Nigeria faces an imminent threat of hunger-induced anti-government protests expected to kick-start on August 1st August 2024, and driven by angry youths who feel that the government at both federal and state levels is insensitive to the pains of the acute hunger and economic hardship currently faced by Nigerians. They have resolved to embark on an anti-government mass protest whose goal is to challenge the existing status quo of bad governance, which has led to the country’s current food crisis, acute hunger, and chronic economic hardship.
The fear of this proposed anti-hunger protest by angry Nigerian youths has generated lots of tensions and anxieties among Nigerians, especially top government officials and security agencies, as they are of the opinion that if allowed to happen, the protest might be hijacked by haters of the Tinubu-led government and translated into a full-blown social revolution. But amidst these tensions, there still exists a glimmer of hope, as two Nigerian mega-NGOs, FUND-YES Cooperative (a project of the Youths Off the Street Initiative) and MULTI-LIFE SAVERS FOR THE LESS-PRIVILEGED PEOPLE, have jointly offered a way out of the acute food crisis and the chronic poverty and economic hardship being presently witnessed in Nigeria. This they have done by creating the FOOD4ALL Initiative, whose aim is to finance, technically support, and build a network of forty million family-based smallholder farmers and food entrepreneurs through its cooperative agri-food entrepreneurship programme tagged “One-Family-One-Farmer Scheme.
In order to globally generate and mobilise the funds needed to successfully implement the FOOD4ALL Initiative, the FOOD4ALL Fundraising Campaign was launched in Lagos on Saturday 27th July 27 2024, at the prestigious Radisson Blu, located at Ozumba Mbadiwe Way, Victoria Island. The kick-off ceremony of the FOOD4ALL Fundraising Campaign was performed by Her Excellency, Ambassador (Dr) Josephine Ojiambo, a top diplomat who served in various top executive positions with the Government of Kenya, the United Nations, and the Commonwealth of Nations. She is also a top executive official of Rotary International.
Dr. Ojiambo is a high-profile and highly celebrated diplomat who served as Deputy Secretary-General of the Commonwealth of Nations; she was Kenya’s Ambassador to the United Nations; she was the Chief of the Executive Board and External Relations of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA); she remains a top executive official of Rotary International and serves currently as the Official Representative of Rotary International to the United Nations, specifically UNICEF and UNEP. At the level of the Commonwealth and the United Nations, Ambassador Ojiambo has been deeply engaged with a range of significant national, African, and global issues. Ambassador Ojiambo sits on the governing boards of several influential international charities, foundations, NGOs, advisory groups, and think tanks.
The FOOD4ALL Fundraising Campaign is designed to raise, generate, and mobilise funds globally for the implementation of the FOOD4ALL Initiative through its One-Family-One-Farmer Scheme, whose aim is to finance youth, women, and other smallholders and family farmers, as well as food entrepreneurs.
Our overall goal is to create, finance, and build a national grassroots network of twenty million smallholder farmers and food entrepreneurs. These efforts are targeted at achieving Nigeria’s food security while tackling the ongoing food crisis, chronic unemployment, household poverty, and economic hardship with a view to growing Nigeria into a prosperous economy. The FOOD4ALL Fundraising Campaign targets raising six billion dollars (US$6 billion) for the execution of the FOOD4ALL Initiative and the One-Family-One-Farmer Scheme between 2024 and 2027.
Ojiambo calls for global support and partnership for the FOOD4ALL fundraising campaign. “I urge global donors and development partners to give their full support to the FOOD4ALL Fundraising Campaign. Nigerians, both at home and across the diaspora, must participate in this nation-building effort. You all must invest in agricultural and food value chains, both in startups and business growth. What is important is to add your own value in different ways. As you carry out these investments, millions of jobs are created, especially for youths and women, as a practical step towards mitigating unemployment and eradicating household poverty while achieving food security and making quality and healthy foods available and affordable. Governments at the federal and state levels must get involved in this programme as a matter of national priority and urgent necessity,” Ojiambo remarked.
While leading the unveiling prayer of the FOOD4ALL Fundraising Campaign, Reverend Father Ejike Mbaka, a popular Nigerian Catholic cleric, calls for global support for the FOOD4ALL Fundraising Campaign. He also stressed the need for Nigerian youths to be agriculturally engaged as the most viable means of generating mass employment, in addition to achieving food security. “It is a known fact that a hungry man is an angry man, and an angry man is a dangerous man. This is why we must not allow the ongoing acute hunger crisis to continue,” Mbaka said.
“What does it take to give our people quality food? It is difficult today for most Nigerian families to afford gari, let alone rice. Yet Nigeria’s tens of millions of hectares of fertile farmlands and its tens of millions of unemployed youths are wasting away. FOOD4ALL Initiative is the solution we need. It is the only way to fix Nigeria’s food crisis. I have earlier donated 2000 hectares; I am giving an additional 1000 hectares and then another 470 hectares, which makes a total of 3470 hectares. I am 100% committed to the FOOD4ALL Initiative and its implementation. I am already breeding more than 500,000 fish on my farm. This is the right way to go if Nigeria must continue to exist,” Mbaka added.
On his own part, Comrade Kennedy Iyere, the Chief Promoter of the FOOD4ALL Fundraising Campaign, urged Nigerians to fully commit themselves to the implementation of the FOOD4ALL Initiative. According to him, it will be unwise at this point to fold our hands and do nothing about the worrisome food crisis, unemployment, household poverty, and economic hardship presently experienced by millions of ordinary Nigerians.
“It is true that the federal government has failed in the implementation of its past agricultural intervention programmes, namely Operation Feed the Nation, the Back to Land Agricultural Programme, the Green Revolution, the Anchor Borrowers Programme, and NIRSAL. The failure of these programmes is the reason for the country’s current food crisis and the existing high unemployment, household poverty, and chronic economic hardship. It is very clear that Nigeria’s government lacks sincerity of purpose in the creation and implementation of its failed past agricultural and food intervention programmes.
“The billions of Naira budgeted for these programmes were looted by government officials, both elected politicians and top civil servants. These people brought the country to this ugly point where, today, ordinary Nigerians not only live in chronic economic hardship but also lack access to food and other basic necessities of life. Therefore, only Nigerians themselves are the ones to drive their own programmes for agricultural development, food security, job creation, wealth building, and economic self-emancipation. It is for this purpose that myself and Reverend Father Mbaka formed the FOOD4ALL Initiative through our NGOs,” Iyere said.
ALSO READ THESE TOP STORIES FROM NIGERIAN TRIBUNE
and then