Mr. Olatunbosun Oyintiloye, a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), urged the president to urgently address the issue of high cost of food items in the country.
He said to news men on Sunday in Osogbo, that Nigerians were hungry and living below the poverty line.
According to him, many household struggle to have up to three meals because some food items were becoming unaffordable to the masses.
The APC leader also urged the president not to ignore the United Nations’ prediction that 82 million Nigerians, which is about 64 per cent of the country’s population, may go hungry by 2030.
He said that the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) data revealed that the food inflation rate in the country hit a record high of 40.66 per cent in May, surpassing the previous month’s of 40.53 increase.
Mr. Oyintiloye added that despite the abundance of natural and human resources the country is blessed with, successive governments failed to drive the economy productively.
According to him, corruption and over-dependency on the system of sharing crude oil revenue by the tiers of government was hindering them from running a productive and self-sufficient economy for the benefit of the masses.
He mentioned that the president was doing everything possible to salvage the situation through various intervention programmes but the impacts of such interventiwons were not improving the situation.