Reps task FG on sustainable food policy

The House of Representatives, on Tuesday, urged the Federal Government to formulate a sustainable food policy    that would guarantee food security in the country.

This followed the adoption of a motion under matter of urgent public importance moved by Honourable Orker Jev on the need to address food insecurity in the country.

While leading debate on the motion, the lawmaker noted that October 16 was World Food Day as declared by the United Nations to draw attention to the eradication of hunger across the globe.

He lamented that over 805 million people go hungry every day without food worldwide, adding that there was the need to eradicate hunger in the land.

He expressed worry that Nigeria was the largest exporter of food in Africa, and food deficit country in the sub-Sahara.

While the United Nations consider hunger as the most basic of human rights as enshrined in the Universal Declaration, Jev noted that in September 2000, world leaders signed a commitment to achieve the Eight Millenium Development Goals by 2015, and the number one was to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.

The lawmaker, however, observed that “Nigerian does not have a sustained policy on food security and thus exposing our country to needless food importation.”

In his own contribution, Honourable Leo Ogor said:  “we are being reminded today that we have a major challenge. We are blessed with good arable land, we can feed the nation and other countries, we have abandoned farming because we have discovered oil.”

Adopting the motion the House directed that the food policy should be submitted to the House Committee on Agriculture Production and Services for further legislative action.

He declared that there was the need for Nigeria as a nation to go back to the drawing board and look inward, adding that farming had sustained the nation in years back.

Also speaking, the leader of the House, Honourable Femi Gbajabiamila, warned that if government did  not do something urgently, “we may be battling with  the issue of cannibalism, where people will begin to eat themselves.

“We have a blueprint that we need to follow. This constitutional review period present an opportunity for us to move agriculture from the concurrent list to residual list,” he said.