The African Democratic Congress (ADC) has accused President Bola Tinubu’s administration of creating what it described as a “government-created humanitarian disaster,” following reports that more than 17 million Nigerians are facing acute hunger across conflict-affected states in the country.
The opposition party said the worsening food crisis was the direct consequence of the Federal Government’s inability to tackle insecurity, protect farming communities and implement policies capable of reducing the rising cost of food.
The position was contained in a statement issued on Monday by the National Publicity Secretary of the ADC, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, in reaction to the latest assessment by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), which indicated that over 17 million Nigerians are experiencing acute food insecurity.
According to the WFP, more than 17 million people across nine conflict-affected northern states are currently facing Crisis, Emergency or Catastrophic levels of food insecurity, representing an increase of nearly two million people from previous projections.
The report further stated that more than three million people in Borno State alone are acutely food insecure, while the combined figure for Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states has risen to 6.2 million.
Reacting to the report, the ADC said the findings were not opposition propaganda but the assessment of the world’s leading humanitarian agency on hunger.
“The African Democratic Congress (ADC) has received with profound concern the latest assessment by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), which confirms that Nigeria is now facing one of its worst food security emergencies in almost a decade.
“These are not opposition figures. They are not campaign slogans. They are the findings of the world’s leading humanitarian agency on hunger,” the party stated.
The ADC argued that the WFP report clearly identified the causes of the food crisis, including expanding insecurity, attacks on farming communities, mass displacement, restricted humanitarian access and declining support for vulnerable populations.
It maintained that the crisis was not a natural disaster but a consequence of the APC-led administration’s inability to secure lives and farmlands.
“In other words, the hunger confronting millions of Nigerians today is not a natural disaster. It is an APC-inspired government-created humanitarian disaster.
“This humanitarian crisis is also the predictable outcome of a government that has failed to secure Nigerian lives, failed to protect Nigerian farmers and failed to address the cost-of-living crisis that it has created,” the statement said.
The party further criticised the Tinubu administration for repeatedly assuring Nigerians that the economic hardship would be temporary, saying the latest WFP assessment had confirmed that insecurity, declining agricultural production and soaring food inflation had continued to worsen.
“For three years, the Tinubu government has repeatedly told Nigerians that the pain we are experiencing is temporary. The WFP has now confirmed what Nigerians have been saying all along: insecurity is spreading, agricultural production is declining, food inflation is worsening and millions of Nigerians are being pushed deeper into hunger,” it added.
