18/09/2025
Today’s episode on Boulevard with Gbolahan Badru
TRENDING: President Tinubu Sacks Hunger!
I said in one of my previous columns that the average Nigerian politician is a heaving hive of Pinnochio-esque fecundity, straining indefatigably to give birth to the next monstrosity of a lie. Nigeria is but ‘a republic of lie’. The President had to fly to France to remember that Nigerians have been starving. The wails in Zamfara, the empty stalls in Osun and Lagos, the fainting children in classrooms in Awka were not enough to paint a caricature of what the country seems to have been thrown into to him. Instead, it took a newspaper in Paris, reporting on Nepal, for hunger to suddenly become a state of emergency. And so, from the comfort of foreign chandeliers, the President commanded his NEC to “bring down food prices,” as though hunger were a stubborn appointee awaiting sack or as if markets had bowed to decrees spoken in French air.
This is the theatre we call governance where Nigeria has become a nation that refuse to be ruled by the cries of its citizens but by the embarrassment of its leaders abroad. Hunger, in their hands, is not an emergency, but a political weapon, unleashed or withdrawn depending on which headlines must be silenced, which crowds must be pacified, and which elections must be won.
We have seen it too many times. Food subsidies appear like Christmas hampers in seasons of political momentum, vanishing as quickly as the ink dries on ballots. The farmer in Benue, who cannot afford fertilizer, becomes invisible until he is needed to decorate a campaign rally with his dusty hoe. Hunger seems to be a calculated political weapon fashioned against the long throats of the average Nigerian populace. It is rationed out like an ATM card, dispensing just enough hope to keep the masses docile, waiting for that which will never come.
When the President thunders at NEC to “bring down food prices,” it sounds like the order of a landlord who has forgotten that the roof is leaking. To the president, his thunderous order might maybe, just maybe be enough to fix the collapse of supply chains, the unchecked greed of middlemen, the insecurity that has chased farmers from their lands, and the policies that dance Skelewu with inflation. And in another show of presidential gauche, the president — oh sorry!— our elected monarch in A*o Villa has issued a democratic decree, as though hunger listens to bulletins, publications released in the Official Gazette or those vituperations in Bayo Onanuga's mass of junks which he refers to as presidential memos.
In this part of the world, hunger is governance’s oldest accomplice. Nigeria has rice pyramids in Abuja and empty pots in Maiduguri. This weaponization of poverty has become a governmental ritual. They weaponize scarcity, first to soften resistance, then to buy loyalty. They know, and it’s their plan that a hungry man may curse, but he cannot march for long. A mother with an empty pot has no energy for protest. And so, hunger becomes the silent police of the ruling class, policing stomachs more effectively than any squad of baton-wielding officers.
If you are largely concerned about the message of this week’s episode, you may take a walk through Mile 12, Oyigbo or Bodija markets and you will see this politics in its raw, fresh and undiluted form. Women bargaining with trembling voices, stretching ₦1,000 across a week. Traders who swear prices change every sunrise, because “the government has spoken again.” Hardworking men who now drink garri with no sugar, calling it “ a survival technique. These are not just economic hardships, but tools of control and dominance. It’s a calculated weaponry. Every spike in tomato prices is a silent reminder that executive orders don’t cook soups, tomatoes do!
The President seems to have found his lost voice in France. The one who could not hear the grumbling bellies in Zamfara could hear the cries of Nepal in Paris. He who could not answer the farmers chased from Borno fields by bandits found compassion when hunger was described in foreign ink. Is it that Nigerian hunger does not speak English loud enough or does not even speak good English at all ? Or that Paris chandeliers brighten the conscience in ways Abuja’s darkness cannot? We ask pathetically.
The sarcasm of it all is unbearable. As though Nigeria were a sitcom where policies are plot twists and citizens are unpaid extras. Today, hunger is sacked. Tomorrow, insecurity may be announced to have been transferred to another jurisdiction. Next week, poverty may be queried for “gross misconduct.” This is how unseriousness mocks our national conscience.
We have cloaked hunger in the gowns of a religious duty- we call it fasting. The “great Nigerian students" in public tertiary institutions share a plate with three friends and call it “bonding.” Nay! We are a people who baptize pain with new names because our leadership baptizes failure with new decrees.
One wonders, will food prices really “come down” because the President has ordered the NEC to do so? Will the yam tuber, insulted daily by transport costs, suddenly apologize and sell itself cheaper? Will the wicked twin of hunger called insecurity suddenly retreat because NEC has been scolded by the President?
I think this episode should be better understood as this: In 2025, the President went to France, read about Nepal, and remembered that Nigerians are starving. And from that foreign capital, he issued the most sarcastic order ever heard of a nation’s leadership, “Bring down food prices.” If governance were that easy, perhaps unemployment could be abolished by WhatsApp broadcast, insecurity defeated by a trending hashtag, and corruption sacked with a memo. Ayebo! Ayeba!
