As of November 2024, Nigeria’s hunger crisis remains severe with over 30 million people projected to experience acute food insecurity by mid-2025. With Nigeria’s estimated population of approximately 223 million, it means that about 14.8% of the Nigerian population is at risk of hunger. Addressing our food insecurity should be at the core of our fiscal proposal and appropriation bill, given that food security is fundamental to public health, economic stability, and social well-being. In designing and implementing budgets that support government agricultural and food security policies, ensuring that the population has reliable access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food must be considered a national emergency and priority that can enhance productivity, reduce poverty, and promote sustainable development.
The food stampede in Ibadan, Anambra and Abuja reveals the severity of hunger in Nigeria and validates in reality, the last T200 Hunger Report, which highlighted the severe state of starvation across many communities in Nigeria. Food insecurity in Nigeria remains a significant challenge, with rural areas, conflict-prone regions, and marginalised communities bearing the brunt. According to the World Food Programme, over 25 million Nigerians are at risk of food insecurity, a figure exacerbated by inflation, climate change and disruptions in local food systems. The effects of hunger are far-reaching, undermining health, education, and economic productivity.
Nigeria’s hunger crisis and food insecurity are driven by several factors, including economic hardships, high food inflation leading to soaring food prices, persistent insecurity in various regions, and climate change effects such as flooding as seen this year in Borno State. These must be tackled from multiple layers of government investment in critical infrastructures for economic growth.
In the proposed 2025 national budget, Nigeria has allocated N826.5 billion to the agricultural sector, marking a significant increase from previous years. The proposed 2025 budget by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to the National Assembly has sparked critical discussions about Nigeria’s development priorities. Among the key areas of focus, addressing hunger and achieving food security must stand at the forefront. With millions of Nigerians facing food insecurity and malnutrition, the 2025 budget offers an opportunity to take bold steps toward ending hunger in the country.
Agriculture is the backbone of Nigeria’s economy and the most viable pathway to achieving Zero Hunger. To this end, the 2025 budget must prioritise investments in agriculture to boost food production and reduce dependency on imports. Either at the federal, state or local government level, key areas for funding include security as already indicated in the budget; modernising farming techniques that will enable small holder farmers with access to modern tools, technology, and training to improve productivity; building climate-resilient agriculture system that supports the adoption of drought-tolerant crops and sustainable farming practices to mitigate the impacts of climate change; and ensure access to credit, by expanding affordable credit schemes for farmers to scale their operations and invest in innovations.
We must further consider a significant portion of Nigeria’s agricultural output that is lost due to poor post-harvest management and weak supply chains. For the 2025 budget to effectively combat hunger, agricultural institutions must allocate resources to rural infrastructure development in building and maintaining rural roads to facilitate the movement of food from farms to markets; create storage facilities as establishing cold storage systems and silos to reduce post-harvest losses; and designate agro-processing zones by investing in food processing centres to add value to raw produce and create jobs.
While boosting food production is essential, hunger cannot be eradicated without addressing affordability and access. The 2025 budget must ensure adequate funding for social protection programmes, such as school feeding initiatives, by providing free, nutritious meals to students in public schools to combat malnutrition and encourage school attendance; coordinate conditional cash transfers in a transparent way that supports vulnerable households with direct financial assistance to improve their purchasing power; and provide emergency food relief when necessary by allocating funds for food aid in areas affected by conflicts and natural disasters.
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