FG blames climate change for high food prices

The federal government has stated that the rise in food prices in the country is due to the effect of climate change.

Recall that Nigeria’s food inflation has been on the rise and according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the food inflation rate in February 2023 was 24.35 per cent on a year-on-year basis — representing a 7.24 per cent point increase compared to the 17.11 per cent recorded in February 2022.

The Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Budget and Planning, Engr Nebolisa Anako, who made the remark in a workshop on Thursday in Abuja, said this has led to lower income, food insecurity and malnutrition.

The permanent secretary said this has seriously put food out of the reach of many. “This has indeed put food out of the reach of many and undermined the right to food thereby stalling the efforts to meet the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2 that emphasised ‘zero hunger,” he said.

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Engr Anako who was represented by the Director of National Monitoring and Evaluation, Dr Zakari Lawani, said the development of an implementation strategy for the Nigeria Food Systems Transformation would serve as a call to action to achieve progress in dealing with issues of poverty, hunger, malnutrition, disease, unemployment, conflict and changing weather patterns.

He further called on relevant stakeholders to support the implementation of all the priority actions with the 2022 call to action as well as mobilise more resources and monitor progress.

On his part, the national convener of Food System Dialogues, Sanjo Faniran, at the workshop disclosed that a committee has been constituted to provide technical support to the development of the 2023 action plan to enable Nigeria to produce a credible country report at the global stock-taking scheduled to be held in Rome in July, 2023.