Food security: Nigeria’s growing population frightening —Ex-Agric Minister, Ogbeh

Former Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh, has said that going by statistics, Nigeria’s population will hit 450 million in 20 years, a figure he said the country may find difficult to feed following poor agricultural yield and lack of mechanised farming.

Ogbeh stated this while speaking at the occasion of World Hunger Day and National Farmers Day Campaign Launch, hosted by 1 Hectare 1 Family, with support from Alliance for Science.

He said a source told him that 20,000 babies are born daily in Nigeria, which is expected to surge the population to 450 million in 20 years’ time.

The farmer, who is also a politician said currently, salary earners cannot afford to provide daily food for their families because of the outrageous prices of food items in the market.

Nigeria’s population is estimated at about 200 million now and it is projected to reach 450 million in another 20 years. A few weeks ago, I was chatting with former vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo and we heard from a source that the birth rate in Nigeria today is about 20,000 babies per day, if that figure is accurate, it is a very frightening figure.

It means that in the next 20 years, we are talking about 450 million people making Nigeria the third most populated country on earth. That is dangerous and we have to think about it because if it happens it will be impossible to deal with the crisis that will follow.

“Hunger is here, just last week my elder sister who is in her 80s called me and asked that we went to the market to buy tomatoes and we bought five tomatoes for N500, one tomato for N100 and egg is also going for N100 per egg and a kilo of yam sells for N1200, the truth is that hunger is here.

“So, you can imagine your salary if you are a low income earner, even if you are well-paid, how much money does it cost to feed your family every day, and how terrible is it for a man if he cannot give his wife enough money to buy food and run the house from day to day,” Ogbeh said.

The ex-agric minister further stated that in the early days of Nigeria, around independence, Nigeria didn’t have this huge population and peasant agriculture sustained the country very well, but the population has been growing.

“Governments are too poor to finance agriculture the way they should and the way many countries do, so agriculture has become a peasant occupation and peasant capacity is too low, very few peasants can handle one hectare of land in a year, and agriculture is rain-fed and can be destroyed by flood.

“There are dams in the country, Kano has the highest number and Oyo the second highest, Kano has 24 dams and Kano does use their dams very well, Oyo does not,” he noted.

In her message, the Executive Director of Alliance for Science, Dr Sheila Ochugboju said Alliance Science has renewed its commitment to ending hunger in their lifetime.

She said the Alliance for science is a willing ally and partner with you in tackling the root causes of chronic hunger and we emphasise the application of agricultural innovations, especially biotechnologies that produce climate resilient crops.

You may be thinking it’s too expensive to end hunger, but estimates say that with just $9 billion a year on farm inputs, we can improve the quality of the seeds and the inputs that help farmers to produce more.

With $2 billion, we can improve the storage and the transportation and actually get the foods to market, with $3 billion, we can help and empower excluded communities such as farmers and cooperatives.

Dr Ochugboju said the technology and knowledge is already there, perhaps what needs to be done is to start celebrating those that are providing the food today; the farmers themselves.

Let’s start a movement. Let’s ask our African governments to honour farmers in their countries. Every African country should have a National Farmers day, she added.

The President of All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), Arc Kabiru Ibrahim said the world food system went through a very turbulent period in 2019 during Covid-19 era, then the Russian-Ukraine war in 2022.

Our food system is challenged more than any other time. For us to get out of here, we must learn how to produce what we eat and eat what we produce and we have to produce optimally.

The Alliance for Science also encourages us to embrace biotechnology. Biotechnology does a lot of things to crops, genetic engineering is taking a hold on the world.

I encourage our farmers to embrace biotechnology. For farmers who are poor, the best way to get out of poverty is to maximise productivity, he noted.

They however adopted 1st December every year as National Farmers Day celebration in Nigeria.

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