IT is claimed by some people that some powers are fostering the non-availability of food so that at full maturity, we won’t be agile and strong enough to resist them. These powers are nurturing hunger as a weapon for their war against us in the near future. It is reminiscent of George Orwell’s Napoleon in Animal Farm. Napoleon’s nine attack dogs are in the form of their lives, intimidating and cowing other animals in the farm to help Napoleon consolidate power. We are being engulfed!
The word ‘engulf’ frightens me a lot. This probably is because of how I came to know the word. The first time I saw the word was in our biology class in secondary school. We were introduced to biology after we were baptised in ‘integrated science’. One of the earliest things that caught my fancy in the course was the amoeba. Coming from a village school, it was fascinating. I was fascinated. The fact that I cannot see it with naked eyes; and that it is shapeless and does a lot of things living things do, including eat, intrigued me. The images of a feeding amoeba as illustrated in the Modern Biology textbook of the 1980s drove home the imagery. In that book whose two authors’ names I cannot readily remember, amoeba was shown engulfing its prey. It was labeled so in the book. I checked for the meaning of the word and I felt for the helpless prey. The image is still in my memory.
I still feel pity for preys. I hate to see the helpless underdog creature eaten, sometimes with vicious rapacity by their predators. It is one of the reasons I don’t always feel comfortable when watching predator animals in action, on TV. They can be mean – be it fish, snake, birds, cats. At that moment, my poor, selfish self completely forgets that predators often die of hunger when they cannot get victims. They therefore must feed as the only way to remain alive. These predators feed as the Creator has ordained them to. They are faithful, loyal and honest to their natural design. So, the amoeba must still be engulfing. The lion will not eat grass. Fish eats fish to grow. The viper does not eat corn; that which eats corn is the food of the viper. It’s a natural order of things.
I was a poor student in the sciences. I still am not a “science student” but I loved biology as a subject because it sat well with me just like the other subjects that I did naturally well in. My reminiscence on biology has driven me strongly to the contention that in recent years, our country is being vigorously driven towards achieving a reordering, several miles away from the way nature had arranged our life. We have long left the natural course and have veered deep into the thicket created by certain centrifugal forces. These evil forces have used our resources and acuity or utter lack of it to rewire our very nature. That is how the current security issues in the country appear. The sight of the looming evil is obscure, but from what the eyes can see, the duiker has turned around to pursue the hunter’s dog. If this is not so, why would there be torching of villages and settlements; killing of people and occupation of their homes, hearts and land with no consequences?
And the unmitigated insecurity is seriously affecting the country on very many fronts. The first casualty is the first item on the order of man’s priority of need: food. Food is not affordable in our country. There is hunger in the land, and it is steadily engulfing the people. There is anger in the land, and it is eating us up. There is acute poverty across the land but the authorities are silent. These have affected productivity – literal and figurative. A combination of these factors has reduced people to refugees in their homeland. The order of their habitat has been altered and this is also scaling up the rate of hunger in the land.
Many have attributed the high cost of food to the inability of farmers to carry out their farming activities. The farmers too are human with blood in their veins. They fear for their lives. The afflicted people in Plateau, Benue, Sokoto, Katsina, Oyo, Zamfara, and other states cannot be thinking of farming in the current scenario of unfettered killings in their domains. The lucky survivors, some of whom are children of the victims would have stories to tell. They might also have actions hidden in their young impressionable hearts. The beleaguered Salihu Tanko Islamic school children of Rafi in Niger State, the survivors of Yelwa-Zangam in Plateau State and so many others have impressions. We recall the slaughtering of farmers that went to harvest their crops in Borno State. These are all bits and pieces of the problem at hand. Agriculture is in shambles and has not added as much as it was supposed to to our national economy. That sector is one of the most affected by the raging insecurity.
The National Bureau of Statistics recently presented a report in which it claimed that there has been growth in the Nigerian economy in the second quarter of 2021. The agency said the gross domestic product (GDP) of Nigeria grew by an impressive 5.01 percent in Q2 of 2021. It said it marked three quarters of consecutive growth after consecutive falls in the second and third quarters of 2020. This, according to the bureau was as a result of the return of businesses following the resuscitation of activities after the doldrums of the 2020 lockdown due to COVID-19. However, in the same report, the NBS said real GDP “grew at -0.79 per cent” in second quarter of 2021. In a lay man’s language, that means no growth. It is indeed negative, a true reflection of our situation. And those who know have also pooh-poohed the figures as misleading and confusing.
A finance guru did not mince words in noting that if the figures released by the NBS were as pristine as they want us and the outside world to believe, the various organs of government would have been explaining the figures through various media. Besides, the concerned finance analyst noted that “agriculture is a significant percentage of our GDP and if farmers were not able to access their farms, because of widespread insecurity, where will the unprecedented growth emanate from?” This seems to underscore the fact that we are gradually being engulfed by food and the lack of it. We are in danger of hunger.
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