Ayodele Olalere
Ijede community, one of the local communities located in Ikorodu, a suburb of Lagos State, recently came alive. Not for a political campaign, as politicians are yet to begin such for 2023 elections.
The community, populated by low-income earners was visited by a non-governmental organization, Provide A Meal Nigeria, PAMa Nigeria based NGO concerned by the level of hunger in the country and therefore bringing succour to much less privileged individuals through the distribution of food to local communities.
With a population of over a 200million people, and blessed with natural resources one of which is oil, Nigeria is arguably one of the poorest countries in the world. Reports have it that around 110 million Nigerians, representing over 60 per cent of the total population, live below the poverty line.
In every part of the country, many Nigerians have turned to beggars with the sight of malnourished children becoming a daily occurrence.
Its no gainsaying levels of hunger in Nigeria are alarming as many number of lives are lost each year to malnourishment and hunger.
Population below minimum level of dietary energy consumption shows the percentage of the population whose food intake is insufficient to meet dietary energy requirements continuously.
Nigeria hunger statistics shows in 2018, there was 12.60% , a 0.7% increase from 2017 . The 2017 statistics was 11.90% which was 0.1% decline from 2016. . For 2016, the hunger data indicates 12.00% which was an increase of 0.9% from 2015 while 2015 s ration was 11.10%, a 1.3% increase from 2014. Therefore, it was pertinent to say various organizations, both local and International saw the need to ensure the hunger gap between the rich and the poor is bridged through voluntary distribution of food to remote parts of the country.
Nigeria is one of many food-deficient countries in Africa, and a food crisis such as Nigeria’s causes distressing levels of stunting in children and is correlated with high rates of poverty.
Organizations such as Provide A Meal Nigeria, is of the believe that when hungers are tackled, the level of productivitiy of Nigerians would increase.
The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal, SDG, one of which is food focuses on tackling hunger.
While speaking at the distribution of food to residents of Ijede, the Chief Marketing Officer, Provide A Meal Nigeria, Yetunde Ajibade, said the NGO is poised to ensure every Nigerian has access to a meal a day. She added the organization had been in partnership with other private sector to ensure thousands of Nigerians benefits from the initiative.
“This is an initiative organized by Provide A Meal Nigeria, a non profit organization focused on SDG 2 under the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals which is to eradicate poverty and ensuring no child or human go to bed hungry in Nigeria. We have our partners such as GIZ, Lagos State government with other sponsors like Tantalisers, Owonikoko farms, to mention a few who have supported us.We also have HDI, a non profit organization.The goal is to have an impact in this community by tackling hunger,” she said.
Yetunde said having gone round some parts of the country, she had witnessed several cases of people suffering from hunger. According to her , millions of Nigerians go to bed hungry on daily basis, with no hope where their meal would come from.
“Having spent 11 years now pursuing empowerment programmes focused on women, I have seen people going through pains. It’s not something you wish on your worst enemy. If you go into the rural areas and see what people are going through, you realised that what we are complaining about in the city; we are just ungrateful people. I have seen people who have lived on garri(cassava flakes) for about a week and saying they don’t know when they are going to eat proper food. I have seen first hand experience of people going hungry. Imagine a child walking to a mother crying for food and the mother is helpless. It’s a real and pathetic situation,” she lamented.
Though government have been making efforts to improve the agriculture secto, Yetunde said such efforts are not enough to eradicate hunger in the land.
She said food, being a fundamental need of the people should be given more attention by the government as no nation can prosper with hungry citizens.
“It’s obvious if you see the way government is supporting agriculture and farmers; that government need to do more because food is a fundamental human need. If you cannot eat, you cannot think of anything else so how do we develop a nation with hungry people.”
As a way of achieving their objectives, Yetunde said the organization is making use of technology to ensure accountability and transparency in their operations.
At Ijede outreach, 1,500 residents received cooked packaged food from the organization, which was made possible through partnership with Tantalizers, one of Nigeria’s popular food chain.
Yetunde lamented lack of finance which has limited what the organization could do to complement goverment efforts in tackling hunger.
“The unique feature of this initiative is that we encourage transparency and accountability. You are able to see how many people have been directly imparted by the outreach program here today. So individual or organizations can partner with us If you have an organization willing to partner with PAM and donate a thousand meal, you will select your meal vendor. We don’t have cash exchanging hands, we transfer directly to the meal vendor and generate meal code with which the beneficiaries collect their meal code. It’s a seamless process to encourage transparency.
“ There is misconception that giving back is only for the rich. Many believes they need to have more than enough before we think of people around us. There is saying that givers never lack. If your neighbor is hungry, the first person they will come for is you if they don’t have food to eat. People should not think they cannot do anything. With a thousand naira, someone would go to bed with a meal. With that, you have been able to change someone’s life. Every time we go out to give food, you see people jumping over each other.
We are not encouraging laziness or irresponsibility in any form but the truth is if you have someone who care enough about you to give you food to eat, please care enough about yourself to get something doing so you will be able to provide for others too. When someone lifts you up, empower yourself and lift others up.,” she added.
For those willing to contribute to the initiative, Yetunde said such ones could visit the organization’s website, www. provideameal.ng and make a donation of as little as a thousand naira.
“You can go to our platform WWW.Provideameal.ng. You sign up and create account for yourself and through it you can decide on which charity you want to partner with. What PAM does is to give you direct receipt. We are looking to do more. Hundred percent of your donation goes to the beneficiaries. If you donate a thousand naira worth of meal, we would deliver it to beneficiaries. We are very happy with what we have done now but we know that we can do more.”
She further said the UK based founders of the NGO, Samson Ibitoye and Adekunle Gbagba are passionate about helping the less privileged which has attracted popular food chains like Tantalisers and Chicken Republic to partner with them. She therefore urged well meaning Nigerians to follow suit as the organization is limited in what it could do due to adequate financing.
“ Financing is our major problem. When you reach out for initiative like this, you realise some people are not as interested in doing good but prefer to look good.We would love to partner with government and well meaning Nigerians. The government is trying but if they make use of technology more people could have access to initiatives they are doing.”
Hear her further:” We are signing up a lot of charities. We would be organising initiatives focused on children, men, youths and so on. We have people who are out of jobs and unable to feed. We are also looking at supporting them to sustain themselves till they get employment. We are advising organisations who are sacking people especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. We have these people data and we are sending food to them before they get back on their feet. What we have seen is that some people don’t look hungry, they dress well but they are hungry.
We should love each other more. Many think about themselves alone but we are not created for ourselves alone. We should have compassion. We keep judging ourselves but if there is compassion, the world would be a better place.
We urge government to partner with private sector and International organizations to see how we can eradicate poverty in Nigeria.”
