ON March 11, 2022, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, FAO, released a report, alerting that 19.4 million Nigerians would experience acute hunger between June and August 2022. The report, produced in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, F-MARD, noted that over 14 million people (including 385,000 refugees), were already in hunger in 21 states. The figure was a massive jump from a similar report of 2021 which put the number of extremely hungry Nigerians at 12.8 million.

Curiously, the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Mohammed Abubakar, waited for all of eight months till this year’s World Food Day to express concern over our food insecurity outlook. As typical of the Muhammadu Buhari government, the minister resorted to blame game.

He attributed the situation of extreme hunger in Nigeria to the residual effects of the coronavirus pandemic, the Russian invasion of Ukraine which has disrupted a major source of global grains and fertiliser supplies, and flooding caused by climate change. He also added the obvious factor of insecurity in Nigeria which has severely affected food production and taken food inflation to 23.12 per cent in August 2022, up from 20.30 in August 2021.

Nigerians did not envisage that after almost eight years of the Buhari administration, officials of the government would be reeling out a long list of reasons the agricultural sector failed to provide food security. We expected the minister to tell a success story and measures taken to achieve the feat.

The primary source of failure can be traced directly to the desk of the president. When he assumed power in 2015, he did not “hit the ground running”. It took him till January 2016 to swear in his cabinet. Having waited for so long in vain for the regime to take action, the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, had to launch the Anchor Borrowers’ scheme in November 2015, to advance easy loans to farmers.

A lot of young people took to agriculture, especially the production of rice in many states. The Federal Government later claimed the credit for its initial modest achievements. However, government’s reluctance or inability to decisively deploy the security forces against terrorists such as the Boko Haram/Islamic State in West Africa, ISWA, bandits and armed herdsmen, is the primary source of food insecurity in Nigeria. These terrorists were allowed to invade farming communities, especially in Benue, Nasarawa, Plateau, Zamfara, Niger, Kebbi, Kaduna, Sokoto, Katsina, Borno, Yobe, Adamawa and the entire Southern states. They massacred farmers and drove many from their communities into IDP camps.

If the Buhari administration had protected Nigerians from these killers and pursued a visionary agricultural agenda, Nigeria would have been food secure, despite extraneous factors. We blame this government for the extreme hunger.