Funmi Olaitan, Ibadan
Researchers from various tertiary institutions across the country yesterday rose from the First International Conference on Pure and Applied Sciences at Ajayi Crowther University, Oyo, calling on the Federal Government and the different states in Nigeria to be more pro-active in their population control and management strategies as a veritable antidote to food security in the country.
The conference which drew academics from different parts of the country expressed reservations over the political will of governments in Nigeria to effectively tackle the issue of food security as manifested in the high rate of continued dependence on food aid from developed countries and foreign donors concluding that “hunger will not be removed by food aid and handouts based on the historic wisdom of a study of all starving nations across the world, both ancient and modern.”
The researchers specifically lamented that “the population numbers in Nigeria are too high compared with the available infrastructure and the welfare package on ground”, stating that this rapid growth can limit increases in per capita income, causing poverty and hunger.
Vice Chancellor of Ajayi Crowther University, Prof. Dapo Asaju, while welcoming the team of researchers, emphasized the urgent need for scientific intervention in changing the living pattern of Nigerians to enable them meet the yearnings of the current global challenges, to avert food crisis in the country.
Speaking in the same vein, Chairman, Local Organising Committee and Dean of the institution’s Faculty of Natural Sciences, Prof, Oyeyemi Oshin, expressed hope that the conference would come up with enduring solutions to Nigeria’s food needs.
Guest speaker at the forum, Prof. Malachy Akoroda, a renowned agronomist from University of Ibadan, maintained that less people or more food is the well-known equation of sufficiency, stressing that only local efforts with external assistance contributing can establish a hunger-free community.
He said, “Where people exceed food supply, widespread hunger and famine results and may die as we have repeatedly experienced in parts of many countries, particularly in the Horn of Africa. The complexity of the hunger debacle in Africa also incriminates many factors apparently unrelated though intricably intertwined. …..Population control and management is needful. There are just some levels or limits to which new houses, schools, stadia, roads, railways, airports, markets, recreation grounds can be established. Each country has a fixed land space. The space determines the carrying capacity as regards food production hectares. Import of food that depends on hard earned foreign exchange is risky when funds dry up. If the human population fills her territory, migration becomes inevitable. The days of empire expansion through the power of might is long past.”
Akoroda, in his presentation titled, “From Hunger and Starvation to Sufficiency: Proffering Solutions to Africa’s Predicament”, then charged Nigerian governments to endeavour to abide strictly by the Maputo Declaration for African Union countries which stipulated spending at least 10 per cent of their national budgets on food and agriculture, noting that this has continued to remain a mirage due to neglect, ignorance and inaction.
“The result of not heeding such proposition has not helped us toward reducing or removing hunger from Africa", he stated.
Plenary sessions at the three-day Conference reviewed issues notably Inclusive Sustainability and Human Capital viz a viz the Sustainable Development Goals; Scientific Research for Food Security and Sustainable Development; Sustainable Development through Women Empowerment, Maternal and Child care; ICT: A Powerful Tool for Poverty Eradication as well as Ethical Issues in Biomedical Research, among others.
