The World Food Programme (WEF) Country Director in Nigeria, David Stevenson, has said foreign aid cannot take Nigeria out of the woods in the nation’s food crisis.
Stevenson said Nigeria’s food crisis started with insecurity ravaging northern Nigeria, caused by bandits and terrorists.
Naijaonpoint reports that Nigeria’s WEF Country Director stated this on Tuesday in an interview with Arise News.
He noted that does not lack resources to address its food crisis, but lacks peace and production to combat it.
According to Steveson, “the solution is peace and production”, and not charity and aid.
He stressed that insecurity has affected Nigeria’s farming communities, with many displaced and others killed. Steveson added that Nigeria can feed West Africa if it addresses insecurity.
“In 2010, Maiduguri flour mills used to produce 400 tons a day of wheat flour. I was there some weeks ago, and now they’re producing nothing in terms of wheat flour, some maize.
“Since January of this year, there’ve been about 450 attacks in the northeast. Just last week, we had 10,000 civilians in Marte walk to Dikwa because of security concerns, being attacked in their home. We had over 40 farmers killed simply because they returned to farming in the northeast. The effects of insecurity are real, and that used to be the breadbasket of the region, the breadbasket of Nigeria, but also feeding parts of West Africa, the Sahelian West Africa,” he stated.