The Consul General of The Peoples’ Republic of China in Lagos, Chu Maoming, has expressed the importance of sustaining food security, saying, it is sad to see that in many developing countries with food shortage, people do not have enough to eat while in some developed countries, food often goes uneaten and gets dumped in trash cans and the amount of food wasted in developed countries each year is nearly as much as the sum of food produced in sub-Saharan Africa.here...

Maoming shared this observations with Newsmen at the Consulate General’s office in Lagos, where he disclosed that the Chinese government is in earnest efforts to safeguarding global food security, and follows a vision on food security that is centered on ‘self-sufficiency in grain supply and absolute security of staple grains’.

He also said that the Chinese government always attaches great importance to the issue of food security and has managed to feed one fifth of the world’s population with a quarter of the world’s total food production on less than 9 per cent of the world’s arable land, even as a few people in some Western countries have been accusing China of hoarding grains in the international market. “it is unnecessary for China to hoard grains”, he went on, “the year 2021 marks the seventh consecutive year that China secured an annual grain production of over 650 million tonnes.

I must point out that the Chinese government always attaches great importance to the issue of food security. China stands as the world’s largest grain producer and third largest grain exporter. China has the capability and confidence of being self-reliant in securing her own food supply. It is unnecessary for China to ‘hoard grains’ in the international market.”

Also, he said, the achievement is in itself, a significant contribution to world food security. “In the meantime, China has shown its responsibility as a major country and made positive contributions to ensuring global food security. Under the Global Development Initiative put forward by China, food security is one of the eight priority areas of cooperation. China will mobilize efforts from all parties across the globe to draw on each other’s advantages, and pull the strength for achieving all sustainable developmental goals, including food security.

The Federal Government has expressed shock at the looting of some warehouses across the country, begging those who looted medical storage facilities to return the vaccines and other medical consumables they carted away.

Government also explained the inability of some states to complete the distribution of palliatives sent to them by CA-COVID, a private sector coalition supporting the national response against COVID-19.

It urged state governments not to also shut down their isolation centres, saying there is need to be at alert in case of a resurgence of the pandemic.

Speaking at a media briefing by the Presidential Taskforce PTF on COVID-19, Chairman of the PTF and Secretary to the Government of the Federation SGF, Mr Boss Mustapha said CA-COVID worked with the state governments in the distribution of their palliatives.

He said; “Of particular concern to the PTF, is the issue of palliatives found and looted from various warehouses around the country. It is important to make the following clarifications. The Federal Government Palliatives consisted largely of the 70MT of grains released from the Strategic Grain Reserves as well as rice secured from the Nigerian Customs Service. The share for each State were handed over to the State Governments for onward distribution to the citizens.

“The private sector coalition (CACOVID) that has been quite supportive of the Federal Government, worked with the States through the Nigerian Governors’ Forum to determine the quantum of their intervention, which was intended to be effective and equitable. A number of indices were worked out for this purpose. The National Coordinator shall also provide further distinction and the modus operandi for the distribution of the palliatives donated to the states by the coalition”.