Unenviable place: ‘Nigeria leads world’ in food insecurity 

The latest World Food Programme (WFP) ‘Nigeria External Situation Report’ (Number 83) published on January 25, 2025, shows that Nigeria leads the world with approximately 32 million people that are “acutely food insecure.” The WFP is the food-assistance arm of the United Nations (UN) and the world’s largest humanitarian organisation addressing hunger and food security.

The WFP says in its report that “the security situation in northern Nigeria remains volatile, with escalating violence and deadly attacks in some of them.” The WFP has been working “to provide emergency food assistance to affected populations, including internally displaced persons (IDPs) and host communities,” the report said.

“Food insecurity remains precarious. Widespread insecurity across the northeast and northwest Nigeria persisted into the start of 2025, with the northwest identified as a forgotten humanitarian crisis,” the WFP said, adding that “recent escalations in the activities of non-state armed groups leave many households unable to return home and rebuild their lives.”

The WFP noted that food insecurity was also heightened by the 2024 floods that displaced many and left their assets, including agricultural livelihoods damaged. It also noted the reported drop in the rate of inflation, from 34.80 percent in December 2024 to 24.48 in January 2025, stressing that “despite these, the cost of food, transportation, and logistics remain very high due to lingering effects of fuel subsidy removal.” 

An analysis of the WFP’s report shows that the key drivers of the alarming food insecurity in Nigeria include widespread insecurity, soaring food prices, high fuel prices, climate crisis, and recurring displacements. These are testaments to the lingering unintended negative effects of the economic reforms of the government of the day.

In the past couple of years, a hyperinflationary trend has persisted. While the Consumer Price Index (CPI) — measuring inflation rate — stood at 34.80 percent in December 2024 (year-on-year), the food inflation rate hit 39.84 percent. A year earlier, in December 2023, the CPI stood at 28.92 percent whereas the food inflation rate was much higher at 33.93 percent.

This is against the backdrop of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN’s) avowed fight to rein in the soaring inflation rate. This stance saw the apex bank move the Monetary Policy Rate (MPR) from 18 percent as of June 2023 to 27.50 percent by November 2024. Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR) was similarly raised from 30 percent to 50 during the same period.

All these led to near-credit drought in the financial system; with high cost of funds pushing up practically the cost of every productive (economic) activity. This ‘cost-push’ effect plus the ‘imported inflation’ element have combined to sustain the rampaging runaway inflation in the country since June 2023.

As contained in the WFP report, fuel subsidy removal, and the resultant spike in the prices of refined petroleum products (particularly, Premium Motor Spirit, PMS), have driven the prices of all goods and services through the roof. Cost of transportation, foods, house rents, household utilities, etc. have continued to soar uncontrollably since June 2023.

In the face of this painful reality, the federal government, rather than enabling local refining to improve PMS supply, opted to be generously issuing licenses for continued importation of PMS and other products. It experimented with a ‘Naira-for-Crude’ policy to enable local refiners to pay for crude supply in the local currency. But no sooner this initiative began to pay off than the policy was scuttled, to the chagrin of the public.

These policy flip flops have seen the price of PMS rise from about N198/litre in May 2023 to N1000/litre as of today. Even the much flaunted repair and re-streaming of the long-abandoned government-owned refineries in Port Harcourt and Warri have recorded no impact in PMS pricing reduction so far.

The chicanery and intrigues that attended the commencement of the giant Dangote Refinery early this year are yet to abate. Vested interests seem bent on ensuring that local refineries remain unviable, while importation of refined products flourishes. And this is why the truncation of the ‘Naira-for-Crude’ deal has fast turned into a new incentive for fuel importation — with the attendant foreign exchange (FX) pressure.

Climate factors, especially flooding, were also identified by the WFP as some of the key causes of food insecurity in Nigeria. Flooding in various parts of northern Nigeria has been a significant concern in both 2023 and 2024. “Notably, in August 2024, heavy rainfall caused floods all through northern Nigeria, resulting in casualties and damage.”

There were also several flash floods in the region, in 2023, exacerbating protection risks for conflict-affected communities. The flooding also impeded humanitarian access to many communities and settlements in the region. The Alau Dam overflow in September 2024 due to heavy torrential rainfall was catastrophic, and caused a lot of havoc in casualties and agricultural livelihoods.

Nigeria’s unenviable record of having the largest number of “acutely food insecure” people in the whole world, as reported by the WFP, presents the country with a case for ‘urgency of now.’ Having 32 million of this set of human beings puts a huge question mark on the much-bandied federal government’s initiatives to boost food production and supply in Nigeria.

What has become of the National Programme for Food Security (NPFS) that aims to enhance national and household food security, reduce poverty through sustainable resource use, and attain increased agricultural productivity? The NPFS, launched several years ago, in partnership with the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), is yet to make any discernible impact on the citizenry as far as food availability and accessibility is concerned.

Similarly, the Agricultural Transformation Agenda (ATA) — a programme aimed at making agriculture a pivotal sector of the economy, is yet to impact the high level of food insecurity in the country. Incidentally, ATA, launched about 14 years ago, was supposed to make Nigeria a net exporter of food, eliminating dependence on food imports.

Given all these seemingly elaborate programmes, it gets more puzzling that Nigeria is still the world leader in food insecurity. This unedifying status subsists even when Nigeria has the Food Rights Act in place. In 2023, Nigeria passed the Food Rights Act, a legislation aimed at guaranteeing all Nigerians access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food, and addressing the root causes of food insecurity.

The Act requires the government to align its policies with the right to food, and take steps to ensure food availability, accessibility, and affordability. The right to food is recognised as a fundamental human right under international law and treaties, such as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).

Alas, two years after the enactment of the law, Nigerians are faced with scorching food scarcity, hunger, malnutrition, and destitution. And with the widespread insecurity that has become an existential threat in the land, rendering many homeless, Nigeria’s food insecurity is likely to beat the WFP report. We hope it doesn’t! 

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