Pauperisation and Echoes of ‘Ebi Ńpa Wá’: Food Security Governance Conundrum in Nigeria?

Olusola Olufemi

The echoes of Ebi Ńpa Wá (cry of hunger), economic hardship, suffering are palpable, and hunger protests continues unabated in Nigeria. In January 2024 food inflation and inflation reached approximately 34 per cent and 30 per cent respectively and the release of 102,000 metric tons of food items amid food protests (national hunger protest led by the Nigeria Labour Congress) is just another palliative measure of the stomach infrastructure politics. Complicating this further is the conundrum of governance, where the lines have been blurred between state governance, rebel/insurgent/banditry governance, and food hoarders and smugglers.

Food is one of the most fundamental determinants of health. Food is central to every culture and at the heart of humanity. Nigeria is among the top countries’ hotspots of highest concern level of food insecurity globally and majority of the population are experiencing hunger, unhealthy diets, loss of livelihoods and assets, and acute malnutrition.

The intersection of food security with health, education, housing, environment, climate change, economic and socio-cultural sectors cannot be overemphasized. Food security is also impacted by various interests and governance regimes, and it became a national security issue when the President of Nigeria declared a National Emergency in July 2023 due to record inflation which made food unaffordable and increased malnutrition rates. The President ordered that all matters pertaining to food and water availability and affordability be included within the scope of National Security Council. A National Steering Committee was constituted to lead the development of a National Implementation Strategy for the National Food Systems Transformation Pathways.

Pauperisation of the people, and the governance conundrum in Nigeria must be halted through sustained food security governance. The bedrock of food security governance is engaging epistemic communities through advocacy planning, participation, and collaboration to attain a transformative and inclusive food governance and food secure futures.

AT ISSUE

·         Food Insecurity

The 5A’s (Accessibility, Availability, Acceptability, Agency, and Appropriateness) of food security are at risk in Nigeria. An average Nigerian can no longer afford a meal a day with a minimum wage of N30,000/month (US$16.6/month) and exchange rate of $US1 to N1800. Nigeria is not on track to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. In the 2023 Global Hunger Index, Nigeria ranked 109^th  out of the 125 countries and with a score of 28.3 and hunger level categorized as serious.

The World Food Program indicates 1 in 3households cannot afford a nutritious diet and more than 100 million people report at least moderate food insecurity while Cadre Harmonisé projects 26.5 million Nigerians to be food insecure in 2024. The state of food emergency and high risks of malnutrition in Nigeria can be attributed to rising inflation and food inflation; skyrocketing food, feed, and fertilizer prices; subsidy removal and Naira devaluation; failure of breadbaskets [North East (Borno), Middle Belt (Benue) and SouthWest (Sakí)], hostility, insurgency, banditry, farmer-herdsmen conflict, separatist agitation, climate crisis, urbanization, national insecurity, and bad governance (insecure, inefficient, and insensitive); ineptitude (ineffectiveness). All these factors continue to propel Nigerians into severe and acute food insecurity even though there is food in the markets, the costs of food are unaffordable, and the food outlook is in dire straits.

On the policy front, the 2016 Nigeria Food and Nutrition Policy emphasizes a country where the people are equitably food and nutrition-secure with high quality of life and socioeconomic development contributing to human capital development and attaining optimal nutritional status for all Nigerians by 2025, with particular emphasis on the most vulnerable groups such as children, adolescents, women, elderly, and groups with special nutritional needs.  The Policy recognizes poverty as the basic cause of the food and nutrition problem. It noted that poverty is entrenched in the mechanisms of governanceand institutions which drive the economy and that malnutrition in Nigeria arises from poverty, gaps in governanceand institutional weaknesses while food insecurity, inadequate care and access to health services are underlying causes and inadequate food intake and diseases are the immediate causes. Despite the recognition of poverty, malnutrition, and governance gaps in the policy, the pauperization of the people is palpable in reality.

·         Poverty and Inflation

Nigeria with a population of 227.6 million and 40.9 % unemployment rate, over 133 million (62.9%) people are multi-dimensionally poor, that is about 6 out of every 10 Nigerians, with 65% (86 million) and 35% (47 million) of the poor living in the North and South of Nigeria respectively according to the World Bank. The National Bureau of Statistics  notes as many as 4 in 10 Nigerians lived below the national poverty line in 2023. Multiple deprivations and food insecurity contributes about 12.5% to the National Multidimensional Poverty Index while about 38.6% are food insecure (poor and deprived) and 50.9% are food deprived/poor irrespective of poverty status on the National Poverty Map. Additionally, the National Bureau of Statistics states Nigeria’s annual inflation rate and food inflation increased to 29.9% and 35.5% respectively in January 2024 with higher prices across a broad range of items including bread, noodles, rice, gàrí (cassava flour/flakes), fish, meat, fruit, and eggs.

Governance

The governance conundrum in Nigeria cannot be overemphasised.Bad governance, poverty  and hunger can result in conflict. Governance refers to the informal and formal rules, customs, processes, and practices that guide any society. Governance for sustainable development entails: effectiveness (competence, sound policymaking, collaboration), accountability (integrity, transparency, independent oversight), and inclusiveness (leaving no one behind, non-discrimination, participation, subsidiarity, and intergenerational equity). Food systems governance relates to processes, actors, drivers (environment, natural, & socio-economic), and institutions that shape decision-making and activities related to food production, processing, distribution, consumption, and waste. Governance for food security (outcome-based) implies food security as experiential outcome, whether socially, economically, environmentally, culturally, or politically. While food security governance  (sector-based) refers to the institutions that comprise the governance regime for food security at different levels.

Food governance structure in Nigeria comprises of:

·         Formal Governance (the Federal, State and Local Government and Traditional rulers).

·         Rebel governance (Insurgents, Herdsmen, and Bandits).

·         Informal Governance (Market Associations, Farmers Associations, Street hawkers and vendors, Associational Life Groups and Food Cooperative societies).

·         Faith Governance (religious institutions).

Food actors involved in food governance in Nigeria include State actors (Federal, State, Local government, and traditional rulers); Corporate actors (BUA foods, Dangote foods, Nestlé, Cadbury etc., and Public Private Philanthropic Partnership); Quasi State actors (Agricultural Research Institutes such as International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, National Institute of Horticultural Research etc.), and Non-state actors (Civil Society Organizations, Households/Family farmers, Associational Life Groups, Mechanized/Irrigation Farmers, Food producers, NGOs, Market Associations,  Insurgents, Rebels and Bandits), and Foreign actors (e.g., China). Notably, everyone that consumes or interacts with food is a food actor and every food actor shape and reshape the food governance landscape in Nigeria.

A New Social Contract for Food Security Governance?

The 2023 UN Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC COP 28) in UAE affirmed the complexities of governanceand the diverse paths toward building inclusive and sustainable food systems. The importance of a multilevel governance frameworkfor food systems transformation was affirmed and a call for  a new governance system with inclusive decision-making mechanismsto achieve the transformation and for creating alliances with like-minded actors from different sectors to work towards this goal was made. Food systems governance plays an important role in shaping the pathways for transformational change towards sustainability. It requires a dynamic transformative governance that combines formal and informal rules and processes of food and nutrition security at all levels of government.

Perhaps with the governance conundrum food security requires a new social contract that is transformational (integrative, inclusive, adaptive, and pluralistic).  This must be anchored in epistemic communities and authorities. The core of food security governance is epistemic engagement of communities through advocacy planning to attain food secure futures. Advocacy planning deals with community organizing and empowerment, enabling communities to speak for themselves.

Advocacy planning is about including rather than excluding citizens from participation in the food security governance process. Inclusionmeans being heard, being well informed and able to respond accordingly. What deems proper is to advocate for epistemic communities and authorities to be engaged in food security governance and ensure everyone’s right to adequate, available, accessible, and culturally appropriate food. What deems proper is affordable and accessible location of food places (Sitopia). It is imperative to integrate the epistemic (ways of knowing) and ways of doing, in the various communities through effective listening and learning. Effectively engaging (inclusivity) the epistemic communities (people) and epistemic authorities (their leaders) will lead to a transformative food security governance and minimise the echoes of hunger (‘Ebi Ńpa Wá) in the land.

Olusola Olufemi, PhD is an Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Planning, Independent Consultant, Ontario, Canada; Associate, Society for Good Health, Sustainable Development & Environmental Awareness, Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria.