FG Commits To Ensure Food Security, Nutrition For Nigs

Federal Government is committed to enhancing nutrition and ensuring food security for all citizens.

Minister of Budget and Economic Planning, Alhaji Atiku Bagudu who stated this at the Inaugural meeting of the House of Representatives Committee on Nutrition and Food Security in Abuja, emphasized the significant progress made in Nigeria, under the guidance of President Bola Tinubu’s government, in recognizing and addressing the challenges of nutrition and food security.

He highlighted the importance of a multi-sectoral approach to tackle these issues, moving away from the traditional view that they belong to a specific sector.

“Nigeria has done very well and supported by different stakeholders particularly the government of President Bola Tinubu, have appreciated the nutrition and food security challenges.

“We have National Food Security Council Chaired by no less a person than the Vice President, Kashim Shettima. We are participants in the United Nations Food System Transformation as as well as the institutional alignment which through the Ministry of Agriculture being recognised as Ministry of Agriculture and that of Food Security.

“What led to it is the recognition that food security is not an agriculture issue, not a health issue, not an environment issue, not physical security issues. It is all of it. So we need to have stakeholders around the table so we can appreciate, we can do better.The same thing with nutrition.

Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dr Abbas Tajudeen, said the house would enact policies and legislative framework towards supporting farmers with subsidies, access to credits and modern agricultural equipment to stimulate enhanced agricultural productivity as this will also have a far-reaching impact in addressing the multifaceted challenges of food insecurity and malnutrition.

According to him, Nigeria, like the rest of the world, is experiencing a food crisis, exacerbated by climate change, rising inflation and pervasive insecurity.

Hence, he said, the decision of the House to set up a Committee that would be dedicated to fashioning legislative measures and actions to tackle the menace of food insecurity and malnutrition affecting Nigerians.

“According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) about 26.5 million Nigerians would be grappling with high levels of food insecurity in 2024, while the country is said to have the second highest burden of malnutrition in the world, with 32% children under the age of five stunted or chronically malnourished”.

“Malnutrition currently impacts 35 million children under the age of five, among whom 12 million are stunted, 3 million are wasted, and 23.5 million suffer from anemia. An additional 17.7 million individuals are facing hunger, with 2.6 million children confronting severe acute malnutrition in 2024. Among women of childbearing age, 7% experience severe acute malnutrition. These figures may exacerbate due to the current food inflation rate, which stands at about 33.7% (according to the Central Bank of Nigeria).

“Furthermore, the World Food Programme’s September 2023 publication of the ‘Nigeria Hunger Map’ estimates that 24.9 million Nigerians are in an acute or critical stage of hunger, categorized as an emergency, while 85.8 million Nigerians have insufficient food consumption. Among this population, 47.7 million Nigerians resort to crisis-level or above-crisis-level food-based coping strategies.

“The above data paints a very gloomy picture requiring urgent legislative action. This is particularly so given that some of the causative factors are issues within the legislative competence of the House to deal with. The food and nutrition crisis affecting us as a nation is partly caused by global warming and climate change, pervasive insecurity across the country which prevents farmers and herders from engaging in their various agricultural activities, poor irrigation, outdated land tenure system, crude and traditional farm practices on subsistence levels as well as a myriad of other challenges.

Chairman of the Committee, Chike John Okafor, said it was the first time in the history of the legislature in Nigeria that the leadership of the House thought it necessary to set up a distinct and exclusive Committee for greater legislative attention to critical interventions in the cross cutting issues of food and nutrition.

“The creation of this committee would serve as a swift response to the present economic realities, especially the current unaffordability of basic foods, arising from uncontrolled inflation and scarce means,” he said.

Oduyemi Odumade, Edited By Grace Namiji