Nigeria In The Face Of Food Insecurity

Food insecurity has been variously defined as the lack of access to enough or adequate good, healthy and culturally appropriate food for a nation or community.

Having said that, therefore, it becomes clearer to see and understand that Nigeria is currently faced with the possibility as well as the reality of experiencing food shortage also known as food insecurity.

The North as we know it, has over the years done very well in terms of food production so much so that it was able to attain self-sufficiency and even ‘export’ to other parts of the country and even outside.

A combination of disturbing factors like increasing cases of farmers/herdsmen clashes in the Middle Belt or the North Central; the increasing cases of armed banditry and killings in the North West; and the illicit activities of terrorism by Boko Haram in the North East have turned the fear of potential food insecurity in the country into stark reality.

Consequently, disturbed by the spate of farmers/herdsmen clashes in Benue State, for example, Governor Samuel Ortom found it necessary to warn of an impending food shortage in Nigeria. He noted that a huge swath of farmland in his state has been abandoned for fear of clashes.

This was way back in the year 2018. So, quantifying the country’s loss in monetary terms, former Head of State Abdussalami Abubakar hinted that Nigeria lost USD13.7 billion worth of crops and livestock annually in Benue, Plateau, Kaduna and Taraba States alone due largely to farmers/herdsmen clashes.

There is also the issue of increased inflation in the country by which many Nigerians cannot literally afford the scarce food whose prices have skyrocketed. This inflationary trend, pundits believe, is being aggravated by some unpopular and insensitive government policies which include unabated increases in fuel pump prices, electricity tariff and even the Value Added Tax (VAT).

Also tenable as a factor for the food insecurity is the increasing spate of armed banditry and kidnappings in the North West, as farmers have generally abandoned their farmlands for fear of being abducted for ransom or for being killed out rightly.

The unpalatable news throughout the North West on a daily basis is that of whole villages being displaced by armed bandits and people taken hostages by some hoodlums who later ask for mindboggling amounts for ransom. As a result, the farmers are scared out and away from their farmlands, that is if they are lucky to flee alive. Just a similar scenario is the case in the North East, where the perpetrators of the heinous crimes are the Boko Haram members.

It is sad to note, however, that these conflicts have collectively and individually contributed to seriously impede the ability of the country to attain self- sufficiency in food production.

No wonder a few months ago the Food And Agricultural Organisation (FAO) indicated that 7 million Nigerians would experience food shortage between the months of May and August 2020. The report further stated that states like Adamawa, Bauchi, Benue, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Niger, Plateau, Sokoto and Zamfara would face food and nutrition crises.

Similarly, in the month of September 2020 the FAO again warned that with over 200 million population, Nigeria remains the most food insecure country in Africa and in the world. The report also noted that food insecurity in Nigeria is made worse by prolonged ethnic, religious conflicts and organised crimes by some bandits, which has greatly affected farmers working on their fields.

Also, the FAO report mentioned floods and drought as other factors contributing to the low agricultural output in the country, while the novel coronavirus is also mentioned to have triggered low agricultural production as well as surge in the prices of agricultural commodities.

Grim as these revelations are, some Nigerian professionals are of the view that FAO statistics are grossly misleading, explaining that the data from the National Bureau of Statistics has shown that 21.7 million Nigerians are unemployed in the second quarter of 2020, with the youth numbering over 13.9 million currently unemployed.

There are also about 2 million refugees living in IDP camps scattered all over the country. This category of Nigerians actually has no access to food as they remain dependent on handouts from Non-Governmental Organisations and other relevant government agencies.

Now, the explanation is that when all these categories of the unemployed and those in the IDP camps are put together with the FAO figures, the number of Nigerians affected by the food shortage will be outrageously large.

In the light of the foregoing, therefore, DESERT HERALD believes that the Federal Government must as a matter of necessity improve the security situation with a view to ensuring that farmers returned to their farmlands for production.

Also, the Federal Government should intensify deliberate efforts towards a drastic shift from the traditional subsistence farming using crude implements to mechanized farming involving machines and other modern technology so as to boost production in both quality and quantity.

Furthermore, the Federal Government should provide affordable storage facilities as a means of preventing or reducing wastages, especially of the perishables and even dry products. And most importantly, the Federal Government must consider giving out adequate palliatives to affected Nigerians as well as opening up its strategic grains reserves for sale at much subsidized prices.

Doing this will reduce and neutralize the hunger and the general effects of the food shortage in the land. This is a must if the government wants to be seen as being truly and meaningfully sensitive to the welfare of its citizens.