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Food Insecurity: Nigerians Are Hungry, APC Chieftain Tells Tinubu
Mr Olatunbosun Oyintiloye, a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), has appealed to President Bola Tinubu to urgently address the issue of high cost of food items in the country.
Oyintiloye in a chat with newsmen on Sunday in Osogbo, said that Nigerians were hungry and living below the poverty line.
The APC chieftain said that scores of Nigerians were disillusioned wondering where the next meal will come from due to the extreme economic hardship.
Oyintiloye also urged the president not to ignore the United Nations’ prediction that 82 million Nigerians, which is about 64 per cent of the country’s population, may go hungry by 2030.
He said that the National Bureau of Statistics(NBS) data revealed that the food inflation rate in the country hit a record high of 40.66 per cent in May, surpassing the previous month’s of 40.53 increase.
Oyintiloye, a former member of the defunct APC Presidential Campaign Council (PCC), said the common household food items were getting out of the reach of the common man due to the hike in prices.
The APC chieftain noted that despite the Nigerians working hard under different dehumanising working conditions, what they were earning was still not enough to support themselves and their families due to inflation.
According to him, despite the abundance in natural and human resources the country is blessed with, successive governments failed to drive the economy productively.
He said corruption and over dependency on the system of sharing crude oil revenue by the tiers of government was hindering them from running a productive and self-sufficient economy for the benefit of the masses.
Oyintiloye, a former lawmaker, who noted that there was no doubt that the president was doing everything possible to salvage the situation through various intervention programmes, said that the impacts of such interventions were far from ameliorating the situation.
He said prices of basic households, some food items such as rice, beans, garri, spaghetti, and host others were on a very high side and becoming unaffordable by the masses.
Oyintiloye noted that it was rather unfortunate that with all the efforts of the president, prices of food and other essentials had continued to be on the increase.
“I will want to urge the president to, as a matter of urgency, declare a state of emergency on hunger, starvation and poverty in the country.
“Hunger is a threat to national peace, and that is why the president must act very fast,” he said.
Oyintiloye also said that there was a need for the government to put in place the price control mechanism to checkmate the sharp practices by the traders in the market.
He said many of the traders were taking undue advantage of the economy to exploit buyers, adding that there was an urgent need to check their excesses.
Oyintiloye, however, urged the president to consider the reopening of the Benin Republic border for the importation of food to solve the problem of food crisis in the country.
He said the challenge of insecurity preventing farmers from going to their farms should be addressed, while subsidised farm inputs be given to them and good incentives be made available to agriculture to attract the younger ones.
Oyintiloye urged Nigerians to continue to support the president, adding that with all the various ongoing economic intervention programmes, the country would rise again.
The Nigeria Immigration Service has officially ended passport production at multiple centres, transitioning to a single, centralised system for the first time in 62 years.
Minister of Interior, Dr Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, disclosed this yesterday while inspecting Nigeria’s new Centralised Passport Personalisation Centre at the NIS Headquarters in Abuja.
He stated that since the establishment of NIS in 1963, Nigeria had never operated a central passport production centre, until now, marking a major reform milestone.
“The project is 100 per cent ready. Nigeria can now be more productive and efficient in delivering passport services,” Tunji-Ojo said.
He explained that old machines could only produce 250 to 300 passports daily, but the new system had a capacity of 4,500 to 5,000 passports every day.
“With this, NIS can now meet daily demands within just four to five hours of operation,” he added, describing it as a game-changer for passport processing in Nigeria.
“We promised two-week delivery, and we’re now pushing for one week.
“Automation and optimisation are crucial for keeping this promise to Nigerians,” the minister said.
He noted that centralisation, in line with global standards, would improve uniformity and enhance the overall integrity of Nigerian travel documents worldwide.
Tunji-Ojo described the development as a step toward bringing services closer to Nigerians while driving a culture of efficiency and total passport system reform.
He said the centralised production system aligned with President Bola Tinubu’s reform agenda, boosting NIS capacity and changing the narrative for better service delivery.
The Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) has disbursed N2.225 trillion as federation revenue for the month of August 2025, the highest ever allocation to the three tiers of government and other statutory recipients.
This marks the second consecutive month that FAAC disbursements have crossed the N2 trillion mark.
The revenue, shared at the August 2025 FAAC meeting in Abuja, was buoyed by increases in oil and gas royalty, value-added tax (VAT), and common external tariff (CET) levies, according to a communiqué issued at the end of the meeting.
Out of the N2.225 trillion total distributable revenue, FAAC said N1,478.593 trillion came from statutory revenue, N672.903 billion from VAT, N32.338 billion from the Electronic Money Transfer Levy (EMTL), and N41.284 billion from Exchange Difference.
The communiqué revealed that gross federation revenue for the month stood at N3.635 trillion. From this amount, N124.839 billion was deducted as cost of collection, while N1,285.845 trillion was set aside for transfers, interventions, refunds, and savings.
From the statutory revenue of N1.478 trillion, the Federal Government received N684.462 billion, State Governments received N347.168 billion, and Local Government Councils received N267.652 billion. A further N179.311 billion (13 per cent of mineral revenue) went to oil-producing states as derivation revenue.
From the distributable VAT revenue of N672.903 billion, the Federal Government received N100.935 billion, the states received N336.452 billion, while the local governments got N235.516 billion.
Of the N32.338 billion shared from EMTL, the Federal Government received N4.851 billion, the States received N16.169 billion, and the Local Governments received N11.318 billion.
From the N41.284 billion exchange difference, the Federal Government received N19.799 billion, the states received N10.042 billion, and the local governments received N7.742 billion, while N3.701 billion (13 per cent of mineral revenue) was shared to the oil-producing states as derivation.
The Governing Council of Kenule Beeson Saro-Wiwa Polytechnic, Bori, has decried the inadequate power supply and poor state of infrastructural facilities and equipment at the institution.
The Council also appealed to the government, including Non-Governmental Organisations, agencies, as well as well-meaning Rivers people to intervene to restore and sustain the laudable gesture, dreams and aspirations of the founding fathers of the polytechnic.
The Chairman of the newly inaugurated Council, Professor Friday B. Sigalo, made this appeal during a tour of facilities at the Polytechnic, recently.
Accompanied by members of the team, Prof Sigalo emphasised the position of technology, technical and vocational education in sustainable development.
He noted that with the prospects on ground, and the programmes and activities undertaken in the polytechnic, there is no doubt that the institution would add values to the educational system in our society and foster the desired development, if the existing challenges are jointly tackled.
This was contained in a statement signed by Deputy Registrar, Public Relations, Kenpoly, Innocent Ogbonda-Nwanwu, and made available to The Tide in Port Harcourt.
The chairman who restated the intention of his team of technocrats to ensure that KenPoly enjoys desirable face-lift, said the Council would deliver on its core mandates, accordingly.
Earlier, the Rector, KenPoly Engr. Dr. Ledum S. Gwarah, commended the appointment of Professor Friday B. Sigalo as Chairman of the KenPoly Governing Council.
He described him and his team as seasoned technocrats and expressed confidence in their ability to succeed.
The Rector pledged the management’s support to the Council to ensure that KenPoly resumes its rightful place in the comity of polytechnics in the country.
Facilities visited by the Governing Council include KenPoly workshops, laboratories, skills acquisition centre, library, hostels and medical centre.
Chinedu Wosu
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