Attaining Food Security In Nigeria

The adoption of food security by the Commonwealth of Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) as one of the most pressing challenges simply underscored a growing problem that has continued to receive lip-service  across Africa.

Earlier, the 7th Session of the committee on Food Security and Sustainable Development rose from a meeting in Ethiopia with lamentation of a steady rise in the cost of food in Africa. They noted that in the past 10 years Africa was the only place where the cost of food had not dropped.

Indeed, this position was corroborated by the Minister of Agriculture, Akinwunmi Adesina when he told the Senate Committee on Agriculture that Nigeria spends N2 trillion (trn) annually on food importation, adding that Nigeria had become a dumping ground for imported foods.

He said statistics show that N1bn is being spent on rice importation alone every day, N240bn on sugar and N1.2trn on fish and expressed the shame that Nigeria has become a net importer of food and dumping ground for cheap food that kill people and the economy.

This is a situation that should no longer be viewed as normal. Although, the present government in Nigeria is tinkering with the National Programme on Agriculture and preparing grounds for the adoption of the Chinese style farming, the political will and the commitment to achieve set goals remain to be seen.

Nigeria and its leadership over the years have never been un-aware of the need for food security. The Operation Feed the Nation, the Green Revolution, the Directorate for  Food, Roads and Rural Infrastructure (DFRRI) among others tried to address this challenge.

Indeed, the various Basin Development Authorities were established to deal with this same challenge along side the Ministries of Agriculture. Decades after, Nigeria now uses more than half of her annual budget to import food. This cannot be accepted because of the arable land, good climate, man-power and market for food that exist in Nigeria.

Incidentally, this inability to effectively work the agriculture part of the economy has exposed the country to the worst kind of insecurity. Yes, to ward-off external aggression but if for any reason the supply route for food is cut, Nigeria will surrender  because her people just must feed.

Besides, if Nigeria continues to depend on imported food, they become most vulnerable to unsafe ones. Clearly, the stomach is the first frontier in the attainment of security and our country does not appear to care. This must change now.

The problem of food security even goes beyond external concerns, some of the recent cases of un-rest, militancy and robbery are related in part to the in inability of some people to keep bread on their tables. In some other African countries like Sudan famine has reduced a whole people to serious mal-nutrition and even death.

Nigeria cannot afford to wait for the consequence which dropping food supply and rising food cost would amount to. Government and the people must first review the mindset that is keeping agriculture out of their priority list. Nigeria cannot continue to develop the taste for foreign food and risk everything.

Clearly, even the oil that provides the money that is so un-profitably used would be finished and this is the time to prepare for that day. Instead of using the money to buy foreign foods, it should be used to develop agriculture. Nigeria should, by now be utilizing crops like to cocoa, groundnut, palm-fruits among others to produce marketable consumables and export based goods instead of giving it away as raw-materials.

Perhaps the first thing that needs to be done is to review the land Use Decree with a view to making land easily available for agriculture and housing. Similarly, Nigeria needs to take advantage of agricultural technologies, storage facilities and fertilizer production to kick start the sector.

Similarly, the youth should be made to take interest in agriculture and deep sea fishing, the study of agriculture should be made compulsory in school with every school maintaining farms. This has become imperative because there is already a disguised emergency even in our country.

For food security, all hands must be on deck as nothing else would do.