The National Economic Council (NEC) struck a chord with Nigerians recently when it called on governors, ministers, local government chairmen, private sector and other stakeholders to take urgent action against malnutrition in Nigeria. The NEC, chaired by the Vice-President, Kashim Shettima, launched the Nutrition 774 Initiative at its 148th meeting in Abuja late February 2025.
Referring to statistics, which indicated that about 40 per cent of Nigerian children under five were suffering from stunted growth, eight per cent from wasting and 27 per cent from being underweight, Shettima regretted that the futures of these children were at risk even before beginning their life’s journey. He said President Bola Tinubu considered the Nutrition 774 Initiative as a national priority. The aim is to deliver lifesaving nutrition interventions across the 774 local government areas of the country.
We hope that this initiative will not end as government pep talk. In 2020, under the immediate past administration of Muhammadu Buhari, the NEC similarly called for concerted action against malnutrition. Then, the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Nutrition Society of Nigeria and Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II, said over 12 million children were stunted, and 2.6 million wasted annually in Nigeria. Saying Nigeria recorded the highest number of stunted children in Africa; Sanusi noted that malnutrition accounted for 53 per cent of deaths among children.
Five years after, nothing has changed. Rather, the problem appears to have worsened. It is estimated that severe malnutrition has risen by 51 per cent in Northern Nigeria. In a joint report last year, five agencies of the United Nations: the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), World Health Organisation (WHO), World Food Programme (WFP) and United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) noted that 82 million Nigerians or 64 per cent of the country’s population might go hungry in 2030. Already, the North-East of Nigeria has more than 4 million people on danger list of food insecurity. The most affected states are Adamawa, Borno and Yobe. Last year, a number of people were trampled to death while scrambling for food palliatives in some parts of the country.
Incidentally, Nigeria is not the only country suffering this problem. The FAO had reported that over 2.8 billion people worldwide were unable to afford healthy diet. In 2022, for instance, over 34,000 children were said to have been admitted to hospitals with severe malnutrition in Afghanistan. The earlier-mentioned joint report of the five UN agencies also noted that 733 million people in Africa and some other continents faced hunger in 2023. The report indicated that the percentage of the population facing hunger continued to rise in Africa (20.4 per cent). If the trends continued, the agencies warned, about 582 million people would be chronically undernourished in 2030, half of them in Africa.
For Nigeria, the major cause of food insecurity is the insurgency in the North and banditry in other parts of the country. Some terrorist groups like Boko Haram and the Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP) frequently attack farmers. This often affects food production. In Plateau, Benue and some other parts of the North-Central region, many farmers battle with bandits and Fulani herdsmen and many of them have had to abandon their farms as a result. Some were killed and their farms destroyed.
This situation, coupled with the removal of fuel subsidy and the floating of the exchange rate, engendered the scarcity and high cost of food items. Besides, we have arable land and a huge population. But most of the lands are lying fallow and most of our people are not interested in farming. In September 2024, the World Bank released a food security update report classifying Nigeria as one of the 18 countries experiencing a significant rise in the number of people exposed to increasing starvation. We still engage in crude and seasonal farming. And this cannot solve the food insecurity in a country of over 200 million people. Most developed countries are sufficient in agriculture.
Intensive agricultural production is the way to go if we are serious about combating malnutrition. If we have enough facilities, we can do mechanized and all-season farming. We need to go back to the first republic era when rice and groundnut pyramid thrived in the North, cocoa plantations in the West, palm oil plantations in the East and rubber plantations in the Mid-West.
Government should walk its talk. It should not just provide incentives to farmers and food companies; it should also invest in high-yield seedlings. It should also try as much as possible to prevent the type of protests that erupted in some states last year over the high cost of living in the country from happening again.
In all, security of life and property of farmers and every other Nigerian is essential. The right to food is a fundamental one as food is a basic human need. No one should be denied that right.