The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, in partnership with the World Food Programme and other agencies, have presented a scary Cadre Harmonise report to the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security.
The October 2023 Cadre Harmonise report says about 26.5 million Nigerians in 26 states and Abuja may face an acute food crisis.
The significance of the report is that it helps to produce relevant, consensual, rigorous, and transparent analyses of current and projected food and nutrition situations.
The key drivers of the predicted food crisis, according to the report, included the removal of subsidy on Premium Motor Spirit, popularly called petrol; the naira re-design policy; floods, conflict and insecurity.
The report provides: “About 26.5 million people, including Internally Displaced Persons (528,000 in Borno, Sokoto and Zamfara states) in 26 states and FCT of Nigeria, are expected to be in crisis or worse between June and August 2024.”
Dominique Koffy, the UN FAO Representative in Nigeria and Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), in his address during the presentation of the report, explained that the agency went to various states in Nigeria to identify populations at risk of food and nutrition insecurity.
Koffy, who was represented by the Assistant FAO Representative Programme, Abubakar Suleiman, provided some of the main results for zones affected by food and nutrition insecurity in the 26 states and the FCT.
He noted that going into the lean season (June to August 2024), households might experience slight to moderate deterioration in food consumption, which might plunge several states into the crisis phase on food consumption.
This unacceptable thresholds of food consumption may have resulted from a significant spike in staple food prices following increases in fuel prices, inflation rate and high cost of food production.
The report also indicated that a significant reduction in household stock was observed among more than 60 per cent of households, with more than 35 per cent having no stocks in 2023 when compared to 2022 and the five-year average on the evaluation of livelihoods.
The report further stated that the low levels of stocks resulted from the washing away of several hectares of matured ready-to-harvest cropped fields, particularly in states most affected by the 2023 flash floods (Kogi, Taraba, Plateau and Niger states).
The Cadre Harmonised report stated that in crisis-affected states of Adamawa, Borno Niger, Zamfara, Kaduna Katsina, Sokoto and Yobe, including parts of Benue and Plateau states, limited production activities were reported.
However, global market stock supply appears to be stable while increases in prices have continued to limit food access across all analysed states.
As provided in the report, the current malnutrition situation for May to September 2023 covering Adamawa, Borno and Yobe (North-East), and Katsina, Sokoto and Zamfara (North-West) showed the prevalence of crisis to worse nutrition situation across the states.
