Jesutega Onokpasa, a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress, has admitted that the ruling party under the leadership of President Bola Tinubu has failed millions of Nigerians who bought into the promise of Mr Tinubu to make food abundant during his tenure.
“I think the real problem is that we have just failed in producing food for our citizens. When we were campaigning for this administration, people were calling us ‘Agbadorians’ because our president was always talking about producing food.
“Unfortunately, we don’t seem to be producing food. We just have to accept that’s our fault. It’s a shame that we allowed crises to skyrocket, especially on food,” said the APC chieftain in an interview aired on Channels TV on Tuesday.
Mr Tinubu had during the 12th Asiwaju Bola Tinubu Colloquium in Kano in March 2021, ahead of the election campaigns, vowed to “recruit 50 million youths into the army and take away from their recruitment source,” adding that “what they will eat, cassava, corn in the morning; yam in the afternoon… You create demand and consumption.”
Mr Tinubu also vowed in Abuja in February 2024 to make the country food self-sufficient and a net exporter of agricultural foods while expanding farmlands and providing low-interest loans for farmers to boost food productivity.
“We will be able to feed ourselves. We’re going to cultivate more farmlands. We’re going to equip farmers with low-interest or no-interest loans. We’re going to bring tractors into this economy,” said Mr Tinubu. “We’re going to invest in irrigation in this country. Nigeria will become a net exporter of food.”
