President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is deeply troubled by the food insecurity in the land. The president is worried that the current minimum wage can no longer buy a 50kg bag of rice.
He declared a state of emergency over food insecurity a few weeks after he assumed the mantle of leadership in May 29, 2023. He declared another one last week in apparent frustration over the lingering food insecurity.
It is obvious that the first state of emergency failed to address the issue adequately. That explains the president’s decision to revisit the matter last week.
The truth is that food insecurity is lingering despite the declaration of state of emergency because the cause of the food supply deficit is yet to be addressed.
Economy watchers are unanimous in their assessment of the situation and their conclusion is that food insecurity is worsened by the activities of bandits and marauding herders who make farms inaccessible for unarmed peasant farmers.
Last week I spoke with a friend whose community is in the vicinity of Uromi, the scene where irrational and edgy vigilante men cut down 16 northerners mistaken for kidnappers.
My friend told me that his community is one of the nation’s food baskets, but that people no longer go to farm because they could be hunted down by herders who turn crop farms to their cattle foliage.
No one dares to challenge the herders because there appears to be an unwritten law that gives them immunity as they cut down with impunity anyone challenging their effrontery.
A recent development in Adamawa state appears to confirm the fears that even the judiciary is defending the herders’ unwritten impunity.
Sometime in 2021, a crop farmer from Dong community, was tending his crops in Kodomti village in Numan LGA of the state. A herder, Buba Bawuro, led his cattle into the man’s farm and they started feeding on the crops. The man challenged the herder who suddenly reached for his cutlass and stabbed the crop farmer on the leg.
The wounded crop farmer confronted his assailant, disarmed him and stabbed him in self defence. The herder died a few days later from his wound. The crop farmer was charged with murder and the judge sentenced him to death despite the defence counsel’s plea that the crop farmer acted in self defence.
The sentence marched up to the highest rung of the nation’s judicial ladder where the Supreme Court upheld the sentence of the lower courts and defiantly sentenced the crop farmer to death.
Everyone, including concerned northerners, is worried by the sentence passed on the crop farmer. The sentence is so controversial that even the relatives of the deceased herder are begging the governor of Adamawa state, Mr Ahmadu Fintiri, to use his prerogative of mercy to convert the sentence to prison term.
The menace of herders is so devastating that crop farmers are afraid of entering their farms without armed escorts. That is partially why food insecurity persists.
Nigeria’s peasant farmers produce 70 per cent of the food consumed in the country.
The menace of herders has reduced the supply of food by peasant farmers by at least 60 per cent. That is why the little quantity of food available in the market attracts outrageous prices.
Besides the menace of herders, bandits in food basket states like Niger and Zamfara have taken absolute control of farms. In some parts of Niger state, the bandits defiantly place a levy of N20,000 on farmers. Only those who pay the illegal tax can access their farms. The bandits are so powerful that the state government has practically accepted defeat as it cannot lift a finger in protest.
Peasant farmers who can afford the N20,000 levy build it into the cost of what they harvest and compel consumers to pay for the bandits’ extortion.
That, again, explains why food inflation stood menacingly at 40 per cent before the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) decided to re-base inflation rate calculation formula.
What the NBS has done has merely reduced inflation on paper. In the market, the food items are still as expensive as they were before the re-basement.
Government has to go beyond the declaration of state of emergency in the fight against food insecurity. The power conferred by the state of emergency should be used to clip the wings of the herders and myriads of bandits to enable farmers access their farms without fear.
The state of emergency will continue to fail so long as herders could march their cattle into crop farms with impunity.
Food inflation will remain at 40 per cent if the bandits continue to control the routes to the farms.
Besides the menace of bandits and herders, the federal government has to accept the basic reality that 60 million peasant farmers clearing the land with cutlass and tilling the soil with hoes can no longer feed a population of 218 million people.
Food supply from peasant farmers was enough when the population of Nigeria was 100 million. Now it has more than doubled and we can no longer depend on the peasant farmers.
The truth is that the size of field that 60 million peasant farmers will cultivate in three months can be handled by tractors and combined harvesters in three days.
That is why the federal government must effectively promote mechanised farming. The declaration of state of emergency like it was done in Rivers state is about taking steps that would otherwise not be taken under normal circumstances. The governor of Rivers state was removed under the state of emergency.
Such radical steps must be taken against bandits and herders to reverse the food insecurity in the land.
Under the state of emergency, the federal government should order state governments in the North to seize the vast lands lying fallow everywhere and turn them to rice or maize farms.
That is the only way we can compensate for the food supply deficit that pushes up prices.