FG restates commitment to food security

Minister of Budget and Economic Planning, Atiku Bagudu, on Thursday, expressed the commitment of the Federal Government to ensuring adequate nutrition and food security for the citizens.

The Minister gave the assurance while speaking in Abuja at the inaugural meeting of the House of Representatives Committee on Nutrition and Food Security with relevant stakeholders

Bagudu said the twin challenges of nutrition and food security have drawn the attention of many stakeholders in the country.

He said both nutrition and food security have hitherto been associated with one sector or the other rather than appreciating the cross-cutting nature of those challenges.

According to him, “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 well as the institutional alignment which through the Ministry of Agriculture being recognised as Ministry of Agriculture and that of Food Security.

“This is commendable. We recall that in the last administration under former President Muhammadu Buhari, a national security council was created chaired by the President himself and I was privileged to be the Vice Chair of that council.

“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 issue. 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.

“The House of Representatives is really helping in addressing the challenges. Mr President has recognized this issues and is committed to addressing them,” he said.

In his remarks, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rt Hon Tajudeen Abbas, said that the Committee was very crucial to the vision of the House to ‘be responsive, results-oriented and effective in performing its constitutional mandate towards the security and welfare of Nigerians’.

He said 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 actions to tackle the menace of food insecurity and malnutrition affecting our people.

He said 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.

According to him, “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.

“It is in the light of the foregoing that this Committee finds relevance and becomes very significant. As a committee, you are expected to provide a legislative response to the worsening food insecurity and malnutrition in the country through effective oversight of policies and programmes towards addressing these twin issues especially as the President had declared a state of emergency on food insecurity, review existing legislations and suggest new legislative frameworks that affect agricultural production, the food supply chain, etc.

“Your task becomes more crucial and urgent in the face of rising food prices and high cost of living occasioned by the withdrawal of government subsidy on petroleum products. I have no doubt in the capacity of the Chairman and members of the committee to deliver on this onerous task of providing immediate solutions to the growing food and nutrition crisis in the country.

“Let me also re-emphasise the position of the House to improve food and nutrition for our people. In our resolve as a House to tame hunger and malnutrition, pursue food security and sustainable development, we prioritised agricultural development as a key legislative agenda based on our strong belief that agricultural sector is a critical factor in growing the nation’s economy and scaling down poverty rate.

“Besides, we are committed to enacting policies and legislative frameworks towards supporting farmers with subsidies, access to credits, and modern agricultural equipment to stimulate enhanced agricultural productivity. This will also have a far-reaching impact in addressing the multifaceted challenges of food insecurity and malnutrition.”

Speaking, the Chairman of the Committee, Hon Chike John Okafor, said that 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 in Nigeria arising from uncontrolled inflation and scarce means,” he noted.