Economic Crisis: Tinubu Govt Begins Free Grains Distribution Next Week

The Government of President Bola Tinubu has announced a plan to distribute 42,000 metric tons of cereals across the country beginning next week.

The aim is to alleviate the suffering of Nigerians who are currently undergoing serious hardship and hunger.

Governor Mohammed Bago of Niger State announced this on Thursday after meeting with Minister of Agriculture and Food Security Abubakar Kyari in Abuja.

The governor suggested that the North Central State would serve as a pilot state before other states joined.

He said:

 “We are here to discuss with the Minister of Agriculture and Food Security with respect to the visit of Mr President to Niger State as regards the commissioning of the mechanisation process that they have been able to provide for agriculture.

“We also discussed the palliatives from the Federal Government in terms of food distribution from all the grain reserves that we have across the country using Niger State as a pilot in the North-Central so that it can commence in earnest.

“The distribution will commence by next week; what we are saying is that Niger State has provided itself as a pilot state in terms of giving the dividends of democracy with respect to agriculture, and as such, our sister states are coming on board.”

In other news, Dele Alake, Minister of Solid Minerals Development, has promised Nigerians that President Bola Tinubu is going to transform the country.

He stated that Tinubu would turn around the country the same way he did in Lagos State.

In a statement issued by his media assistant, Segun Tomori, Alake expressed confidence that Nigeria will soon overcome its current economic difficulties.

According to Alake, the suffering is due to Nigeria’s ongoing “gestation period” of economic restructuring and reforms.

Alake stated that President Bola Tinubu remains committed to revitalizing Nigeria’s economy and positioning it for long-term growth through his Renewed Hope plan.

According to him, the president has a track record of changing a region’s economic tides, just as he did when he was governor of Lagos State.

“Going down memory lane to the experience in Lagos state, the then governor Tinubu in 1999, met a state that was almost insolvent, with a monthly Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) of N600 million,” Alake said.

“And a wage bill of over N1.1 billion monthly, with little or no resources to cater to infrastructure and other sectors of the economy.

“President Tinubu took similar measures in Lagos as he is taking in Nigeria, to turn the tide and financially re-engineer the state. Today, the state is the fifth largest economy in Africa, bigger than most African countries.

“What we are going through is the gestation period of reforms and policies for economic restructuring and like the President will say, it is like throes of pregnancy, that a pregnant woman goes through. After delivery, she heaves a sigh of relief.”