The African Democratic Congress, ADC, has criticised the president Bola Tinubu administration over rising food prices, saying the government’s economic measures have failed to ease the cost of living for Nigerians.
The party said the government should not focus on the marginal decline in headline inflation while millions of Nigerians continue to struggle to afford basic food items.
The ADC National Publicity Secretary, Bolaji Abdullahi, stated this in a statement on Tuesday while reacting to the latest inflation figures released by the National Bureau of Statistics.
According to the NBS figures cited by the party, headline inflation fell from 15.91 per cent in June to 15.43 per cent in July. However, food inflation rose from 17.52 per cent to 20.31 per cent year-on-year during the same period.
Abdullahi also noted that food inflation increased from 3.75 per cent in June to 5.56 per cent month-on-month in July, arguing that the figures showed that food remained increasingly unaffordable despite the decline in overall inflation.
“The Tinubu government has run out of ideas,” the party said, arguing that the key measure of economic progress should be whether Nigerians can afford basic food rather than improvements in headline inflation figures.
The ADC linked the rising cost of food to worsening food insecurity and called on the government to treat food security as a national security priority. It urged increased investment in agricultural production and measures to reduce the cost of fertiliser, seeds, machinery, fuel, transportation and access to finance.
The party also identified insecurity, poor roads and high transportation costs as major obstacles to food production and distribution. It called for improved security to enable farmers to access their farms and transport produce to markets.
The ADC further proposed a transparent national food reserve and strategic buffer system that would allow the government to release essential food items when prices rise sharply and purchase produce from farmers when market prices fall.
The party said Nigerians would ultimately judge the success of the government’s economic policies by the prices of food in markets, rather than by declining headline inflation figures.
