The President of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Comrade Joe Ajaero, has said that it is an insult to Nigerians for the Federal Government to provide grains as a palliative for the food insecurity plaguing Nigeria in recent times.
President Tinubu had on Thursday ordered the immediate release of 102,000 metric tonnes of rice, maize, millet and garri from government reserves and stores of the rice millers to the Nigerian market.
But Ajaero said Nigerians aren’t pigeons or birds.
“I feel sad when we talk of federal government giving people grains as if we are giving grains to pigeons and all these other birds. At this time and age in Nigeria, we are talking of federal government providing how many tonnes of grains to Nigerians as a measure of stemming the level of hunger and poverty in the country. I beg to disagree that that is a serious insult to Nigerians I think that we should think of something else.” He told Arise News on Sunday, February 11.
“If somebody is telling us that it is going to start work today and tomorrow, have they kept the promise? That is the question. Heck no. I think the issue of trust should be paramount in whatever we do as a government and as a people. If we look at the end of every federal executive council meeting you will discover that the federal executive council meeting seems to have transformed into a procurement committee… not directly on policy issues.
“Even when they had agreements with organised labour, with Nigerians, such meetings don’t come out with clear statements on how to implement them, and I am getting worried. So, when Nigerians are hungry, you give them some bags of grains as a solution, that’s not what we need at this point in time.”