Hunger: Nigeria Is Starving Its Own People; That’s Iniquitous!

 By Olu Fasan

Recently, the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, published the results of the General Household Survey Panel, which showed that 63.8 per cent of households face severe food insecurity and are skipping meals, some for a whole day.

Nigeria is not in war or ravaged by famine, so why should two-thirds of the population be in the throes of hunger and starvation? How can one explain the savagery of hunger that has reduced many Nigerians to scavenging for food? Well, here’s the harsh truth: the Nigerian state is starving the Nigerian people through deliberate policy choices.

Bola Tinubu, the president whose badly-thought-out policies have inflicted pains on ordinary Nigerians, recently admitted that “there is hunger” in Nigeria. But Tinubu had nothing more to say beyond the usual platitude: “there is hope.” Elsewhere, the government would roll out urgent practical measures, not pie-in-the-sky promises, to tackle the problem. But, here in Nigeria, the government has done nothing meaningful to alleviate the untold sufferings that its own policies have caused the people.

Lest we forget. Tinubu’s decision to float the naira and to remove the fuel subsidy, whatever their merits, are the proximate causes of the debilitating cost-of-living crisis now gripping Nigeria. The scrapping of the currency peg led to over 70 per cent devaluation of the naira and to imported inflation, while the withdrawal of the fuel subsidy caused the tripling of the pump price of petrol, creating adverse knock-on effects. Even the IMF, which supported the policies, recently said that there should be “appropriate design and sequencing” of such reforms, “with the costs and benefits of multiple reforms appropriately spaced through time, so as not to overburden populations.” The IMF also said that “there should be complementary and compensatory measures to mitigate potential social costs.” 

Of course, Tinubu’s painful reforms do not include any of those safeguards. They were not appropriately designed and sequenced – naira’s floating, fuel subsidy removal, and electricity subsidy withdrawal were all done almost in parallel. And there have been no complementary and compensatory measures to mitigate their social costs. Recently, Wale Edun, the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, said that Nigeria saved $20 billion by removing the fuel subsidy and floating the naira. 

Great, but what have the savings been spent on? Is the collapse of business activity, due to high inflation, high interest rates and naira’s steep devaluation, which has significantly raised input costs, the right price to pay for the government’s exchange-rate and monetary policies? Is the fact that 64 per cent of households are going hungry, due to poverty and the skyrocketing costs of foods, the right price to pay for the withdrawal of the fuel subsidy? Where is the safety net for the vulnerable?

Social protection is a badge of the healthy society. South Africa proves this by having one of the most generous social safety nets in the world. According to a recent survey by the Economist magazine, a basic welfare state has raised millions out of indigence in South Africa. Spending on welfare grants rose from about two per cent of GDP in 1999 to almost four per cent in 2024; today, 47 per cent of the population receives a grant, up from about six per cent in 1999. Furthermore, 89 per cent of South Africans live in formal housing, and 95 per cent enjoy electricity.  

Those statistics shame Nigeria, which calls itself the Giant of Africa. In truth, it is a big-for-nothing giant, with no safety net for its citizens, a large number of who lack proper housing and have no access to electricity and clean water. Indeed, according to official figures, 63 per cent of Nigerians, or 133 million, were multidimensionally poor in 2022; now, 64 per cent cannot afford enough food to eat. It is interesting to note that the figure was 36.9 per cent in 2019. So, government policies doubled the rate of hunger in five years. But most of that has happened under Tinubu, whose policies have increased food inflation, now 39.16 per cent, and left most Nigerians with no disposable income and, thus, no spending power.

The American economist Arthus Okun came up with the “misery index” as a measure of people’s economic distress. The index is the sum of inflation and unemployment rates. The higher the index, the greater the misery. Of course, Nigeria’s misery challenge stems from worsening unemployment and inflation. Headline inflation is currently 33.88 per cent, while unemployment is nearly 40 per cent. Did I say nearly 40 per cent? Yes, I did, and decidedly so! Forget the dodgy jobs data that the NBS has produced since it changed the definition of unemployment in 2023, which resulted in the unemployment rate magically dropping from 33.4 per cent to 4.1 per cent, now reportedly 4.3 per cent! 

Given that a low unemployment rate is a sign of a strong economy and a sign of better living standards, why is it that Nigeria’s economy is so weak, and poverty is so rife, despite the unemployment rate being supposedly as low as 4.3 per cent? Truth be told, Nigerians must ignore the NBS’s fuzzy job figures for, as a Financial Times editorial rightly put it, “bad jobs data leads to bad decisions.” Similarly, Nigerians must ignore the so-called GDP growth rate, reportedly now 3.46 per cent, and trumpeted by Tinubu, because it is a “paper growth” that doesn’t create jobs or reduce poverty in Nigeria. 

Basic economics says that the demand for labour is derived from the demand from goods and services. Sadly, Nigeria is in a vicious cycle. Most of the citizens are so poor that they can’t buy goods and services. The resulting weak demand, which has led to large inventories of unsold goods, means that businesses can’t expand and can’t hire people. One solution is to raise the minimum wage, but the new monthly minimum wage of N70,000 has been wiped out by inflation. According to an analysis by SBM Intelligence, the market intelligence consulting firm, the average Nigerian spends roughly 97 per cent of their income on food.

Surely, that must shift the focus to agriculture. But while agriculture accounts for 40 per cent of jobs in Nigeria, and small farmers produce 90 per cent of foods, the truth is that farming in Nigeria is bedevilled by weaknesses in the three critical areas – cultivation, mechanisation and fertilisation – that have boosted agricultural produce worldwide, not to mention other chronic challenges around access to finance, climate change and insecurity.

But no civilised nation can let hunger ravage its citizens. Nigeria must do two things urgently. First, it must establish a genuine social safety net. Second, it must remove all restrictions on food imports. Tinubu once promised duty-free food imports but seems to have reneged. Yet, Nigeria can’t ban food imports amid widespread hunger. That would be iniquitous!    

*Dr. Fasan, Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), is a commentator on public issues