A FAIR idea of what anarchy looks like was witnessed in Lagos after the October 20, 2020 Lekki Toll Gate shooting. Patriotic Nigerian youths, responding to police brutality in Delta State, staged a series of street protests code-named with the hashtag: #EndSARS.

It was initially a demand for the disbandment of the Special AntiRobbery Squad, SARS, in the Nigeria Police Force, which had turned on defenceless citizens for extortions, beatings, tortures, unjust detentions and extra-judicial killings. As the peaceful protest gathered more participants, defying efforts to disperse them, Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu pleaded with former President Muhammadu Buhari to quell it with the army.

The upshot was the military’s firing into the protesters which the Justice Doris Okuwobi Judicial Panel of Inquiry set up by the Lagos State Government later officially pronounced a “massacre”.

After the bloody military intervention, hoodlums hijacked the protest and launched malicious attacks on properties of the LASG and some members of the ruling party in Lagos. They also attacked and burnt down many police stations, killed many policemen and carried out a massive looting of warehouses, malls and private businesses. Over 80 Bus Rapid Transit, BRT, buses were incinerated. The LASG said it lost over N700 billion, including the closure of the Lekki Toll Gate.

The #EndSARS protest was a product of anger. But what we are experiencing right now is a product of hunger, which is far more desperate and dangerous. Due to the harsh economic policies of the government, the prices of foodstuffs have gone way beyond the reach of even the erstwhile comfortable middle class elements, talk less of the already 140 million multidimensionally-poor Nigerians.

Sporadic protests have broken out in many parts of the North and the South-West. The North, which is traditionally the food basket of Nigeria, is hardest-hit simply because of the menace of jihadist terrorists, bandits and armed herdsmen, who have driven farmers off their farms.

Videos of hoodlums attacking food-carrying trucks and looting food items have been making it to the social media. In Abuja, food warehouses have been broken into and looted.

This must be nipped in the bud before it becomes a nationwide copycat crime. We acknowledge that hunger is driving people to desperation, but looting is still a crime. If we allow it to spread, the hunger and hardship will worsen and society could totally breakdown as we have see in Haiti.

We call on the Federal and State governments to prioritise food subsidies at this time. Until food security is restored, funds for capital projects should be diverted to provide food at affordable prices for the people. The governments of Lagos and Imo states have already taken this laudable step.

We must summon the same political will we used to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic to protect our people from this hunger pandemic.