MUHAMMED Sa’ad Abubakar, sultan of Sokoto, says the laziness of people is responsible for hunger in the land.

According to Daily Trust , the sultan said this at the 22nd annual Ummah convention in Sokoto.

He was responding to a comment by Ahmad Bello, chairman of the Shura committee of the National Islamic Centre, who told the federal government to address the “extreme hunger” in the land.

“The chairman, Shura committee talks about hunger in the land but let me make it clear that we are hungry because we are lazy,” the sultan was quoted to have said.

Bello had earlier said: “Let us be very frank and blunt about this. There is hunger, extreme hunger in the land. There is no better evidence of this than the millions of our hapless children, all victims of cruel parental neglect, who go about begging for food from households, on streets, or just eating out of dustbins.

“Our political and spiritual leaders must do something about this, and urgently too, as it would be a crime, a sin and a folly not to do so.”