New Telegraph

Agric expert tasks Senate on speedy passage of food bill

Following threat to food security in Nigeria, a retired Professor of Agricultural Economics and Policy and President, Food and Infrastructure Foundation (FIF), Gbolagade Ayoola, has petitioned the National Assembly (NASS) to urgently adjudicate right to food as a fundamental human right in the country’s constitution. Ayoola urged the lawmakers in the country’s national assembly to rise up to the occasion to make the right to food a fundamental human right in the constitution.

The President of the Food and Infrastructure Foundation disclosed this in a memorandum he presented to the Deputy Senate President/ Chairman, Senate Ad hoc Committee on the Review of 1999 Constitution, National Assembly, Abuja, Senator Ovie Omo-Agege.

The memo was entitled: ‘The Need to Make the Right to Food a Fundamental Human Right in the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.’ He urged the Senate committee to speed up the passage of the right to food bill currently pending before the Senate (SB Bill 240) in order to protect agriculture and guaranteeing food security in the country. According to him, the food bill requires amending the constitution in Chapter 2 (Directive Principles of State Policy, wherein not justiciable), and in Chapter 4 (Fundamental Human rights, wherein justiciable). Speaking on fast tracking movement of the food security provision from chapter two to chapter four, the agric expert advocated that citizens could better engage the government over failure to make food available and affordable by not providing requisites facilities such as irrigation, rural road networks, market and other rural infrastructure.

In addition, he said his group wanted President Muhammadu Buhari be mandated to produce and review on yearly basis an implementation strategy as a schedule to the bill, and to deliver an annual food situation address to the National Assembly.

He said the bill is geared towards improvement of policy environment for food security and agribusiness in terms of policy responsibility, accountability, transparency and due process on the part of the government. Ayoola made case by arguing that entrenching such in the constitution engender selfsufficiency, thereby freeing the country from the clutches of neo-colonialism.

He said in the memorandum “that right to food bill will stimulate incremental food output through the supply response of farmers in the bid to meet the new demand pressures from the general populace, thereby improving incomes, livelihoods, and employment in rural Nigeria.”

While giving an insight into the genesis of the move, he said the purpose of the memorandum “is to register our humble appeal for the favourable consideration of the right to food bill currently before the Ad hoc Committee on the Review of the 1999 Constitution, which Bill was passed on to the Committee for further deliberation following its successful First and Second Readings earlier in this year.”

Read Previous

Ghanaians warn against amending law to favour Nigerians

Read Next

MAN: Forex regime puts payment obligations at risk

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *