Erudite U.S-based lawyer, High Chief Owolabi Salis, has once again expressed intense agitation over the soaring cost of foodstuffs in Nigeria, lamenting that the poor were groaning under the draconian yoke of acute hunger, misery, and squalor.
Salis, in a press statement, made available to LEADERSHIP, said the high cost of foodstuffs has remained a significant concern for the suffering Nigerian populace, adding that it keeps getting worse with every passing day.
According to Salis, “While it would have been at least tolerable if things had remained as bad as they were, the situation as it stands now goes beyond the bounds of tolerance. The increasingly high cost of foodstuffs is fast getting out of reach for the grossly marginalized poor. Certainly, things should not continue this way to avert disastrous consequences.”
The Ikorodu-born lawyer and social reformer, who ran for governorship in 2019 on the platform of Alliance For Democracy (AD), argued that the foremost cardinal expectations of any government worth its salt are to provide food and health care to its citizens, especially the underprivileged. He emphasized that food, above all else, is crucial as it sustains human existence and good health. “Health is equally important,” he added, “but unfortunately, the poor are dying almost daily due to the inability to afford essential medications like antibiotics, which are now so costly beyond the reach of the common man.”
“Any government unable to provide food and medical care for its citizens, especially the hungry poor, is grossly failing in its most primary responsibility to the masses,” Salis asserted. He elaborated that as human beings, the highest creation of the Almighty Lord of the Universe, there is a level of living below which people must not be allowed to fall, or they would be equated to sub-human beasts.
He recalled that only two days ago, the president urged Nigerians to embrace agriculture, a sentiment echoed by his wife, Remi Tinubu, about three months ago, adding that “The ravaging onslaught of Fulani herdsmen has perpetually ostracized farmers from their land, making their farms a no-go zone through an unabated spree of savage killing and kidnapping. Moreover, the soaring inflationary spiral that has skyrocketed the cost of pesticides and fertilizers remains untackled to any appreciable effect.”
“I remember about four months ago, i stressed the need for the president to focus on security, electricity, and agriculture due to their strategic importance in driving other sectors while harnessing limited resources to optimum beneficial advantage,” Salis said.
“And only two weeks ago, I issued a statement stressing the need to tackle agriculture with the decisive dispatch it deserves. But it appears the powers that be are not heeding these wise promptings,” lamented the learned lawyer-politician, popularly known as “Oba Mekunu” (king of the poor in Lagos and New York) for his humanitarian propensity for the downtrodden.
Against this background, Salis reiterated his earlier call on the president to emulate the exemplary templates of countries like China and Israel, which were able to overcome significant odds to transform their lands into agricultural paradises.
“Asiwaju should also borrow a leaf from President Roosevelt, who presided over the U.S. during the excruciating moment of the world economic depression of the 1930s. It remains vividly on record how he defied popular party conventions, bypassing the party to unilaterally choose those he deemed capable of assisting him in surmounting the crucial challenges of that period.
“President Tinubu would do well by looking beyond the narrow considerations of party loyalty to the wider public world to find competent, well-heeled technocrats with the requisite acumen to team up with him in lifting the country from the doldrums,” Salis advised.