The Northern Elders Forum, (NEF), has said increasing fuel price would worsen hunger in the country. He cautioned that any increase in fuel price would force many Nigerians into desperation.
Spokesman of the forum,Hakeem Baba-Ahmed said: “Government is committed to raising the price of fuel. One of the worst things you can do is to create huge additional hunger around the cost of living, cost of fuel, cost of prices, forcing the people more into desperation and you want to have an election a few months after that.
“The more unhappy the citizens, the more they feel they don’t have a stake in the system. Food security is serious and the possibility of hunger has never been more real”.
He asked: “What qualifies the current class of governors to become governors? How does a country of 230 -250 million people end up with the kind of people with so much power as governors? There must be something really broken about our political system, our democracy that it isn’t working. It is throwing up the wrong people to occupy and carry huge powers.
“90 percent of our governors have no business being anywhere near power. And I say this because they don’t have the preparation, the background, the competencies to be governors, and yet because of the democratic processes they won the election, So, that’s the first thing. We have the wrong people wielding power over people that are desperate for new and effective leadership.
“We need an administration that should pay attention to the integrity of the 2023 elections and security is a serious possibility”.
Baba-Ahmed described the cost of governance as too much, saying “From the north, we have 19 governors, legislature, the judiciary, the cost of governance alone can solve the problems of banditry and kidnapping and poverty and education”.
