By Gabriel Ewepu

ABUJA – AS hunger grips Nigerians badly, stakeholders in the agricultural sector, Wednesday, demanded the Federal and State Governments to implement Right to Food Act 2023 and not food palliatives.

The call was made at a one-day training for journalists and editors on the ‘Right to Food Law and Food Security Policies in Nigeria’, in Abuja, and organised by Global Initiative for Food Security and Ecosystem Preservation, GIFSEP, in partnership with Oxfam in Nigeria.

Speaking on the sidelines of the training, the Executive Director, GIFSEP, Dr Michael David, explained that the essence of the training of journalists and editors on the Right to Food Law and Food Security Policies is basically to deeply create the awareness and sensitize Nigerians about their right, and also to ensure the Right to Food is immedded in the constitution.

David said: “The awareness creation of the right to food law, the right to food act in Nigeria has been very low.Millions of Nigerians are not even aware that there is a law that makes food a basic human right in Nigeria and their responsibility in asking for accountability and transparency on the part of the government, and that is why we are organizing this training of journalists to also know about the act.

“It is been two years since it was signed into law and the most important thing about this Act is that it was an amendment of the constitution. It is a law, it is not just like an act of some sort.

“So a law is as strong as its implementation, and the implementation cannot happen without awareness, and to build the political will for the implementation of this law, we need citizens to be involved, and for citizens to get involved, they must know about this, and we cannot do this without the involvement of journalists, and that is why today we are sensitizing journalists to know that there is a law like this because they are Nigerians and also eat food. So it is also a law that affects them and affects every human being in Nigeria.

“We are calling on the President to ensure the implementation of the law, and the law is a Right to Food Act, and I always say that the Renewed Hope Agenda of the President will be incomplete without the implementation of the Right to Food Act because right to food is also a national security issue.”

Meanwhile, he (David) said the State Governments are to key into the implementation of the Act because they have budgets for food security.

“It is also that food is on the concurrent list. So state governors also need to wake up. It is not just the President that will ensure there is food security for everyone.The state governors also have budgets. So the questions we begin to ask is what was the budget of the states on food security?”

Also, the Founder and President, Farm Infrastructure Foundation, FIF, Prof Gbolagade Ayoola, who presented a paper titled ‘Understanding the Right to Food Act’, pointed out that the rights of Nigerians to food needs to be upheld as a fundamental right like other rights immedded in the constitution.

Ayoola also said the violation of Right to Food should be challenged in the court, therefore, the government and private sector need to protect the right to food of Nigerians.

“Government should have the obligation, private sector concerns also should have obligations to protect the right to food, meaning that wherever the public authority is over-exercising its own powers beyond its boundary, it is possible for such an authority to be called to question and failure of which it can be remedied in the court.

“Take for example all our protection, laws guiding fragile areas of land, fauna, fishes in the ocean, creeks and so on, which have been violated by influence anyhow, anywhere in the water bodies of this country, there is nobody doing anything, even asking questions about it, whereas they are offending nature, they are offending the basis upon which life hangs in this country and they should be called to question under this law.

“And of course, the right to fulfill the law is an obligation of public policy authorities also, meaning that if for no fault of anybody’s, he’s unable to feed himself because of one natural disaster or another, it is possible or is required by this law for government to move food physically to address the situation because life requires dignity under this law and when dignity is not accorded, it is possible for somebody to seek justice in the court of law.

Whether the Right to Food Act serves as a panacea to the hunger in the land, he said, “It is a panacea because we have tried various other means that constituted panacea for many, many years and we don’t succeed.

“We discovered that the only thing that remains that we have not investigated properly and deployed properly is the instrumentality of policy in fighting hunger. Policy environment determines the extent to which technology will work, determines the extent to which things will succeed, implementation will succeed in this country.”