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Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has described a United Nations warning that nearly 35 million Nigerians could face acute hunger between June and August 2026 as a devastating global verdict on what he called the catastrophic failure of the President Bola Tinubu administration, declaring that no government with a conscience can preside over such mass suffering and still speak the language of progress.
Atiku, in a statement issued on Monday in Abuja by his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, said the grim UN projection should shake the conscience of the nation, as it confirms that under the current administration, Nigeria has moved from economic hardship to a full-blown humanitarian emergency.
“This is not just another alarming statistic to be debated on television panels and forgotten by the next news cycle. This is a human tragedy of terrifying proportions. Thirty-five million Nigerians — that is more than the population of many African countries. That is tens of millions of citizens — mothers rationing food in silence, fathers crushed by the humiliation of empty pockets, children going to bed hungry, young people losing hope, and vulnerable households slipping daily from poverty into desperation,” he said.
The former vice president laid the blame squarely on what he described as the administration’s economic illiteracy and policy recklessness, singling out the abrupt removal of the fuel subsidy without credible social buffers as the trigger for the worst cost-of-living crisis in recent memory.
“The chaotic mishandling of exchange rate policy sent the naira into a punishing tailspin, wiping out purchasing power, inflating import costs, crippling manufacturers, and suffocating small businesses. Food inflation has become savage. Staple items that once sustained ordinary households are now priced beyond reach. Rice, garri, beans, yam, bread — the basic pillars of survival — have become symbols of economic exclusion,” Atiku said.
He also linked the hunger crisis to the deteriorating security situation in Nigeria’s farming communities, questioning how the country could feed itself when farmers across Benue, Plateau, Kaduna, Zamfara, Niger, Katsina, Sokoto, Borno, and other agrarian belts remain trapped between banditry, terrorism, mass abductions, and violent land invasions.
“You cannot talk about food security while abandoning the people who produce food,” he said, adding that the government’s borrowing habit, extravagant public spending, weak social protection architecture, and declining investor confidence had compounded the crisis.
Atiku called on the Federal Government to immediately declare a food security emergency, demanding urgent support for farmers through subsidised inputs, improved access to credit, protection of farming corridors, strategic food reserve deployment, price stabilization mechanisms, and emergency household support for the most vulnerable.
“Nigeria cannot continue governing hunger with speeches. No amount of propaganda can fill an empty stomach. No amount of political spin can disguise the suffering in our markets, homes, transport parks, farms, and streets. A hungry nation is an angry nation. And no government should toy with that reality,” he warned.
The former vice president said the worsening humanitarian situation underscored the urgent need for what he described as experienced, disciplined, compassionate, and competent leadership capable of rescuing Nigeria from “one of the gravest governance failures in the nation’s democratic history.”
Vanguard
