By Aladeokomo Babatunde S
Food insecurity, a major problem in Nigeria affects millions of individuals who find it difficult to get adequate food and nourishment. The United Nations lists inflation, rising food costs, violence, and climate change as some of the major factors contributing to food insecurity in Nigeria.
According to UN projections, if immediate action is not taken, around 25 million Nigerians might be hungry between June and August of 2024. From the estimated 17 million individuals who are now at risk of food insecurity, this is a predicted rise.
This worrying trend is mostly caused by ongoing violence, rising food costs, inflation, and climate change. Persistent violence in Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe (BAY) and armed banditry and abduction in areas like Katsina, Sokoto, Kaduna, Benue, and Niger have hindered access to food.
The National Emergency Management Agency reports that extensive flooding during the rainy season of 2022 destroyed over 676,000 hectares of farmlands, reducing harvests and raising the possibility of food insecurity for households nationwide.
One consequence of climatic variability and change in Nigeria is floods. Future weather patterns are expected to be more harsh, which will impact food security.
Currently, 3 million people live in the northeastern BAY states out of a total of 17 million that face food insecurity. In the lean season, this number is predicted to rise to 4.4 million in the absence of prompt action.
This includes very vulnerable populations who have been displaced and those who have returned and are already fighting to survive amid a massive humanitarian catastrophe that is requiring aid for 8.3 million people.
The most susceptible group to food insecurity is children. Six out of the 17 million Nigerians who lack access to food now reside in Borno, Adamawa, Yobe, Sokoto, Katsina, and Zamfara states and are under the age of five.
When acute malnutrition is the cause, children are in grave danger of dying. It is projected that the number of children experiencing acute malnutrition will rise from 1.74 million in 2022 to 2 million in 2024 in the BAY states alone.
To ensure that disadvantaged children have access to life-saving nutrition services, UNICEF is investing in scaling up preventive nutrition interventions in collaboration with the government and partners like MSF and ALIMA.
In the six aforementioned states, UNICEF and its partners were able to provide life-saving nutrition assistance to around 650,000 children in 2022. The northwest, including the states of Katsina, Zamfara, and Sokoto, is becoming a hotspot for malnutrition and food insecurity. 2.9 million people are thought to be severely food insecure at the moment (Cadre Harmonisé Phase 3 or worse.)
The issue of food insecurity in Nigeria is one of the elements of a failed state. This has been on the rise right from pre-independent Nigeria through the post-independent era. Virtually every successive government over the years has promised to diversify the economy of the country from oil-based to agricultural but this has never surpassed the level of idealization and policy formation. Food security, food production and massive food processing are key to the survival of the largest democracy in Africa and the largest black race in the world.
Going by the definition of food security, we can have a clear understanding of what food insecurity is all about and the problem facing Nigeria presently in this area. According to EC-FAO food security exists in any territory when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.
If there is anything to go by in this definition one can arguably states that Nigeria has never in her history attained the level of food security. This issue of concern therefore cast an aspersion on the kind of leadership we have got in the last six decades of this nation.
The fundamental of protecting lives and properties among other oaths for political office holders that ought to lead into an integral part of national security has also called into question the ability and integrity of all who had taken such sacred national oath.
To domesticate the definition of food security and test-run it on the present realities of the increasing prices of commodities and food items amid the shortage of food in Nigeria, we shall limit our scope to planning alone as a necessity for the attainment of food security status in Nigeria. It is worthy of note that the issue of food security is multidimensional with so many approaches and concerns that keep evolving daily.
Over the years, government intervention at every level at attaining food security majorly revolves round policies to provide access to seedlings, provision of incentives and more concentration on crop production only. Government and stake holders in this sector of the economy have collectively done less in terms of planning.
With effective planning and implementable policy in place, the issue of food insecurity in Nigeria can improve above 100% in the space of four democratic years. Food planning in this regard will include but not be limited to transportation planning, data appreciation, price standardization and regulation, Research, science, and technology. All these key fundamentals of food planning are germane to national food security and by extension national security.
Although Nigeria no doubt is facing a harsh economic meltdown as a result of widespread insecurity, corruption, over-dependence on oil revenue, and failed foreign policies one can argue differently that the issue at hand in terms of food insecurity is more of food shortage orchestrated by poor planning and not of low production as it is been painted in the public eye.
One of the crucial elements of food planning for food security is distribution. Nigeria’s current food shortage is on the rise because, among many other things, no authority is closely monitoring food distribution at reasonable intervals across the country. In any case, food distribution monitoring cannot be easy unless there is leverage on data science and technology. We experience a lot of food wastage daily across the country as a result of ineffective food distribution.
Furthermore, effective food distribution also leverages an effective transportation system. Effective food planning is not only key to food availability but also key to food accessibility. If there is no plan to access the available food, production in the first place has been rendered useless.
The government must double its efforts in providing an efficient transportation system that connects producers easily to consumers. If we keep relying on other infrastructural deficits we have in our transportation sector, we may never attain the level of food security as a nation. In essence, if there are no proper data on food mobility some part of the country will be witnessing extreme food shortage while another part is witnessing wastage.
For Nigeria to attain food security we also need to pay serious attention to secondary and tertiary production. In this regard, we must leverage on our capacity in primary production and invest heavily in food processing and storage. At the present most of our production is still seasonal and since we have little capacity for processing and storage, we experience a lot of wastage at this level of production therefore contributing heavily to national food insecurity. A plan for massive food processing and food storage will go a long way to rescue this nation from rising hunger.
Besides effective food distribution, transportation planning, data appreciation, food processing, and food storage, planning also involves regulations that can bring about standardization, price regulation and customer protection. A standardized price will help citizens get value for their money and it will also mitigate the issue of retailers overshooting the price of food items for selfish gains. If there are no price and quality regulations consumers may find it difficult to access quality foods needed for their well-being while the same amount of food is hoarded somewhere to waste.
Finally, there is no way we can attain food security in this generation neglecting the input of research, science, and technology. Our academic and research institutions which ought to be the initiators of solutions that will drive national food security seem to have been running a parallel objective from the ultimate goal of governance for too long and the Government that is supposed to be the financial and the beneficiary of academic research have refused to fund these institutions. For us to lift Nigeria out of hunger, food shortage and food insecurity, government and research institutions will have to work harmoniously just as the public and private sectors will have to agree to.
In all, the government will have to take a bold step by leading the way through deliberate appreciation of data, funding of research institutions, provision of infrastructure, and empowering food regulatory agencies to demand standardized products with reasonable prices from producers.
Aladeokomo Babatunde S, is a Food Security Campaigner and Human Rights advocate wrote from Lagos Nigeria
aladeocommon@gmail.com
