Hardship: Peter Obi decries Ukraine’s food donation to Nigeria, calls it ‘national disgrace’

• Obi, though commended the Ukrainian authoritoes for supporting Nigeria, said it was a national disgrace that war-torn Ukraine is donating food to Nigeria.

Former Anambra state governor, Peter Obi, has expressed his revulsion and displeasure at the donation of food items to Nigeria by Ukraine.

Ukraine had, last week, donated 25,000 tonnes of wheat as emergency food assistance to 1.3 million vulnerable, crisis-affected people in northeast Nigeria amidst galloping inflation and food price hike.

Reacting to the development, Obi described the eastern Europe country gesture as “disheartening”

Obi, though commended the Ukrainian authoritoes for supporting Nigeria, said it was a national disgrace that war-torn Ukraine is donating food to Nigeria.

He bemoaned the turning of once economically buoyant and an agriculturally-endowed nation like Nigeria to a welfare state that now depends on aide from a country that’s perennially at war.

“It is disheartening that our once economically confident nation, blessed with vast arable land and abundant natural resources, now relies on a war-torn Ukraine for food assistance,” Obi wrote on his twitter page on Monday.

“This national disgrace stems from years of leadership failure, necessitating urgent reflection and a reordering of our national priorities and resource management and allocation.”

Mr Obi added Nigeria “must aggressively reorder our priorities by investing resources in productive sectors like agriculture.”

The former Anambra governor said, “Addressing insecurity is crucial for farmers to return to their fields, enabling a productive manufacturing sector and supporting small businesses.”

For months on end, Nigerians have been grappling with cost of living crisis engendered by galloping inflation and astronomical increase in food prices.

The situation has sparked protests in major towns and cities across the country as citizens took to the streets to make known their dissatisfaction with the precarious and parlous state of the nation.

Over the weekend, residents of the Federal Capital Territory stormed a warehouse and looted foodstuffs. In Katsina a horde of hungry and hardship-battered Nigerians attacked a truck transporting foodstuffs and carted away its contents.