Our Children Are Hungry

[Richard Akindele]

Nigeria now tops the list of countries with the highest number of malnourished children, so says a UNICEF report launched in Abuja, entitled, "Progress for Children - A Report Card on Nutrition. The report says out of a total 146 million underfed children in the world, 73 per cent of them live in ten African countries, including Nigeria. On continental basis, Nigeria tops the list with six million such children.

It is ironic that Nigeria's great agricultural potentials and her oil wealth cannot keep her children above hunger and malnourishment. Certainly, the country's inability to feed its citizens is the direct result of long years of misrule and corruption. At independence, Nigeria had everything going for her. Her prospect for economic growth was heightened by the presence of varied cash crops and minerals in virtually all the regions of the country. Nigeria was the world's largest exporter of groundnuts and palm produce and the third largest producer and exporter of cocoa. Suddenly, all of these were jettisoned in the 1970s in favour of a self-destructive dependence on crude oil.

Since then, successive Nigerian governments have destroyed the incentive for food production through ill-conceived policies that have no regard for national food security. Most agricultural institutions and research centres in the country have been abandoned, just as much of the arable lands have in due course been left uncultivated.

The sad consequences of all these are what we are witnessing today - genteel poverty and malnourishment of Nigerian children. Today Nigeria is a chronic importer of food. Villagers who used to engage in subsistence farming have abandoned their farmlands and their hungry children in the villages in search of non-existing white-collar jobs in the cities. It is therefore not suprising that the Obasanjo government had to initiate a special free meal project in schools to provide primary school pupils one free meal every school day. As praise-worthy as it is, this is just a mere palliative, not the real solution to the country's food crisis.

As Mr. Ayalew Abai, the UNICEF country representative, observed at the Abuja launch, "the average annual rate of reduction in underweight prevalence of 2.2 per cent is insufficient to meet the targets of the first Millennium Development Goals by 2015"

As it is, Nigeria ought not to have all of six million children under five years that are underweight either through hunger or poor nutrition as revealed by the UNICEF report. At such tender age, malnourishment has grave implications for the development of children's brains which is a way of saying that we are risking a certain proportion of the country's future leaders to intelligence problems.

Certainly, that is not the way to be competitive in this increasingly knowledge-driven global village. Which is why we believe that the administration's economic reforms ought to start from the cradle, namely with the children.

This Day.

[XSi]

We need to go back to OFN - or even feed yourself, we depend a lot on the market, go to Oshodi and see pepper of 100 naira, I could raid my mother's garden for pepper and sell for 2,000 naira (yes, that much right behind the house). If only we had time to grow some basic stuffs around us, this issue could be resolved in a way. Cassava and cocoyam are easy to nurture and so is maize. Tomatoes needn't cost a fortune and bitterleaf, curry and pumpkin.

We should learn to look up to the soil and not to the market all the time, until everyone can feed themselves from their pocket.

[fw12]

Excellent point.

I wonder why Nigerians don't grow something. I'd understand if there's no land to grow stuff on. But I don't think that's the case with most Nigerians.

But, seriously, why is it that our people are hungry?

Citizens of most nations have never grown anything. Yet, they are never hungry. Let's call this problem what it really is, failure of government policies.

Government can easily produce fertilizer at home. But we don't do it.

Our scientists could be trained to produce tractors, or convert cheap used vehicles into tractors. Why isn't the government taking the initiative? These kinds of things are too expensive for ordinary individuals to undertake. But our government certainly has the money to make it happen.