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Hunger in the Land

There is hunger in Nigeria but the present regime keeps blaming the woes Nigerians are going through on the past regime instead of sitting up to work.

They made several promises to make sure Nigerians do not suffer as well as making the average Nigerian proud to be a Nigerian.

In fact, we were all taken in by these promises and more. But one year down the line, most of these promises have been broken, so much that Nigerians, in their usual way, have rechristened them All Promises Cancelled, instead of the All Progressive Congress.

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Now, instead of the change they promised getting better, it has become a change for the worse, as they keep heaping the blames on the recent past regime as if we don know that the former government did not steer the ship of the country in the right direction.

All Nigerians want from the present government is to sit up, buckle up and get down to business.

In the past one year, many Nigerians have been thrown into untold suffering, hardship, deprivation and distress. More than 2,000 companies have closed shops and well over 5,000 workers have lost their jobs, throwing up more unemployed people into the polity, and as a result, many have turned to beggars, petty thieves and destitute, all as a result of the policies of the government to make Nigerians brace up for tougher times.

There is hunger in the land, aplenty, with many stealing food items to feed their families. Some few weeks ago, a research carried out by Guardian Newspaper revealed that theft of cooked food is now the order of the day in the country, occasioned by the biting hardship being experienced in the country owing to the economic recession.

In the research, it was gathered that due to hunger, cooked food has suddenly become a target of hungry people who wait for their neighbours to put their foods on the fire and once it is well cooked, they swoop on the pots and make away with it.

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Shortly after that, there was a report of a hungry man who stole a pot of 'Ogbono' soup which one of his neighbours was cooking in the Mpapae area of Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory.

When the man was apprehended, he confessed that his children had not eaten for two days and he had no option but to do what he had to do so that his children would not starve to death.

The effect of hunger and starvation facing workers in Ekiti State due to several months of unpaid salaries also forced a female secondary school teacher to resort to the shameful act of stealing a pot of steaming amala (a popular a Nigerian food made out of yam flour).

According to the report, the teacher, a staff of Ekiti Baptist High School, was caught after she sneaked into the kitchen of a neighbour to steal the meal with which she fed her hungry kids.

Another primary school teacher simply identified as Julius, was beaten to a state of coma after he was caught stealing food from a neighbour to give his starving children, just as a man was caught at a market in Abuja, where he stole two tubers of yam because his family was hungry.

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What of the man who took his five-year-old son to a rice dealer and left the boy there while he took home a bag of rice with the promise to return with the money?

It was after several hours when he did not return that the rice dealer traced him to his home to find out why he did not come back for his son. There, the man confessed that he had actually left the son with the dealer because he had no money to pay for the rice.

The untold hunger and suffering in the land are becoming unbearable, though the government keeps telling us to be patient, that to get out of the wood, everyone has to restructure.

But for how long will this continue as there seems to be no way out of this and no immediate light at the end of the tunnel? Supporters of the government on the other, do not see anything wrong in what is going on, even close to two years of coming into power.

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They still think every blame for the woes of the nation should go to former President Goodluck Jonathan.

Yes, we all should 'blame, curse and castigate' GEJ for what he has plunged the nation into but when will this government realize that the time to act and wipe away the pains and pangs of hunger from the land is now?

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