(Voice of Paul) – Egypt seemed to unlock one of my love languages that I didn’t know I had – guess what it is – no, not that, you didn’t guess right – it is a buffet! I had a 12-hour stopover in Cairo when I was travelling to Amsterdam earlier this year and one thing that struck me was the abundance of availability of food in Egypt! These guys hosted us in a buffet at two consecutive times, in the night and in the early morning before our departure. Surprisingly, a large percentage of Egypt’s landmass is covered in deserts – dry, hot, and unproductive but guess what, Egypt has an abundance of food but come to Nigeria where we have arable farmlands covering more than 70% of the country’s total landmass, Nigeria can’t feed itself – isn’t that horrifying?
Looking at the face of the wife of the President of Nigeria, one would figured out she was under pressure to do what she did, holding the leafy, greeny vegetables that she grew in her backyard farm at the Presidential residence in Aso Rock, Abuja. In all honesty, Nigeria is blessed with large swathes of arable farmland that can grow virtually any seed planted into it.
With 1.64 Trillion Naira going into the Nigerian budget for security for 2024, the country has experienced several kidnappings of farmers where some of them even lost their most precious possessions. Not only limited to kidnappings, Nigerian farmers also pay staggering farm levies or taxes to bandits who ransack their communities – even with all the technological systems that are freely available, and the monstrous budget for security, the country can’t protect its own farmers. If there is anything more terrible than shameful, we should call it that.
Now, in all of this pandemonium, a supposed global icon of philanthropy, the poster child of the dark world that controls the global economy emerged as the saviour of Nigerian farmers and his name is Bill Gates. In the heat of all the atrocities that are going on in our country with the herdsmen, the farmers, and the skyrocketing high cost of staple foods, Bill Gates gave Nigeria drought-resistant seeds. On the surface, the gesture seemed very helpful but what many people would not see is that it was a successful attempt by Bill Gates to control the food chain of Nigeria.
According to a conspiracy theory, the seeds given by Bill Gates will reconfigure Nigerian farmlands in such a way that the farmlands will only support seeds like that of Bill Gates to grow and produce fruits while natural seeds will struggle to grow and bear fruits and what did this man say recently at a conference? If you can control the food, then you can control the population. The Caucasians never stopped their colonialism, they only changed it to business. As Africans, it is high time our political leaders encourage nationalism and formulate policies that put the interests of Africans at the center and not just running around the world going to sleepy-talky meetings.
