The National Secretary of the Labour Party, Alhaji Umar Farouk Ibrahim, says the party is petrified over the stampedes that claimed about 65 lives, including children, in Oyo, Anambra states and the FCT.
Alhaji Ibrahim said the stampedes had become one too many, noting that the magnitude loss of lives at a time when Nigeria was not facing any natural disaster was a pointer to the fact that hunger could be the worst epidemic a people can face.
Ibrahim, who disclosed this in a statement issued on Friday, said it was also poverty that makes some Nigerians scoop fuel from accident scenes resulting in inferno which brought about hundreds of casualties.
He added that the National Bureau of Statistics survey revealed that more than 2 million people had been kidnapped in Nigeria in the last one year and Nigerians paid a cumulative $1.42 billion to kidnappers within the same period.
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“One major reason some people resort to crime is hunger. Nigerians in millions have been subjected to hunger arising from other reasons such as rising inflation and poor economic management.
“The economic reforms of the Tinubu administration have caused untold hardship to Nigerians. Hunger is turning into an epidemic and not many people can survive this situation,” he said.
According to him, the Labour Party, prior to the 2023 general elections, warned that unless Nigeria changed its consumption policies to a productive policy, the economy would be in serious jeopardy.
He therefore called on the government to scale down most of its agenda in 2024 and redirect its policies towards food production, adding that over 70 per cent of Nigeria land resources are laying in waste.
The LP Secretary said the protection of lives and property is the cardinal purpose of the government but that the lives of Nigerians no longer matter that much as a large number of people had been wasted by kidnappers, while many simply get killed while trying to survive at all cost.
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