About 10 agencies under the presidency will spend a total of N485, 591million to have refreshments and meals this year.

This is contained in the 2024 budget appropriation act, recently assented to by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

In the expenditure document, State House Headquarters will spend N176.6m for refreshment, State House Operations got N33.7m for the same purpose and State House Liaison Office Lagos got N20.6m.

Also, the Chief of Staff Office will use N20.7m for refreshments and meals, the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) will spend N15m, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) will spend N71.3m and the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) got N46.4m to spend on refreshment.

Similarly, the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) will spend N26.8m on refreshments and meals, while the Nigerian Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI) has got N23.8m and the Office of the Chief Economic Adviser to the President will spend N5.1m on refreshment and meals in 2024.

If the amount budgeted for the refreshment of just a few officials and their visitors is to be shared among all Nigerians, each Nigerian will go home with N2.1m.

Nigeria’s current total population is 226,570,138 as of Monday, January 8, 2024.

Food prices have spiralled beyond what millions of Nigerians can afford, forcing tens of them to turn to begging to eat.

This year, Nigeria is expected to see about 26.5m people grappling with high levels of food insecurity, as disclosed by the federal government and its partners during the unveiling of the October 2023 Cadre Harmonisé analysis on food insecurity.

Moreover, approximately 9m children are at risk of suffering from acute malnutrition or wasting. Of these, an alarming 2.6m children could face Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM) and require critical nutrition treatment.