Nigeria’s food crisis requires immediate humanitarian action – NESG

The Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) said that the current food crisis in Nigeria requires immediate humanitarian, social protection, and food systems responses to address.

The NESG disclosed this yesterday in a policy brief entitled: “Status of Food Security: Dimensioning the Crisis, Policy Options and Strategic Responses.”

The group noted that despite a contraction in the Nigerian agriculture sector in 2023, resulting in reduced productivity, the nation is fortunate to face no climatic risks of famine or drought, as no part of Nigeria is categorised as High Risk or Moderate Risk and Deteriorating.

“The number of food-insecure Nigerians increased significantly, from 66.2 million in Q1 2023 to 100 million in Q1 2024 (World Food Programme, 2024), with 18.6 million facing acute hunger and 43.7 million Nigerians showing crisis-level or above crisis-level hunger coping strategies as of March 2024.”

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It stated that the National Food Systems Profile reveals critical institutional, policy and industrial coordination and governance gaps.

NESG further recommended that “Nigeria needed to apply urgency, tenacity, and a national state of emergency in dealing with persistent structural vulnerabilities and continuing socio-economic vulnerabilities, with 133 million people experiencing extreme multidimensional poverty, characterised by significant regional disparities.”