Just recently, Nigeria’s Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Sabo Naono, said that there was “no hunger” in the country. Addressing a press briefing to celebrate the 2019 World Food Day in Abuja, he claimed that “… we are producing enough to feed ourselves. I think there is no hunger in Nigeria; there could be inconveniences. When people talk about hunger in this government, I just laugh.”
This is not the first time, When the Minister assumed office earlier in August 2019, he proclaimed infamously that Nigeria was food secure, adding: ‘What we need is to get our acts together and develop the (agricultural) sector.”
Worrying trajectory
This denialism ignores the facts and the reality of millions of Nigerians, many of them children who are malnourished or chronically malnourished as a result of poverty and/or lack of secure access to food, including in the conflict-plagues northeast of Nigeria. As in other parts of the world, hunger in Nigeria affects women and children disproportionately.
According to estimates from the United Nation’s Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), currently more than twenty million Nigerians are malnourished. Hunger has been increasing in recent years, and the country is not on track to meet the African Union’s goal of zero hunger by 2025. The FAO defines hunger or malnourishment as an inability to acquire enough food to satisfy dietary energy requirements. The reality that the Minister denies is that out of 100 Nigerians about twelve are likely to suffer from hunger.
More than 40 percent of children under the age of five are estimated to be affected by stunting, defined as low height to age ratio. Stunting poses serious health problems, but crucially also impairs cognitive development and compromises the economic potential of those affected. Nigeria’s stunting rate is significantly higher than the average for developing countries which is 25 percent. This likely reflects the country’s extremely poor record in access to clean water and improved sanitation which directly affects nutrient intake.
Progress then reversal
Between 1991 and 2011, Nigeria made remarkable progress in reducing hunger. The share of those malnourished fell from over 20 percent to about 6 percent in 2007, thereafter remaining stable for several years. However, from 2011, progress was reversed. Moreover, due to extremely fast population growth, the absolute number of malnourished Nigerians has been increasing over the past decade.
When it comes to food production, the Minister’s claim about Nigeria producing enough to feed its population and that food is accessible and affordable is also misleading. By definition, food security is reached when all people at all times have access to food to live a healthy and productive life. In other words, food needs to be available, people must be able to afford it and also gain access to it physically. Moreover, food use and stability over time also shape food security.
Nigeria does not have food security. Various experts have stressed this and refuted the Minister’s blunt statement, including Prof. Bamidele Omitoyin, a former Dean of Renewable Natural Resources, University of Ibadan and Dr Abayomi Olaniyan, Executive Director of the National Horticultural Research Institute. The 2019 Global Report on Food Crises identified Nigeria and more specifically northern Nigeria as one of the places that is likely to remain among the world’s most severe acute food crises this year.
The International Futures system (IFs), an integrated modelling platform housed at the University of Denver, forecasts that by 2030, close to 280 million people could live in Nigeria. Demand for food will grow, but on current trajectory the country will not produce enough food to satisfy it. Despite its vast agricultural potential, agricultural imports surpass agricultural exports by a vast margin. Nigeria’s food instability, in terms of net import dependence, has been steadily increasing.
Net imports currently account for about 14 percent of total agricultural demand (in tons of all production, including crops, meat and fish), up from roughly six percent in 2000 and slightly above the 12 percent average for sub-Saharan Africa. According to IFs, by 2030, net imports could account for as much as a third of total agricultural demand. Food production needs to increase and at the same time, Nigeria needs to reduce dependency on net imports.
Whilst the recent ramping up government’s food imports ban could potentially underpin domestic agricultural production over the medium to longer term, assuming sensible policy sequencing in support, this will do nothing to alleviate the extant food insecurity challenge.
Reaching potential
Eliminating hunger and achieving food security in Nigeria is possible. However, it is a complex task that requires carefully calibrated interventions on multiple fronts involving multiple stakeholders. It is the government’s responsibility to identify the best levers in terms of policies, investments, technologies as well as human and institutional capacities to eliminate hunger and make Nigeria food secure.
On the supply side, arable land under cultivation needs to expand, yields need to increase and so do livestock head sizes. In addition, post-harvest losses need to be reduced. On the demand side, people’s access to food must improve. This can only happen via growing incomes, consumer subsidies, price management, school feeding programmes, support to under-five children and mothers, and also pregnant women.
It is difficult to see how this can be achieved given that with N138.48 billion allocation, the Ministry of Agriculture gets only 1.34 percent of the 2020 budget. After all, Nigeria is a signatory to the 2003 Maputo Declaration on Agriculture and Food Security in Africa where African Heads of state committed to allocate at least 10 percent of the national budget to agriculture.
Failing appropriate and mutually reinforcing interventions millions of Nigerians will continue to be hungry in the future. It is inconceivable that the Minister finds such prospects laughable.
JULIA BELLO-SCHÜNEMANN
Dr Schünemann is senior associate, Good Governance Africa (GGA-Nigeria). She holds a PhD in International Relations from the Universidad Complutense, Madrid and has held senior research positions at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) in Pretoria and FRIDE in Madrid. Her expertise includes policy forecasting (using the International Futures model) and conflict analysis.
