Former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar says more than two years into President Bola Tinubu’s administration, there is still “no sign” the government can tackle the hunger and poverty gripping Nigerians.
In a statement issued by his spokesman, Paul Ibe, Abubakar described the level of deprivation as “unacceptable,” particularly for “the underprivileged and the downtrodden.”
He warned that “most violent socio-political eruptions and revolutions all over the world have been powered by pervasive hunger and unbearable material conditions—especially the paradox of squalor amidst plenty in our land.”
Former vice-president argued that the primary duty of any government is to secure the welfare of its citizens, yet “the masses of Nigerians are progressively wallowing in misery and poverty under the watch of the Tinubu administration.”
He linked the country’s hardship to rising crime, saying it is “engendering a growing propensity for high-wire fraud, terrorism, kidnapping, cultism, drug addiction and ritual sacrifice.”
Abubakar urged the government to reflect on history, citing the French Revolution, the 1917 Russian revolution and the Arab spring—where “a young man, caught in unbearable frustration, set himself ablaze, triggering violent socio-political eruptions from Tunisia across the Middle East and North Africa.”
“Back home here in Nigeria,” he added, “it may not be out of place to argue that even the EndSARS protest was fuelled by the traumatising frustration of hunger and government insensitivity.”
He maintained that whatever reforms Tinubu claims to be undertaking “must have a human face,” stressing that “food insecurity is a daily occurrence nationwide. There is no government worth its salt that does not place priority on the welfare and security of the people.”
“Whether the present powers accept it or not,” he said, “the reality of our existence is that the poor are increasingly dying of hunger while the majority of the living poor exist at the mercy of the ill-advised policies of this government.”
