IT is really distressing to know that the policy decision of the Federal Government enunciated since July to suspend the payment of customs duty on the importation of some specific food items with a view to ameliorating hunger in the country has yet to be implemented. That is more than two months after the policy pronouncement. The failure to commence the policy of zero duty on food items has dashed the hopes of millions of Nigerians who had anticipated its immediate implementation in July at the height of hunger in the land. And the hunger has yet to abate. It is even astonishing that the #EndBadGovernance protest in August, which had pervasive hunger as its central grievance, could not sway the government to expedite the implementation of the pro-poor policy. Meanwhile, there were reports that the government policy on zero-duty food importation would translate into the forfeiture of over N188 billion in revenue by the government, but that the forfeiture represented the government’s commitment to prioritising food security over short-term revenue goals. Sadly, the seeming reassurance turned out to be rather presumptuous.
Though not a policy initiative to be relied upon to guarantee food security in the long run, the 150-day duty-free import window for food commodities approved by President Bola Tinubu on July 8 promised to alleviate food inflation in the emergency situation that the country had found itself. It, therefore, beggars belief that government officials do not appreciate the enormity of the problem of food insecurity situation in the country. Even the president who gave the directive seemed to have gone to sleep after the public announcement. Otherwise, a policy that was announced as a reaction to public outcry would not have been treated as if it was a proactive measure over which the government has the luxury of procrastination. During the nationwide protests, the Federal Government announced early in August that the guidelines for suspending customs duty and taxes on imported food items would be introduced one week later. The guidelines were to be developed by the Ministry of Finance. However, the directive could not be implemented because the ministry failed to release the list of beneficiaries for tax exemptions.
Is it not disappointing that the one-week timeline specified by the Federal Government to kick-start the implementation of the policy has yet to come to fruition three months on? Does that mean the presidential directive was a ruse? What could have so preoccupied the Ministry of Finance that it could not give fillip to the implementation of the presidential directive? Could it be that the ministry did not see the official stop-gap measure to tackle food insecurity as a priority? Does the Ministry of Finance realise that its slipshod management of the economy contributed and is still contributing largely to the economic hardship and hunger in the land? And why has the government monitoring mechanisms failed to capture this egregious official lapse and escalate the same to the appropriate authorities? Could it be that the officials involved, including the initiator of the policy, are acting in cahoots just to hoodwink the suffering masses? Did the officials think that hunger and the prices of food items that have gone through the roof would automatically reverse themselves?
The reality is that Nigerians are still hungry and the prices of staple food items are still very high. While the marginal decline in food inflation reported by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) for August may have been occasioned by a modicum drop in the prices of tomato and pepper, the prices of other food items, including onions, are still high. Is the government so detached from the citizenry that it couldn’t realise that with less than three months to the end of the period of grace, nothing has changed and that Nigerians are still groaning under the yoke of hunger and the prohibitive prices of consumer items? Is it so difficult to observe the palpable despondency all over the land? And in any case, if the government knew that Nigerians were hungry in July and wanted to help them, then why is it not asking itself what the people have been eating since then, given that the promised help has not come till now? Why is it difficult to implement policies that are pro-poor? Yet, a pedestrian matter like the new National Anthem was rolled out with the speed of lightening while some other self-serving initiatives like the N160 million cars for the National Assembly members and acquisition of new presidential jets were treated/implemented with dispatch. This cannot be the way to go. It generates bad optics and diminishes government’s claim to be concerned about the welfare of citizens.
If the waiver policy on food imports, which was to take effect from July 15 till December 31 has yet to take off by today, September 30, that is a reflection of the laissez-faire approach to governance. It is most insensitive and disrespectful to the citizenry, especially against the backdrop of the fact that the challenge the policy was meant to address still subsists and is even worsening. It shows, and sadly so, the level of importance the government attaches to ameliorating the plight of the average Nigerian. The citizens’ indignation about the lackadaisical manner their welfare is being officially handled is bound to be further heightened when they realise that the delay in implementing the policy was not caused by any tenable official excuse other than unwarranted and avoidable red tape. Ordinarily, the government should have had a way of monitoring the implementation of this policy, but for unknown reasons, it did not.
We urge the government to implement the zero-duty food importation policy forthwith. The resilience of ordinary Nigerians in the face of economic hardship, particularly hunger occasioned by official policies and government’s sloppy management of the national economy, has been rather unprecedented, and that can only be in the hope that the government will soon rediscover itself and begin to fulfill the very essence of governance in any society. However, the needless delay in bringing succour to Nigerians through the implementation of duty-free importation of food items suggests that the government assumes that the citizens’ threshold for tolerance of pain and avoidable inconvenience is limitlessly elastic. And that is perilously wrong.
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