The African Democratic Congress (ADC) has criticised the President Bola Tinubu-led administration over the continued rise in food prices.
According to the ADC, the government has run out of ideas on how to address the worsening cost of living.
The party said the government’s focus on the slight decline in headline inflation did not reflect the reality faced by millions of Nigerians struggling to afford basic food items.
The ADC National Publicity Secretary, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, stated this in a press statement issued on Tuesday.
The party was reacting to the latest inflation figures released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), which showed that headline inflation fell marginally from 15.91 per cent in June to 15.43 per cent in July.
However, Abdullahi said the figures also showed a sharp rise in food inflation, which increased from 17.52 per cent in June to 20.31 per cent in July on a year-on-year basis.
He also noted that food inflation rose from 3.75 per cent in June to 5.56 per cent on a month-on-month basis.
According to him, the figures showed that the government’s economic reforms were yet to make food more affordable for ordinary Nigerians.
“The Tinubu government has run out of ideas,” the party said.
“The government’s focus should not be on celebrating headline inflation figures while Nigerians struggle with rising food prices. What matters is whether ordinary Nigerians can afford basic food items, not just statistical improvements on paper.”
The party also linked the rising food prices to the wider problem of food insecurity, citing a report by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), which it said estimated that 35 million Nigerians were facing acute food insecurity.
The ADC challenged the government to explain why Nigerians were finding it increasingly difficult to afford food if its economic reforms were producing the desired results.
It said the administration should be willing to acknowledge when its approach was not delivering the expected outcome and adopt new measures to address the hardship.
The party proposed that food security should be treated as a national security issue, with the government focusing on increasing food production and making farming more affordable.
It called for measures to reduce the cost of fertiliser, seeds, machinery, diesel, transportation and access to finance for farmers.
The ADC also identified insecurity as a major threat to food production, saying farmers would struggle to produce food if they could not safely access their farms, harvest their crops or transport their produce to markets.
“The government must reduce the cost of moving food from farms to markets by addressing poor roads, insecurity, high transportation costs and multiple levies. It should also establish a transparent national food reserve and strategic buffer system to release essential food items when prices rise sharply,” the statement added.
According to the ADC, such a system would also allow the government to buy from farmers when prices fall, thereby protecting both consumers and producers.
The party said the government could continue to point to falling headline inflation as evidence of economic progress, but Nigerians would continue to judge the economy by the price of food.