By Nnamdi Elekwachi
In less than two months or so in Nigeria, over sixty lives, including women and children, were lost in what a section of the media has craftily named ‘food stampede.’ While Nigeria keeps enriching her lexicon with inventions or amplifying the same with numerous economic jargons bequeathed to her by the West, many Nigerians would admit that they learnt words and concepts like ‘austerity measure,’ ‘structural adjustment,’ first-hand by living in and experiencing Nigeria. Even a mild concept like cashless policy came with acute pains for Nigerians. And one is left wondering what works in the country.
In the late nineties (‘90s) prior to transition to the much-touted Fourth Republic, politicians and political parties gave their word that they would change and better the lot of indigent masses, hopes were equally high. The thinking would have likely been that twenty-five years down the line, the talk of social welfare in Nigeria would be about food stamps which could be exchanged for food at designated centres, but no, it is about ‘food stampede,’ and how hungry Nigerians are dying in the struggle to secure food during unsystematic distribution of bags of rice and other food or relief items as seen recently.
Ibadan, Okija, and Abuja churned out a bad summary for year 2024, which coincidentally marked 25 years of uninterrupted civilian government in Nigeria; the longest ever. And when I say 25 years here, I mean a quarter of a century, which also means a generation time. It is not to say that there are no benefits from our democracy in the last 25 years, of course there are many of them. But the thrust of my lamentation here, say jeremiad if you like, is that we should have long passed this stage by now. Alarmingly, food insecurity has reached an all-time high. Hunger? The numbers too are frightening.
According to the World Food Programme, WFP country brief, 26.5 million Nigerians are facing acute hunger in 2024, representing a 44% increase in the 18.6 million said to be food insecure in 2023. In 2024, Nigeria was ranked 110th out of 127 countries with a score of 28.8 points, indicating ‘serious hunger levels’, according to the Global Hunger Index. The irony is that the budget of the same year 2024 in Nigeria allocated ₦10 billion on travels and refreshments to the president and vice president. What is more, the proposed 2025 budget is allocating some ₦9.3 billion to the same item – travels and refreshments while hunger ravages the country.
Having broken with conventions, let me mourn with a deep sense of sorrow here the nationwide deaths which is a fallout from food insecurity, a plague in Nigeria. I have hitherto sent my condolences through various media platforms and channels, having earlier called for our national flag to fly at half mast in all government offices, including missions like embassies and high commissions abroad, because what befell us indeed calls for national mourning. The last time we had something similar was in 2005 when in a tragic succession, Nigeria lost hundreds of her citizens and foreigners in multiple air disasters, the same tragic year she later lost Stella Obasanjo and Chief Rotimi Williams.
There is no sense in which these deaths do not represent a national disaster, and we must not wait till such or a similar disaster hits the thirty-six states of the federation before we declare it a national concern. While I do not intend to illustrate sensational demographic details here, it has to be understood that the three latest scenes of crash – Abuja, Ibadan, and Okija in Anambara – are by no standard the poorest states or cities in Nigeria. It is somewhat ironic that Abuja, the seat of power, is a hunger scene too. There is the ancient city of Ibadan too, and then Okija which is in Anambara, arguably one of the richest states in the country, by GDP. It reminds me of the first reported food stampede that greeted us this year, sometime in February, when the Nigerian customs announced 25 kg rice distribution in Yaba, Lagos, during which seven died and the exercise had to be halted. The meaning is simple: urban hunger is rife in Nigeria. Many don’t have access to food, among those that do, only a few enjoy nutrient-rich food, otherwise known as ‘balanced diet.’
This assertion – of hunger being nationwide – diminishes the claim that the Igbo of South-East are the least affected by government policies causing food scarcity or insecurity. I make this case in reaction to the argument advanced in favour of the non-involvement exhibited in the region during the recent hunger protests in August and October of this year. I have yet to understand the reasoning behind uploading videos of drinking sessions to the internet, whether to show the South-East as a better-off region or to malign the political misjudgment of others. Relatively, the Igbo are plagued by hunger, just like other regions and groups in Nigeria.
Hunger itself is not alien to the Igbo of the South-East. Apart from Okija, which is the latest reported hunger scene in the region, there are other numerous flashpoints of hunger in all the five states in the South-East that are not even reported in the mainstream media. Household finances are generally shrinking, and what has to be done is to carry out an inclusive intervention programme that addresses poverty at the core.
I am aware that the Federal Government declared an emergency on food insecurity and removed tariffs on importation of certain food items, but neither policy has yielded any positive outcome with inflation not letting up, because Nigeria is not investing critically in agriculture. This brings me to yet another irony. In the appropriation of 2024, the federal government allocated ₦344 billion to the National Assembly alone, that is some 469 federal lawmakers of both chambers and respective staff members, while the National Agricultural Development Fund, NADF, charged with the task of ensuring food security, got a paltry ₦102.5 billion from the same appropriation. How can Nigeria address hunger with a plethora of ironies and misplaced priorities?
Though a myriad of factors like the issue of climate change resulting in flooding and desert encroachment, Islamist insurgency, cattle rustling, farmer-herder conflict, and sundry other issues account for the reason we have food insecurity, Nigeria should begin to invest more in agriculture. It should be a concern that with over 20% of her citizens into agriculture – both commercial and subsistence – Nigeria is unable to feed her population whereas the US with about 6% of its population into agriculture wastes over 20% of its food produce at the garbage. And my call is not only for the federal government to revolutionise agriculture, but for states to initiate and sponsor robust agricultural programmes.
Sadly, these deaths are much, and I wish we equally learn much from them because no tragedy, no sorrow, no irony compares to the fact that we have vast uncultivated arable land but still harvest deaths in and out of season because we are not able to manage hunger better.
Nnamdi Elekwachi, a historian, writes from Umuahia, Abia State.
