Prediction Of 35 million Nigerians To Face Hunger Verdict On Tinubu’s Failure – Atiku

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Samuel Ogidan

Former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar has taken a swipe at President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration on the latest warning by the United Nations that nearly 35 million Nigerians could face acute hunger between June and August 2026.

Atiku described this development as a devastating global verdict on the catastrophic failure of the Tinubu administration, declaring that no government with a conscience can preside over such mass suffering and still speak the language of progress.

Atiku, in a statement on Monday in Abuja by his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, shortly after participating in national political engagements in Yola, said the grim UN projection should shake the conscience of the nation because it confirms that under the current administration, Nigeria has moved from economic hardship to a full-blown humanitarian emergency.

“This is not just another alarming statistic to be debated on television panels and forgotten by the next news cycle. This is a human tragedy of terrifying proportions. Thirty-five million Nigerians.That is more than the population of many African countries.

“That is tens of millions of citizens — mothers rationing food in silence, fathers crushed by the humiliation of empty pockets, children going to bed hungry, young people losing hope, and vulnerable households slipping daily from poverty into desperation.

“This is not a famine caused by drought. This is not a war-induced collapse. This is not an earthquake or a natural catastrophe. This is man-made suffering.

“This is the consequence of economic illiteracy, policy recklessness, and leadership failure.

“When this administration came into office, it sold Nigerians the promise of Renewed Hope. What it has delivered is renewed hunger, renewed inflation, renewed insecurity, and renewed despair.”

Atiku further said that “the abrupt and poorly sequenced removal of fuel subsidy without credible social buffers triggered the worst cost-of-living crisis in recent memory. Transport fares exploded overnight. Food distribution costs surged. Basic goods became luxuries.

“The chaotic mishandling of exchange rate policy sent the naira into a punishing tailspin, wiping out purchasing power, inflating import costs, crippling manufacturers, and suffocating small businesses.

“Food inflation has become savage. Staple items that once sustained ordinary households are now priced beyond reach. Rice, garri, beans, yam, bread — the basic pillars of survival — have become symbols of economic exclusion.

“Yet the crisis does not end there.

“How can a nation feed itself when farmers cannot safely access their farms?

“For years now, farmers across Benue, Plateau, Kaduna, Zamfara, Niger, Katsina, Sokoto, Borno, and other agrarian belts have been trapped between banditry, terrorism, mass abductions, violent land invasions, and state helplessness.

“You cannot talk about food security while abandoning the people who produce food.

“Add to this the government’s reckless borrowing addiction, extravagant public spending, weak social protection architecture, declining investor confidence, collapsing productive capacity, and a frightening absence of coherent economic coordination — and the result is exactly what the United Nations has now confirmed: a nation drifting into hunger at scale.

“The tragedy is even more painful because Nigeria should be one of the easiest countries in the world to feed.

“We have the land. We have the climate. We have the manpower. We have the entrepreneurial energy. What we clearly do not have at the moment is competent leadership.

“A government that watches millions slide toward hunger while investing more energy in image laundering than in urgent intervention has failed the most basic test of governance. Hunger is not an abstraction.”

The former Vice President said that hunger fuels crime. Hunger deepens insecurity. Hunger destroys productivity. Hunger fractures families. Hunger destabilises nations.

He said: “No serious government should need the United Nations to tell it that its citizens are starving.

“The warning from the international community should not be treated as mere embarrassment. It should be treated as a five-alarm national emergency.

“The Federal Government must immediately declare a food security emergency and move beyond tokenism.

“We need urgent support for farmers through subsidised inputs, improved access to credit, protection of farming corridors, strategic food reserve deployment, price stabilisation mechanisms, emergency household support for the most vulnerable, and a clear production-driven economic recovery strategy.

“Nigeria cannot continue governing hunger with speeches. No amount of propaganda can fill an empty stomach. No amount of political spin can disguise the suffering in our markets, homes, transport parks, farms, and streets. A hungry nation is an angry nation. And no government should toy with that reality.”

Atiku said the worsening humanitarian and economic collapse further underscores the urgent need for experienced, disciplined, compassionate, and competent leadership capable of rescuing Nigeria from what he described as “one of the gravest governance failures in the nation’s democratic history.”