FROM recorded history across the globe, nothing sparks riots and societal chaos more easily than hunger and starvation, especially those caused by bad government policy such as Tinubu’s.
On October 21, 1789, a baker named Denis François, was accused of hoarding loaves of bread as part of a ploy to deprive the people of food. Despite a hearing which ruled that he was innocent, the crowd dragged François to the Place de Grève in France where they hanged and decapitated him and made his pregnant wife kiss his bloodied lips. More extreme cases have been recorded, one of the most gruesome being the 1933 Holodomor Famine in old Russia under Stalin, specifically in Ukraine. Stalin’s agricultural policy created extreme famine resulting in the death of millions of Ukrainians. Evidence of widespread cannibalism was documented where poor hungry peasants ate corpses of fellow Ukrainians. Citizens started to hunt for other human-beings seeking to kill and cook them for food.
There have been street protests in Argentina against the newly-elected President’s ’omnibus law’ advocating austerity measures and privatization, which is perceived as anti-people and undemocratic. Central Algeria is contending with water shortage protests.
In 1863, a protest led by women and young boys and girls changed the course of American history. A group comprised mostly of hungry mothers, freed slaves and impoverished children said enough to speculators hoarding food and the government channelling resources to businessmen and the army. Emaciated women and groups of girls and boys who worked in local factories for little more than $1 a day descended on Capitol Square in Richmond, Virginia, demanding to see the mayor and reasonable access to food and other necessities. The mayor refused to see them, so they marched to the market, recruiting thousands of protesters along the way and took provisions, including a quarter-ton of bacon from suspected robber barons, chanting, “Bread or blood!”
In Nigeria today, the poor and even the so-called rich are haemorrhaging under severe food inflation and skyrocketing prices of goods and services with no indication that the situation will abate anytime soon. The poverty rate is estimated to have reached 40.1% with an estimated 87 million Nigerians living below the poverty line, while as many as 133 million (63% ) are multi-dimensionally poor. These figures are frightening, bearing in mind that they may be pushed to the edge where the only available option might be to pour onto the streets as was the case during the famed 1775 bread riots and Flour War in France and the 1929 Aba Women tax riots in Calabar and Owerri, both of which were direct consequences of anti-people policies.
The world has seen food riots that metamorphosed into political movements. The recent protest in Iran was ignited by the sharp rise in egg prices, likewise the Arab Spring which was catalysed by unaffordable bread prices. Harsh living conditions ought to be confronted frontally by the authorities as quickly as possible before they get out of hand.
The point here is that the federal authorities must understand that not all grievances or discontent are politically motivated as is often interpreted in Nigeria. Hunger has no respect for political parties. Studies have shown that there is a reason why hungry people resort to violence, no matter how unjustifiable such reasons might be.
New York University food historian Amy Bentley wrote that food riots occur when a food item functions as a symbol of people’s intense frustration and anger at being trapped in a web in which they have no outlet. Food is a uniquely powerful symbol because it creates a “moral economy,” as British food historian E. P. Thompson argues, connecting people across political parties, backgrounds and socioeconomic lines, in a collective understanding of injustice, unlike almost any other cause.
Nationwide mass protests have taken place in Niger, Kano, Kogi and Oyo states, to demand immediate interventions to address the rising cost of living. Without further action, there are fears that food inflation could spark civil unrest on a much larger scale across the country if urgent steps are not taken to address the untold hardship being suffered by the population. Businesses have expressed concern about a spate of looting of trucks conveying food and raw materials. Such situations should not be treated by simply waving them off as ‘antics of mischief makers, political opponents, and unscrupulous elements’. A hungry man is not only an angry man; he is also a very dangerous man!
Another serious problem with hunger is that it moves in a vicious cycle. It pushes the individual into desperation and from desperation into drug abuse, and from drug abuse to violent crime and vice versa. In fact, drug addiction has taken a turn for the worse in our communities with new and more sophisticated brands flooding every nook and cranny of the country each with its own peculiar branding from coke, shisha, skonk, loud, to cannabis locally known as igbo. In an event of hunger-induced riots on the streets, with individuals under the influence of such substances, hell would be let loose upon this nation.
All kinds of solutions have been proffered, ranging from fighting insecurity, reducing fuel prices, diversifying the oil-based economy, having food reserves, bringing back the old commodity boards and so on. The bottom-line is that the only way to pacify a hungry man is to put food on his table, and that should be the major pre-occupation of the Tinubu-led federal government at this point.
Asaba
June, 2024
