A Professor of Soil Physics, Patrick Oladipo Aina has warned of imminent famine in Nigeria if the Government does not act to prevent it urgently.
Professor Aina gave the warning while delivering the 13th Professor Afolabi Adegbola Memorial lecture organised by the Ikorodu Division Resource Development Group (IDRDG) in Lagos few days ago.
In the lecture, entitled “Climate Change and Food Security: The Challenge of transforming agriculture in Nigeria”, Prof. Aina who is the Vice-Chancellor of Ekiti State University, noted that though Nigeria marked her 52nd year of Independence as a nation, He said that it was disheartening and frightening that millions of Nigerians have nothing to eat. Citing India and China each with larger population than Nigeria, the Vice-Chancellor said “India’s population is larger than that of Nigeria so is China to mention just two. In these two nations, food is abundantly available and cheap”.
He lamented that Malaysia, now a prosperous country whose major foreign earning is palm oil got palm seeds that have now turned to gold from Nigeria while Nigeria wallows in poverty.
Professor Aina, therefore, advised that budgets in the various sectors of governments must look favourably towards meeting the hunger threat.
The EKSU helmsman also disclosed that Nigeria has been rated as the largest importer of electricity generators in the World while millions of the populace have no access to electricity at all. He declared: “As many as 100 Million Nigerians do not have access to electricity at all, while the remaining 50 Million of the population receive unstable, unreliable, irregular and poor quality of electricity supply”. Prof. Aina stressed that emission from these generators and others have adverse effects on Climate.
He observed that the present Climate Change in the World was as a result of the combination of factors such as emission from indiscriminate burning of bushes, usage of fertilizer petroleum generated by usage of fossil fuels, diesel aerosol or gas and even carbon monoxide among others.
Prof. Aina also noted that in the developed agricultural economies, the mode of land processing contributed a lot to climate-change and food insecurity. The Vice-Chancellor lamented that these factors have led to increase in high temperature all over the world, rainfall variability leading to drought and dissatisfaction in some regions and flooding in other regions, as well as changes in water level of oceans, rivers, lakes, ponds etc.
The Chairman of the occasion, Professor Fola Lasisi in his remarks observed that the lecture was timely, educative and of immense benefit to all Nigerians. Prof. Lasisi a former Vice-Chancellor of the
University of Uyo commended the Ikorodu Division Human Resource Development Board for organising the lecture.
