GOVERNOR Mohammed Umar Bago of Niger State reacted very poorly to the protests that rocked Minna, the state capital, and other areas recently over rising hunger and hardship. He blamed the “opposition” for allegedly “sponsoring” them. Some women who were part of the protests were arrested but later released with public apologies from the Governor.

We advise the Federal and all state governments to sit up and do something about the desperate situation Nigerians find themselves in, or the situation could get out of hand very quickly. Hunger and biting poverty have taken over the land. Even people who used to cater for the less-privileged are no longer able to foot their basic bills due to the harsh economic conditions. The protests in Niger, Kano and other places in the North are just warning shots.

The Sultan of Sokoto, Saad Abubakar II and the Emir of Kano, Aminu Ado Bayero, among other prominent leaders, have voiced out their concern that hunger is driving people nuts. Even the president himself, Bola Tinubu, was confronted by thousands of people wailing in the streets that they were hungry when he travelled to Lagos for the Christmas holidays.

The All Progressives Congress, APC, leadership must take note that at no other time in the history of this country was there this level of mass hunger and desperation than towards the tail end of the Muhammadu Buhari regime and the past nine months of the Bola Tinubu era. The main cause of the hunger is that we allowed armed terrorists, bandits and criminals to invade our forests and farmlands from where they attack law-abiding Nigerians on their farms, in their homes and at the highways.

They are displacing indigenous people from their communities and kidnapping for ransom. As a result, people can no longer farm or move around safely. The efforts being made by the army to root out these networks of evildoers have not produced the desired result. Unfortunately, government’s purported release of grains from the strategic reserves has not been felt beyond the circles of well-connected ruling party members.

Even a resort to importation of food will be problematic due to scarcity of foreign exchange. We must close ranks to get rid of the criminals from our forests. The army cannot do it alone. The people must be called in, trained and armed under government security supervision to join in flushing out the criminals.

As soon as that is done, everybody must be involved in agriculture. People in urban areas should be encouraged to engage in soil-less farming around their homes. Worldometer puts the current Nigerian population at 227 million. We must find food for them or be prepared to pay dearly for failure to do so. We must act now!