Economic Hardship: Start The Importation Of Food Now, TUC Tells FG

The Trade Union Congress of Nigeria (TUC) has urged the Federal Government to begin the importation of food to mitigate the soaring prices of food across the country.

The President, TUC, Festus Osifo, disclosed this during a press conference on the economic hardship ravaging the country on Monday in Abuja.

For osifo Nigerians have never witnessed this level of hardship before even during military regimes, adding that the problems are not unconnected to the government’s poor patronage of locally made products and services, and lack of capable hands at the helm of affairs.

“Nigerians must live to see tomorrow before we can understand how beautiful a government policy is. The national pride of striving to achieve food sufficiency locally should be temporarily relaxed. Governments at all levels should immediately purchase sufficient quantities of food items from different parts of the world and share them with vulnerable Nigerians.

“Importing food from abroad at this point will assist to reduce the hyper-inflation of food in the country. FG should allow importation of food items for Nigerians consumption within the next two weeks.”

Osifo advised President Bola Tinubu to, as a matter of urgency, strengthen the economic management team of his administration and also look beyond party or tribal lines to head hunt the best Nigerians throughout the world who could sit down and develop homegrown solutions to the hardship menace.

Osifo however noted that the call for a new minimum wage is part of the solutions proffered by the union to address the economic hardship in the country.

He said the falling value of the naira against the dollar in the FX market has further eroded the value of the minimum wage.

The TUC leadership is thus calling for the passage and implementation of a new minimum wage law that reflects the current economic realities.

He called on  the Federal Government’s economic team to work towards a more realistic rate of the naira to dollar, which they pegged between N500 and N800 to the dollar. The union also recommended a clamping down on currency speculators, especially those online, who they say have made remittances from abroad drop.