Group Explain Reason For High Food Prices, Urges Buhari To Install 'Vibrant' Senior Military Officers

The Coalition of Northern Elders for peace and Development (CNEPD) has drawn a link between persistent insecurity in the country and the rise in the prices of food items in the country.

Speaking on the state of insecurity in the North, the National Coordinator of the CNEPD, Zana Goni, said that there were cases of abductions and killings in the North that have been left unreported.

He said that the rise in the prices of food prices in Nigerian markets "did not come to us as a surprise", citing a link between insecurity and food scarcity.

Goni said, "The victims are sometimes killed or placed on permanent hard labour just as the female ones are forcefully raped and impregnated by their abductors.

"Most victims are captured in their farmlands while carrying out their routine and legitimate duties of farming, in order to provide for their families.

"Again, the latest increase in the prices of commodities, especially food items in Nigerian markets, did not come to us as a surprise, in view of the link between insecurity and food scarcity.

"The helpless situation, which our people have found themselves in, has made them abandon their farming activities, thus resulting in the current food insecurity in the country.

"The revelation by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Monday that the country’s inflation rate has jumped to 14.23 percent (year-on-year) in October, showing a percentage point increase of 0.52 did not come to us as a surprise.

"We recall with regret that the current inflation rate of the country had risen to this level above the 13.71 in September.

"The Consumer Price Index (CPI), a computation which measures the average prices of goods and services consumed by people over time, released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), showed that the index also increased by 1.54 percent month-on-month compared with 1.48 percent rise recorded in September.

"The 14.23 percent year-on-year rise in composite inflation is 0.23 percentage point above the upper band of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) prediction for the end of the year.

"Maintaining the recent trend, the food category led the index. It rose from 16.66 percent year-on-year recorded in September to 17.38 percent in October.

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"The rise in food inflation shows that Nigerian households have continued to spend an increasing percentage of their incomes on food! This is not only regrettable but also unacceptable.

"We knew we were getting to this boiling point of our food insecurity and had long alerted the appropriate authorities on possible ways of averting this, one of which has been our consistent call on the Federal Government led by President Muhammad Buhari to restructure the security architecture of the country for better efficiency so that farmers can return to their farmlands."

Sack of Service Chiefs

He urged President Muhammadu Buhari to sack the head of the Nigerian military and put in position "new and vibrant senior officers".

He said, "Once again, we call on President Muhammadu Buhari to, as a matter of urgent national priority, sack the Military High Command and engage new and vibrant senior officers, who are not in short supply.

"We further submit that unless and until adequate security was provided for our people in the North, the current food crisis, which has pushed inflation rate to an astronomical height, will only get worse.

"We will like to state, without any sense of equivocation, that as insecurity threatens food sufficiency, so does it have the potential to erode whatever gains the Buhari-led administration may be laying claim to.

"We hold that as the President was able to select this crop of Service Chiefs in 2015, he still has the golden opportunity of recruiting even a better team, as all he needs is to assemble an intelligence team for that purpose.

"Our fear is that, if nothing urgent is done to restructure the security architecture in the country, the poverty situation may worsen, with a consequential negative effect on the already precarious state of insecurity."