Amidst rising food prices, President Bola Tinubu last week declared an immediate “State of Emergency” on food insecurity in the country.
The move is seen as part of an aggressive push to boost agricultural productivity and reduce the high prices of major staple foods in Nigeria.
The development is in line with the government’s short, medium and long-term strategies towards addressing the challenges of food affordability and accessibility in the country.
“Mr President is not unmindful of the rising cost of food and how it affects the citizens. While availability is not a problem, affordability has been a major issue for many Nigerians in all parts of the country. This has led to a significant drop in demand thereby undermining the viability of the entire agriculture and food value chain,” Dele Alake, the presidential spokesperson, said in the statement announcing the government decision.
In the statement, Mr Alake listed some of the specific steps to be taken by the government in the implementation of the state of emergency. These include the immediate release of “fertilizers and grains to farmers and households” and protecting “farms and the farmers so that farmers can return to the farmlands without fear of attacks.”
In the recent past, there have been cases when constituted authorities (Presidents or Governors) declared a state of emergency due to civil unrest, armed conflict or epidemic across different areas/parts of the country.
When such pronouncements are made, the government authorises relevant agencies to swiftly enforce policies (curfew, lockdown etc) that it would normally not be permitted to implement to restore orderliness for the safety and protection of its citizens.
The recent declaration of a “state of emergency” on food insecurity further confirmed experts’ concerns over the continuous decline in the purchasing power of Nigerians, amid poor income and climate change effects on food prices.
It also gives credence to the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP)/ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) earlier predictions that over 25 million Nigerians may face acute hunger at the peak of the lean season (the period between planting and harvesting – June-August) this year.
Meanwhile, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Nigeria’s annual inflation rate rose to 22.41 per cent in May from 22.22 per cent in the previous month. The food inflation rate also followed a similar trend, climbing to 24.82 per cent in May from 24.61 per cent in April.
The situation worsened further due to the aftermath of government policies such as the immediate removal of petrol subsidies leading to increased transportation costs, and the move to unify forex rates, among others.
Since Mr Tinubu made his declaration, many Nigerians have raised concerns about the key indices driving food insecurity in Nigeria and the legal implications of Mr Tinubu’s declaration of a state of emergency on food security in the country.
Food Security
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), food security is attained when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.
It is also explained as the state at which individuals have sufficient food to generate a calorie requirement of about 2,200–2,300 calories per day for adult females and 2,900–3,000 (about 8-10 kg of maize flour) calories per day for adult males, while children require a lower calorie level to maintain adequate health.
The inability of a country to meet these criteria is often described as food insecurity.
The 11th edition of the Global Food Security Index (GFSI) published last year, showed that Nigeria ranked 107th (scoring 42.0 points) out of 113th countries globally in the food security index. This suggests that 12.9 per cent of the global population in extreme poverty was found in Nigeria as of 2022.
According to the ranking, Nigeria is trailing other African countries like Morocco at the 57th spot (63.0 points), South Africa at the 59th spot (61.7 points) and Tunisia at the 62nd position (60.3 points), among others.
The report hinted that for the past three years, the trend in the overall food security environment has reversed.
“Eight of the top ten performers in 2022 come from high-income Europe, led by Finland (with a score of 83.7), Ireland (scoring 81.7) and Norway (scoring 80.5). These nations score strongly on all four pillars of the GFSI. Japan (scoring 79.5) and Canada (scoring 79.1) round out the remainder of the top ten,” it said.
The difference between the top performer and the country at the bottom of the ranking has continued to expand since 2019, reflecting the inequity in the global food system, the report said.
Nigeria’s Food Insecurity
Some of the major factors identified to be contributing to food insecurity in Nigeria include poverty, climate change, conflict and insecurity, increasing population, poor policy implementation, inefficient agricultural practices, post-harvest losses and low budgetary allocation to agriculture, among others.
In the past decade, the number of people living in extreme poverty in Nigeria has been increasing significantly. In effect, high levels of poverty make it difficult for people to access and afford nutritious food.
Between 2016 and 2022, the population of Nigerian men living in extreme poverty rose from 35.3 million in 2016 to 44.7 million last year just as that of women increased from 34.7 million in 2016 to 43.7 million last year, according to Statista.
In 2022, an estimated population of 88.4 million people in Nigeria lived in extreme poverty, data on the website showed. While the number of men living on less than $1.90 per day in the country reached around 44.7 million, the count was at 43.7 million for women.
Apart from poverty, harsh weather patterns, droughts, extreme temperatures and floods also impact agricultural productivity and food production not only in Nigeria but also globally.
Within the past decades, the impact of climate conditions is evident on crop production across the country’s different regions.
Data from Nigeria’s Meteorological Agency (NiMet) shows that the duration and intensity of rainfall have changed from normal across some states over the years, with devastating impacts on agricultural practices.
Last year, Nigeria witnessed one of its worst floods in the last decade as hundreds of villages and urban centres were submerged in waters, displacing over 2.4 million people.
According to official statistics, over 600 Nigerians died in the disaster, while expansive hectares of farmlands were also destroyed, with ripple effects on the country’s state of food availability, affordability and safety.
Conflict and insecurity
Conflicts and worsening insecurity in certain regions of the country, especially in the northeast, northwest and north-central have equally disrupted agricultural activities and displaced farmers. This has hindered food production and distribution, as many farmers are unable to visit their farmlands for fear of attacks by bandits or herdsmen in the last decade.
That is in addition to poor access roads, inefficient transportation systems, and lack of effective storage facilities, among others across farm settlements in Nigeria.
This often leads to massive spoilage and wastage, amid poor investment in preservation infrastructure that could help improve the shelf lives of food items before getting to the consumers.
The high level of post-harvest losses being recorded worsens food availability due to Nigeria’s growing population, making it difficult to meet the increasing demand for food. Despite not producing enough to complement domestic consumption, a large chunk of food grown by farmers gets damaged due to supply chain disruption and logistic challenges.
Poor Budgetary Allocation
Despite being a signatory to the 2003 Maputo Declaration on Agriculture and Food Security in Africa, which among other things requires parties to allocate 10 per cent of their national budgets for the development of agriculture across the continent, Nigeria is yet to comply with the pact.
Within the last decade, allocation to the sector has been extremely poor, even amid wastage and corruption.
Before the immediate past president, Muhammadu Buhari, assumed power in 2015, only 1.43 per cent(N67 billion) of Nigeria’s 4.7 trillion national budget was allocated to the sector.
In 2015, agriculture drew a paltry budgetary allocation, with only 0.9 per cent of the N4.49 trillion budget.
In 2016, 2017 and 2018, allocation to the sector increased to 1.3 per cent, 1.82 per cent and 2.01 per cent of the N6.10, N7.44 and N8.61 trillion total federal budgets, respectively.
The rate fell to 1.56 per cent in 2019, and 1.34 per cent in 2020, before recording a slight increase of 1.37 per cent in 2021 and just 1.8 per cent in 2022 — the highest recorded in four years.
In percentage terms, the highest allocation to agriculture in the past two decades by any government to date was in 2008 and 2009 respectively.
In 2008, Mr Yar’Adua’s government budgeted N2.92 billion for agriculture, which was 5.41 per cent of the total budget, and in 2009, it budgeted N3.101 billion, which was 5.38 per cent of the total budget.
Ineffective agricultural policies
In the last five decades, Nigeria has introduced a number of agricultural policies to boost production and improve food security but the impacts of these policies have been poor.
In the early years of Nigeria’s independence, agriculture served as the nation’s mainstay with the country being one of the biggest producers of palm oil, groundnut, cotton and cocoa.
The sector alone employed over 70 per cent of the labour force and accounted for as much as 62.3 per cent of the nation’s foreign exchange earnings. But things changed for the worse after the nation discovered crude oil and productivity declined in the sector.
Since then, Nigeria has struggled to reposition its agricultural sector, with the numerous policies introduced by different administrations.
Under Mr Buhari alone, notable agricultural policies launched in an effort to revamp the country’s agricultural sector are Agriculture Promotion Policy (APP), Nigeria–Africa Trade and Investment Promotion Programme (NATIPP), Anchor Borrowers Programme, Presidential Fertiliser Initiative, Presidential Economic Diversification Initiative(PEDI), Zero Reject Initiative, Economic and Export Promotion Incentives, National Agricultural Technology and Innovation Policy (NATIP) and the Food security council among others.
Despite these policy interventions, there have been no significant changes in the country’s state of food availability, affordability and accessibility, prompting Mr Tinubu to declare a state of emergency in the sector.
Legality of Tinubu’s Declaration
On Thursday, while declaring a state of emergency on food security, Mr Tinubu directed that all matters pertaining to food and water availability and affordability, as essential livelihood items, be included within the purview of the National Security Council.
But since the declaration was made, many Nigerians have wondered what the move entails and how the government intends to implement the declaration.
Kazeem Oyinwola, an Abuja-based legal practitioner at Amofin Solicitors, said by the reading of section 45(2) and (3) and section 305(1) of the 1999 Constitution, a declaration of a state of emergency is within the purview of the powers of the executive president.
He said the circumstances under which the president may declare a state of emergency under section 305(3) of the 1999 constitution include: where the Federation is at war or in imminent danger of invasion or involvement in a state of war; where there is an occurrence or imminent danger, or the occurrence of any disaster or natural calamity; where there is any other public danger which clearly constitutes a threat to the existence of the Federation; or where the president receives a request to do so in accordance with the provisions of 305(4) of the constitution.
Based on this, Mr Oyinwola explained that with the statistics released by the FAO recently projecting that about 25.3 million people in Nigeria will face acute food insecurity by June to August, in addition to the rising inflation figures from NBS and the effect of the recent removal of subsidy on premium motor spirit (PMS), there is an imminent danger of food insecurity in the country.
This danger, he argued, can be subsumed to fall under “an occurrence or imminent danger” or “any other public danger which clearly constitutes a threat to the existence of the federation” provided under section 305(3) of the constitution, and this enables the president to declare a state of emergency.
However, he said there are procedures to be followed to make such a declaration valid.
For such declaration to be valid as enshrined in the constitution, Mr Oyinwola told PREMIUM TIMES that the declaration/proclamation must, by instrument, be published in the official “Gazette” of the federal government and that the president must immediately after the publication, transmit copies of the official Gazette containing the proclamation including the details of the emergency to the leadership of the National Assembly.
Consequently, he said, both the Senate President and the Speaker of the House of Representatives shall convene to consider the situation and decide whether or not to pass a resolution approving the proclamation.
“This, therefore, goes without saying that the announcement of the ‘proposed’ state of emergency on food insecurity made by Mr Dele Alake, the presidential spokesperson, cannot be said to constitute a valid proclamation of a state of emergency yet,” Mr Oyinwola told PREMIUM TIMES in an interview.
He argued that at best, one can describe the move as “inchoate” until the announcement is followed up with a proclamation in the official Gazette of the federation and subsequently transmitted to the National Assembly in accordance with the provision of section 305(1) and (2) of the constitution.
Agric Experts Speak
In her remarks, Fisayo Kayode, a senior manager at Sahel Consulting Agriculture and Nutrition Limited, believes that the declaration is not anything novel because Nigeria has been in a food crisis for a long time.
“This is not a new thing. We have been in a food crisis for a long time. Unfortunately, we are not addressing it with a sense of urgency. Food security is not only focused on affordability. It also includes accessibility and food safety,” she said.
She noted that over 40 per cent of food produced in Nigeria gets wasted due to poor logistics and infrastructure for proper aggregation, storage and processing, adding that distributing fertilisers and seeds as captured in Mr Tinubu’s plans for farmers every planting season will not solve the problems.
“We need to think outside of the conventional ways that we have addressed food security in the past. We need to develop solutions that will create efficiency,” she said.
She said there are many SMEs and large businesses trying hard to add value to the raw materials produced by local farmers but they are restricted because of several economic factors.
“They struggle to afford the required infrastructure to aggregate and process. There is also the case of inadequate policies that create an enabling environment for doing business,” she said.
She noted further that the continuous devaluation of the Naira also makes it difficult to access funds to import the necessary machinery.
“If we want to address food security, we need to tackle these limitations head-on and support the local food producers through catalytic initiatives,” she noted.
On his part, Razaq Fatai, Africa Policy Manager at the ONE Campaign, said while the declaration of a state of emergency on food security is a commendable step, it is imperative that it is accompanied by tangible actions and clear timelines.
He noted that the immediate release of fertiliser and grains is a starting point and that most of the other proposed interventions in the action plan are existing solutions already known to Nigerians.
He said the real challenge lies in the political will to translate the president’s objectives into actionable steps.
“We urgently need the federal government to outline a comprehensive approach and provide a timeline for delivering on its promises. Every passing day without concrete action leaves more people trapped in the vicious cycle of hunger and poverty,” he said.
Similarly, Esther Adegunle, Associate Director, Business & Economic Growth, DAI, expressed worries over the implementation of the proposed plans to address food insecurity after repeated failures by past governments.
“Recently, we have seen Ethiopia implement reform initiatives transforming the country from a wheat importing country to meeting its local demand and exporting wheat. With effective implementation, this could be Nigeria’s path to achieving food security,” she said.
PREMIUM TIMES
