Nigeria built on human rights, equality of all ethnic nationalities and religious groups, democracy, development, and a just federal system.

History and posterity have assigned this task of ushering a Second Independence Movement, and attaining the Second Independence on to the labour, professional, trader, farmer, student and  youth  movements, and other forces committed to emancipatory politics. If we are united, we can never be defeated.

Ahmed Aminu-Ramatu Yusuf worked as deputy director, Cabinet Affairs Office, The Presidency, and retired as General Manager (Administration), Nigerian Meteorological Agency, (NiMet). Email: aaramatuyusuf@yahoo.com