The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has linked shortage of food and hunger in the country to insecurity, climate change, inefficient subsistent and seasonal farming practices. The Governor of CBN, Olayemi Cardoso made this known while speaking at the joint Senate committee on Finance, Banking and other Financial Institutions and National Planning. He said that the apex bank was working tirelessly with all, including the leadership of the National Assembly, to bring lasting solution to the issues bedeviling the nation.
According to him, “The upward trend of food inflation is primarily due to supply shocks caused by insecurity, climate-induced factors such as flood and rainfall shortage in some cases, inefficient subsistent and seasonal farming practices as well as importation bottle necks that have impacted the prices of imported food items. Anecdotal evidence indicates that recent exchange rate volatility has fuelled more foreign demands for agricultural products, especially, from neighbouring countries. While this presents an opportunity to expand and boost agricultural output, hence creating jobs in the sector, supply constraint exacerbated demand by instigating more inflationary pressures.
Speaking on the inflation rate in the country, Cardoso said, “In December 2023, the economic landscape revealed significant shifts. The headline inflation stood at 28.92% in December 2023 as against 28.20% in November, food inflation was 33.93% as against 32.84% in November, while core inflation was 23.06% as against 22.38% in October 2023. On what the Federal Government and the CBN have been doing, he said, “the emergency committee on food security, set up by the President, has been taking a number of measures and we see an end in sight to the persistent rise on food inflation. Meanwhile, the Managing Director of Bama Farms Limited, Prince Wale Oyekoya, stated that the government needs to pump more money into the sector and monitor the funds to ensure it goes directly to real farmers and not political or portfolio farmers.
“Encourage more youths with modern tools to go into farming to replace the aged farmers. Adding values to farm produce is another way the government needs to look into. He also urged the government to provide irrigation system to farm all-year-round and do away with rain fed system that we are used to in Nigeria and take the intervention funds away from political farmers to real farmers. He called for the provision of storage facilities to curb spoilage and post-harvest losses and that all silos in the hand of the Federal Government should be released to private investors to store the grains after harvest.
Speaking further, he said the government should ban all importation of food that could be produced in the country, and that Nigerians should eat what we grow and grow what we eat, adding that value chain in terms of processing must be encouraged in all the 774 local governments. Oyekoya also noted that the government needs a sound policy towards the agriculture sector and to also conform to Maputo Agreements, which Nigeria is a signatory, to set aside 10 per cent of their budget to the agriculture sector in order to feed the nation’s exploding population, which Nigeria has not been doing. To mitigate hunger and attain food security, the National President, All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), Kabir Ibrahim said that the nation need to take a number of measures comprising climate smart agricultural production, all year-round production, embracing mechanisation and maximising investment in agribusiness as well as deploying science, technology and innovation including agricultural biotechnology.
“On a broad basis, this becomes the elixir for insufficiency in the optimisation of productivity so that availability takes control of scarcity, but in Nigeria, what we are experiencing is really weak purchasing power of our currency not necessarily food unavailability or insufficiency. He said that productivity must be optimised by deploying a regime of sustainable subsidy for all means of production in the short-term and that in the long-term; the nation must expand and deploy education as well as technology in agricultural production. “We must also encourage processing, minimise post-harvest losses, maximum distribution, and organise as well as control consumption thereby minimising waste”. He equally observed that when security is restored, farmers would produce optimally and there will be supply and the food demand of Nigerians would be met.
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