The national secretary of Labour Party (LP), Alhaji Umar Farouk Ibrahim, has said the party is petrified over the stampede to death of about 65 Nigerians in the last few days in Oyo, Anambra and the FCT.
Ibrahim in a statement said the stampede had become too many and the loss of lives at a time when
Nigeria was not facing any natural disaster was a pointer to the fact that hunger could be the worst epidemic a people could face.
Citing a World Bank report, he said in 2023, the poverty rate in Nigeria was estimated to be 38.9%, with 87 million Nigerians living below the poverty line. But presently, the poverty rate in Nigeria is estimated to be 40.7%, thus making Nigeria the second-largest poor population in the world after India.
He said it is only poverty that makes some Nigerians go scooping fuel from accident scenes, resulting in deaths from infernos on several occasions last year.
Similarly, he said, the National Bureau of Statistics survey revealed that more than two million people were kidnapped in Nigeria last year and Nigerians paid a cumulative $1.42 billion to kidnappers within the same period.