With food queue stampedes claiming scores of lives, the President of the All Farmers’ Association of Nigeria (AFAN), Kabir Ibrahim, has urged the Federal Government to activate short-term measures including the importation of basic farm produce to flood the market with food.
Ibrahim made this known during Channels Television’s 2024 End-Of-Year Review with the theme, ‘Focus on the Agriculture Sector, Food Security, Research and AfDB Investments’.
“These short-term measures will include, unfortunately, even importation. We have to do a lot more work to stem insecurity,” he said.
He stressed that for food security to be achieved in Nigeria, availability, affordability and supply stability must be settled.
The AFAN president said, “In Nigeria, many factors are debilitating against this chief of which is insecurity and climate change.
“All the efforts at providing mechanisation, good seeds, good science and technology, and all that are also very germane to the attainment of food security.”
Ibrahim said because population growth is still very high in the country, Nigerians must be able to practise agriculture very well, provide assistance for irrigation agriculture, and mechanise agriculture to attain food security.
“We should also have the plan to do a medium-term and a long-term arrangement but for now, what is required in Nigeria because of the terrible stampede that we see, that of hunger and a lot of poverty, we need to look at short-term measures to make Nigeria food-secure or at least feed more number of people and be sure that millions of people of people achieve food sufficiency.”
Nigeria’s headline inflation rate rose to 34.60% in November 2024 from 33.88% in October 2024, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
Significantly, the food inflation rate in November 2024 was 39.93% on a year-on-year basis, 7.08% points higher than the rate recorded in November 2023 (32.84%).
On a month-on-month basis, the food inflation rate in November 2024 was 2.98% which shows a 0.05% points increase compared to the rate recorded in October 2024 (2.94%).
The rise in food inflation is attributed to the rate of increase in the average prices of mudfish, catfish dried, dried fish sardine, rice, yam flour, millet whole grain, corn flour, agric egg, powdered milk, fresh milk, dried beef, goat meat, frozen chicken, among others.
Food and commodity inflation have skyrocketed as Nigerians battle what can pass for the worst cost of living crisis since the country’s independence over six decades ago.
Bretton Woods institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund had advocated the removal of energy subsidies and the floating of the naira, saying failure to effect the two economic policies has plunged Nigeria into severe inflationary pressures.
After his inauguration in May 2023, President Bola Tinubu removed the petrol subsidy and floated the naira. Petrol prices more than quadrupled, soaring from less than N200 per litre to over N1,100 in many parts of the country. The naira also took a nosedive, wobbling from around N700/$ to N1,600.
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