PMB Seeks Intensive Effort To End Food Crisis

President Muhammadu Buhari has called for concerted effort to end the looming food and nutrition crisis in the Economic Community of West Africa State (ECOWAS) most especially in the Lake Chad region. He also frowned at the high rate of illegal migration of Nigerian youths to Europe through the Mediterranean Sea, coupled with the activities of Boko Haram insurgent group in the Lake chad region which has led to acute malnutrition and food crisis.
President Buhari who stated this at the 32nd annual meeting of the Sahel and West Africa Week organised by the Food Crisis Protection Network in Abuja, yesterday, described the food crisis threat in West Africa as real.
Represented by the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Chief Audu Ogbeh, he called for an immediate stop to the act of illegal migration, saying it was ‘’unfair to European countries.’’ President Buhari who said that agriculture revitalisation was a solution to the migration issue, expressed the readiness of his administration to support farmers in order to boost local production in the country.
He said, “We think that if we re-organise our agriculture better, many of these youths will earn a decent living at home and do not have to die in the desert or drown in the Mediterranean Sea or become an embarrassment to their host countries and to us here in Africa.
“We are not unmindful of our youth’s population here, hence the need to ensure that the agriculture sector is revitalised as soon as possible.
“We have decided that we will no longer rely on rainfall, we will create dams, water reservoirs and insist on harvesting food at least three times in a year.’’ According to him, there are 800 million hectares of agricultural lands across the world that is yet to be cultivated and Africa owes half of
them. The president, appealed to Sahel and West African and other relevant agricultural stakeholders to devise ideas that would guarantee better management in cattle breeding through artificial insemination. He however, said his administration was aggressively tackling humanitarian crisis of the Internally Displaced Persons by attending to issues of food and nutrition especially for women and children in the North East.
“We are pained when we see our youths especially across West and North Eastern Africa desperately scrambling to board boats, travel by roads, endue any pain, absorb any humiliation in a desperate attempt to cross the desert, get to Libya and cross the Mediterranean Sea to Europe.
“We consider it as something that must stop as fast as possible because it is unfair to Europe,’’ he added. The President of ECOWAS Commission, Mr Marcel De Souza disclosed that no fewer than 40 million Nigerians were internally displaced as a result of the insecurity in the North Eastern region.
He listed some of the developmental challenges of the Sahel and West African regions to include economic and political governance. De Souza called on governments of the regions to invest toward addressing unemployment and food crisis which were bane to development.
The Malian Minister of Agriculture, Mr Kassoum Denon appealed tovarious countries in the Sahel and West Africa to share ideas and success stories with a view to addressing food crisis in the regions.