Recently, Nigeria has been going through a lot. Violent protests and looting of Federal Government warehouses where food items are kept have become prominent. Efforts by the Nigerian Customs Service to auction seized food items such as rice left four persons dead. A major reason why our people are terribly hungry is that agricultural production in the country faces security challenges ranging from sectarian conflicts and displacement of farmers from their farmlands, among others.
All sorts of conditional cash transfers and palliatives by state governments have now become the order of the day. The Minister of Budget and Economic Planning, Atiku Bagudu, also announced Federal Government’s commitment at ensuring adequate nutrition and food security for citizens with the empowerment of 250 vulnerable smallholder farmers in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja. How far can these temporary reliefs go? Recall that the World Health Organisation (WHO), at the World Food Summit in 1996, declared that “Food security exists 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”.
A 2023 World Food Programme publication titled, ‘Nigeria Hunger Map’, had estimated that 24.9 million Nigerians are in an acute or critical stage of hunger, which it categorised as an emergency, 85.8 million Nigerians are said to have insufficient food consumption patterns while approximately nine million children are said to be at risk of suffering from acute malnutrition. To paint a clearer picture of the scenario, the latest projection by The Cadre Harmonisé, an initiative focused on food and nutrition analysis, said that year 2024 could bring about sharp rise from the 18.6 million people that are vulnerable to food scarcity.
To change these narratives, governments at all levels must go beyond rhetoric and adopt multiple strategies to address food insecurity. These strategies include enacting realistic and achievable public policy that would prioritise agricultural development, and avoid paying lip service to this critical sector. Since hunger cannot be tackled amid insecurity, it is important for the government to quell terrorism, herders-farmers clash that had driven farmers off their farmlands. It is when these strategies are put in place alongside properly-monitored distribution of palliatives to those in dire need, not middlemen.
Food security is a national security priority, hence the declaration of a state of emergency by the Federal Government on this sector. To move forward, legal backing and legislative frameworks that would make farmers to get subsidies and cheap credits from banks to acquire modern agricultural equipment, should be accessible. FarmingFarmersFarms urges the government to put conducive environment in place that would encourage more investments in the sector. It is truly hoped that when these policies are implemented with the support of other stakeholders that the growing culture of relying on palliatives would give way to real empowerment by fighting hunger and agriculture would take its pride of place in Nigeria.
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