FOOD CRISIS: PLAYING WITH HUNGER
Government should do more to address the food challenge
During the last Christmas holiday, dozens of Nigerians were killed in stampedes that occurred from desperation to access foodstuff from charity groups, underlining the level of hunger in the country. Unfortunately, despite repeated promises by President Bola Tinubu to address the challenge of food insecurity, the government has been paying lip service to the issue. On 15 July last year, the federal government announced the implementation of the import duty waiver programme on food items expected to run till 31 December 2024. The window ended last Wednesday without action on the policy despite skyrocketing prices of foodstuff in the country.
When the policy was announced to alleviate the current hardship in the country, the gravity of the situation was better expressed in a statement by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation Director-General, Qu Dongyu. “It
is incumbent upon all of us to act now and to act fast to save lives, safeguard livelihoods and prevent the worst situation,” he said while noting that the magnitude of suffering at the time was alarming. Even when the situation has since degenerated, the federal government is yet to act with the urgency the situation deserves. Going by the latest National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) Consumer Price Index, food inflation had climbed to 42.29 per cent as of November 2024, representing a 55-percentage point year-on-year increase compared to 23.74 per cent recorded in November 2023.
Last July, the minister of agriculture and food security, Abubakar Kyari, had announced that the 150-day duty-free import window for food commodities involved the suspension of duties, tariffs, and taxes for the importation of maize, husked brown rice, wheat, and cowpeas. We fail to understand why the federal government would initiate a policy it has no desire to implement, especially at a period many Nigerians are going through harrowing times. The first indication of a lack of sincerity came three months later when the Nigeria Custom Services (NCS) said it had not received any list of beneficiaries from the ministry of finance regarding the suspension of duties on imported food items.
Since food Is needed for survival and well-being, there is a need for urgent intervention to avert a human catastrophe in the country. As of June last year, according to the Cadre Harmonisé analysis on national food insecurity, the number of Nigerians grappling with food insecurity had reached a whopping 31 million. “Unless targeted humanitarian actions in the forms of food assistance, emergency agricultural support and resilience livelihood re-building interventions are urgently implemented among the risk populations, their FNI situation may deteriorate further,” the report stated.
While it is a general problem, the food crisis is more pronounced in the Northeast. Indeed, the head of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Nigeria, Trond Jensen said food insecurity and malnutrition are among the main drivers of humanitarian need in the BAY (Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe) States. Over the past year, dozens of farmers have lost their lives, and others have been abducted or injured while eking out a living outside the security perimeters of Borno’s garrison towns due to limited farming lands and few or no livelihood options.
A combination of climate-induced issues and socio-political instability in various regions are sparking growing food crisis. The situation is compounded by recent policies on removal of fuel subsidy and floating of the Naira. The challenge at had is not only that Nigerians are battling acute hunger but also that the federal government has created a serious credibility problem for itself on how it has handled this issue.
