allAfrica.com: Nigeria: At the Mercy of Rice Merchants (Page 1 of 1)

Global food crisis! Imagine how that is good news for Nigerian leaders at the various levels of government. It's not peculiar to Nigeria, they'll readily say. So, the nation's poor, who incidentally are the world's poorest of the poor, cannot start fusing and apportioning blame for the hunger and starvation which stares them in the face, or blaming their leaders for the deplorable and pitiable condition. The way it's hitting the poor of the countries down the world's economic ladder is the same way it is biting the poor of countries atop the ladder. The truth in that statement should be left for our leaders to determine.

In the meantime, the crisis has provided another window of opportunity for the very same few individuals who have been the brains behind the economic woes of the larger majority of our populace to engage themselves in what they know best: fleecing the nation by looting and smiling to the banks both here in Nigeria and abroad. Yar' Adua, who for several months in wilful connivance with his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) kith and kin majority in the National Assembly refused to put pen to the 2008 budget papers, thereby creating an artificial deadlock in the nation's economic activities both in the private and public sectors, has suddenly opened a floodgate of raw cash into the system by ordering that a whopping N80 billion be deployed to combat a food crisis in the nation. The highly uninformed would immediately begin to celebrate the president as a conscious and pro-masses president. The question however is: whose interest is the money meant to serve? Who are those who will benefit from the food crisis largesse? The answer is simple: the family members of those in power, which of course include the extended family members of the ruling PDP.

It won't be long before we start hearing-mind boggling tales of how the money ended up in the hands of some ghost Nigerians with some ghost import and export companies who were issued some phantom contracts, who were paid in full but the contract was never executed. At that point the nation's food crisis would have gone from a food scarcity epidemic to a ravaging plague. The president has announced that part of the money, if not all, would go to Thailand to purchase 800,000 metric tons of rice. This is at a time when the government of that country has placed an embargo on rice exports as part of their internal measures to stave off the global crisis in their domain. For a long time, Nigerians have been addicted to rice from that far-East country. Reason: our local rice is nothing to eat either at home or outside. If it is not competing for space with grains of sand and stones inside the pot, the shafts always accompany the rice all the way to the dining table.

The federal government has advised that Nigerians should not panic over the impending food shortage. Even before the advice came, the price of foodstuff, especially rice, has risen by over 100 per cent, sending a chilling fear down the spines of the larger populace. Really, the much prophesied Armageddon is around the corner. Long before the global institutions announced the crisis, Nigeria had been home to food disasters. If one casts his mind back to the last couple years or more, one would find that foodstuff in most Nigerian markets have been on a steady rising trend, making the meager income of the average worker almost useless.

The government has spoken against panic buying. But who will send the first panic signal? Is it not the same government made up of PDP strange bedfellows? Before you would mention Yar, you'd find these men and women queuing up either at the Wadata Plaza, Aso Rock or the Ministry of Agriculture, using their party cards to get the contract to import the Thailand rice, even when they know that they have no intention of delivering the goods after getting the contract. Their only claim to the right for the contract is that they contributed in making sure that Yar' Adua clinched the presidency legally or illegally or they would tell you that they fought with their lives and money for the aborted third term agenda of the former president.

At the end of the day, when the rice finally makes its way into the country,by hook or crook, its first port of call would be the warehouses where it would be hoarded pending when manyof the poor masses would have slumped and died of hunger. They would then gradually sneak them into the markets for the highest bidders, who of course would still be the PDP members who are privileged to get all the mention in all the scandals emanating from the various probes: power sector, NNPC, FCT, police equipment etc.

Talking about, "making hay while the sun shines", Nigeria, Africa's self-acclaimed giant and widely acknowledged well-endowed with all the resources the Creator could lavish on any nation, could today have been the food basket of Africa, if not the world at large. What happened to Operation Feed the Nation, OFN, a programme initiated by former president Olusegun Obasanjo, in his youthful days as military head of state? Many say it transmuted into Obasanjo Farms Nigeria, OFN. The roundly criticised former president cannot deny the claim that he turned our collective heritage into his private property since his farm today occupies a very large land mass in the six geopolitical zones while the nation cannot boast of a single farm. The man continued this craze of annexing the nation's resources in his twilight years as democratic president. Also, the River Basin project has gone the way of the nation's other projects which no one can account for. Should we still wait for the food doom or the Thailand rice?

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