NESG Urges Urgent Action To Address Nigeria’s Food Crisis

The Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) has emphasised the critical need for urgent action to tackle the nation’s persistent structural and socio-economic vulnerabilities, internal conflicts, and elevated unemployment rates. These challenges, it said, pose formidable obstacles to Nigeria’s food system, necessitating a comprehensive and immediate response.

The NESG also outlined urgent measures to address the current food crisis in Nigeria, aiming to develop a comprehensive approach to alleviate hunger and offer practical solutions.

“Nigeria’s Response Must Have a Food Systems Approach that Matches the Scale and Dimensions of the Food Value Chain Risks and Vulnerabilities,” the economic think-tank said in a policy brief on the status of food security in Nigeria titled “Status of Food Security: Dimensioning the Crisis, Policy Options, and Strategic Responses.” 

According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) food inflation stood at 37.92 per cent on a year-on-year basis in February 2024. The number of food-insecure Nigerians increased significantly, from 66.2 million in Q1 2023 to 100 million in Q1 2024 (WFP, 2024), with 18.6 million facing acute hunger and 43.7 million Nigerians showing crisis-level or above crisis-level hunger coping strategies as of March 2024. 

“This unprecedented crisis demands immediate humanitarian, social protection, and food systems responses,” NESG said in the new policy brief.

Nigeria’s National Food Systems Profile shows critical institutional, policy and industrial coordination and governance gaps, which NESG said reflects a fundamental and systemic challenge with national food systems vulnerabilities, which is not a new insight. 

Basing its statement on the federal government’s recent decision to release grains of food in response to the ongoing food crisis, NESG said the amount of stock available in the past and present has proven inadequate, leaving the federal government with little flexibility to respond to crises.

Considering the broad-based actions that underpin the current presidential declaration of a state of emergency on food security, NESG said everything within the collective capacity of the federation and Nigerian society should be put in place to immediately respond to the crisis in the availability, affordability, and accessibility of the national food systems.

It stated that the institutional framework for a national food security response needs to be strengthened immediately to properly dimension the presidential initiatives to match the national demand requirements. The current intervention targets do not match the national food demand profile.

“There is an urgent need for the Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning, the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, and the Coordinating Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, along with key agencies like National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), National Social Safety Net Coordinating Office (NASSCO) and the National Social Investment Agency to define the proper scale, scope and strategy of a National Hunger Response (It is pertinent to note that a national hunger response is not the same as national food systems response – as it is primarily a humanitarian and social protection intervention to get food to Nigerians that will starve right now if we do not reach them),” NESG said in the policy brief that was recently released.

As part of the recommendations, NESG said key performance indicators must be allocated to critical institutions like the National Agricultural Seeds Council, Fertiliser Council, Bank of Agriculture, Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL), Security Agencies, etc. and other risk partners.