By Sanni Sheu-ahmad

World Food Day marks October 16 1945; the day the United Nations founded F.A.O (Food and Agriculture Organisation). However, October 19th is Junior world food targeted at making children take an active part in how we ensure to safeguard their food security from today. The annual commemoration serves as a global reminder of the importance of food in our lives and it would be best if we take this season to address the urgent case of food inflation in Nigeria. Our immediate action on food security would determine if our future population would actually live or just survive, in fact it would tell on the sovereignty or otherwise of our Nation in the decades to come.

The Nigeria Bureau of Statistics publish reports on Consumer Price Index (CPI) which measures how the prices of goods and services consumed by people for day-to-day living change from time to time. Last month they recorded rise in prices up to 26.72% in September from the 25.80% recorded in August. That is about 1% rise within a month. Meaning that a honest worker’s salary cannot afford him same amount of things he enjoyed last month. Several goods and services are components parts of the things they check and find the average. However Food inflation rate is always the item on the rise the most. By monthly calculation, The Food inflation for September 2023 was 30.64% 2023 rising by 7.30% from 23.34% of September 2022. For year-on-Year calculation of inflation, Food and drink is right on top at the increase in the Headline index with 11.81% meaning that if things continue this way for the next decade or two, Our under 18 population who are currently half of all Nigerians would be faced with spending an enormous fraction of their income on food else they would starve, be malnourished, or be subservient to other societies that can feed them.
This might seem like some dystopic fiction but it is happening all around us already unless we do turn a blind eye. Within the last twelve years, I watched my favorite canteen in the inner city first cancelled Pepper soup dessert from it’s menu because patrons could no longer afford it. Then they stopped offering fresh fish, then no protein at all but cow skin popularly called Ponmo. I have also seen families across the country that have subsistuted the animal protein on their menu for Soyabean puddle, Boiled Milk, Insects or edible Bugs and in worse cases Blood meal or Bones scavenged from the Butchery. This leaves us at a dilemma of what kind of adults do we want to make out of a population of malnourished, unhealthy, stunted children population and maybe a few wasted ones.

By understanding the root causes of this problem we can proffer and implement holistic solutions, we can pave the way for a more food-secure and prosperous future for all Nigerians. The reasons behind this unsettling situation are multifaceted, One face of it comes from system errors which only the government can tackle such as insecurity, lack of infrastructure, forces of demand and demand and supply, impacts of climate, allocation of land, pressure from international trade and regional politics. The other face of it is more of individual or community problem that would require us to tell ourselves the truth and face realities. Talk of taste / preferences, institutionalized greed, socio-cultural stance, credit worthiness, attitude to change, as well as the pursuit of enlightenment and new information.

For the insecurity, Food supply had dropped from majority of our farming communities who are being haunted by insurgents /terrorists, kidnappers, herders or having inter community clashes. Traditional leaders and the head of township unions should be held to ransom by the government to end communal clashes or at least point out to the root cause.
Drought and other impacts of climate change can be mitigated by standard weather service information, coupled with robust Agricultural extension services, This would save the downstream sector from losses arising from unpredictable weather. We would plant more resilience crops, know when it is best to carry out particular farm practices and safeguard livestock from endemics. Infrastructural challenges comprise roads that would be plied to bring out food produce from where they cultivated, followed by Power supply needed to process the food or store them and ensure they do not perish or become contaminated before getting to final consumer. We can make efforts to show farmers ways to renewable energy like wind, solar and more importantly how to convert agricultural waste to biofuel. Government can work out road systems into these communities that would not require huge capital cost. The toll gotten from that route would be retained strictly to develop the infrastructural need of the place. There and then bridges would be built to link the far hinterlands previously unreachable which would consequently push up supplies and reduce price. Arable land; though scarce in some states lie fallow in some other states of the federation therefore State governments should collaborate more on schemes that would ensure mutual benefits and lead to food security for the nation at large. Government can step into the free market situation, They can prevent glut during the high supply season just by buying the excess at fair price and storing it for the off peak season when it can be used to rid the market off exorbitant prices. Furthermore, The Government is responsible for the needed diplomatic relations that would prevent one country or comity of countries from pressurizing us to open our borders to their food export while we are trying to attain food sufficiency by nurturing local production. Diplomatic effort would prevent other nations from using food trade as a manipulative, negotiation or punitive tool in times of crisis. We should learn from the recent Black Sea Grain export situation where some countries of the world suffered rise in price of Food because Russia block Ukraine from exporting. Two brothers fighting somewhere very far away perhaps halfway across the world would not result in hunger for our people if we agree to eat what we produce or try to produce what we eat. This talk about taste leads other issues on how individuals and community, apart from the government can contribute to ensuring our future generations do not starve or beg for food.

We should face reality and ask ourselves why we gradually dropped making local ‘swallow’ food from flour which is typically made of Plantain, Yam or Cassava; crops which we sufficiently produce locally and instead shifted to wheat that we would need to import more of it from the Baltic countries. Same wheat that nutritionists caution that it is high in gluten. Who is weaning us away from self-subsistence and setting our children up for dependency? We should legitimately ask these questions because we were rice sufficient in the 1960s. But today the Indian subcontinent hold knife, fork and spoon over our foreign exchange, each one of them taking a sizeable chunk each year because we must eat Parboiled Oryza Sativa. When and how did their variant of rice become our staple food? What happened to Oryza glaberrima which our people around the Niger river and Niger Delta farmed from time immemorial?  How come it is so difficult to reverse these trends? This is October 2023, we fell into the hot soup of rice import since the 1980s and we have been trying to get out of it since October 1985; 38 years after. Since the past 20 years from 2003 Government has been trying to push back on wheat import first through the policy which recommend a 10% use of casaava flour in bakery, 10 years later in 2013 it was reinforced with tax on imported wheat. Despite cassava offering a gluten-free diet and there is a prospect of developing biofortified foods, the effort has not worked. Our taste for ‘all things foreign’ is the first trap of subservience that we set for our future generation. What if they could not get rice from Thailand, Wheat from Ukraine, Stockfish from Norway or Palm oil from Malaysia?

Greed manifests in the impunity of middlemen forcing price on producers and their customers. From Oluwo Fish market in Epe to Zaki Biam Yam market in Ukum, They are all the same. This exorbitant prices which the off takers later charge on the consumers is not collected or enjoyed by the farmer / fisherman but by the bully in the market who did absolutely nothing except maybe patronize the institutions of authority. The solution to this is in the hands of the people to call out and cut off these reapers. To pressurize the traditional, socio-cultural or religious institutions who endorsed this men to withdraw their endorsement. They are the reason why a boy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia who has not and would never see a river would have eaten more cod liver oil than the boy who lives in Sagbama or even Koluama in Bayelsa state.
Researchers report that the Omega-3 in fish oil, may have long-term neurodevelopmental effects that ultimately reduce antisocial and aggressive behavior problems in children. But greed would not allow some fishing communities sell any of their fatty fish to their own people but to other people who offer cash. Greed is also central to the ineffectiveness in implementation of the palliative food package government is currently using to cushion the present economic situation. People who themselves know they are not anyway poor still obstruct the poorest of the poor from getting food. Every one of us would need to fight the battle against greed internally. There can be enough for everyone’s need but there would never be enough for anyone’s greed.

Some socio-cultural stance adds to food insecurity as well and we would need to change them. Land ownership that excludes women in some societies leaves a man to do with the annual harvest of the family as he pleases. There would be no problem if a man sells all harvested produce and even go ahead to take an extra wife. As long as the woman or women are allowed to have their own farms or businesses where they get the rewarded of their input and are allowed to spend it as they please. An empowered woman translates into an empowered society. The empowered mothers would store food ahead of the planting season and no child would starve.

Unemployment which is a major reason for food insecurity can be remedied if people have access to capital/ credit facilities but our people need to be credit worthy, For instance, the high rate of defaulters of the Federal Government Anchor Borrowers Program meant that the CBN for the past one year has been going after citizens who default. This does not send the right signal for other bodies that might want to help. If we leave a credit worthy legacy for our children then they would have access to more financial services and their future would not be one of dependence on high level of government support and foreign aids as the trajectory points presently.

Going forward, we must put the pursuit of enlightenment and new information on food security on the front burner of discussions at forums.
At COWLSO; A function of Top women Technocrats presently going on in Lagos state, A speaker is proposing how Homestead Farming would drive families towards food security. When families in the city practice some level of Aquaponics. We should see less dependence on processed food and the enjoy attendant health benefits. If we sustain this discussion more ideas can be generated, past ideas can be assessed and progress can be celebrated. And we would have our tomorrow’s food ready today. Our children would not starve.

Sanni Sheu-Ahmad writes from Lagos. He is Pioneer Fellow of the Lateef Jakande Leadership Academy, currently acting as Special Assistant to the Governor on Economic Planning and Budgets. He can be reached via mail at ahmad_sanni2000@yahoo.com