Nigeria not ready for SDG-2 food security, says Prof. Ajayi

·         VP Prof. Osinbajo commends

One of the speakers at the yesterday’s summit on food actionable programmes against hunger, Prof. Rasaq Sanusi Ajayi has said that Nigeria is not following the path of Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs) to attain food security.

Prof. Rasaq Ajayi disclosed this during the United Nation (UN) Food Systems Summit Dialogue held yesterday on virtual zoom conference.

                     

Ajayi disclosed that Nigeria is currently not on track to achieve SDG-2 food security, saying that Nigeria holds 25million of the world’s hunger as 33 percent can presently not afford energy diet, while 91 percent cannot also afford a healthy diet, thereby leading to an increased sickness in both adults and children. 

The food nutritionist added that despite the policies and partners that Nigeria had, hunger and malnutrition still remains, as he noted that Nigeria needs to scale up sustainable cold chain technologies to tackle food loses, and suggested the need for a new alliance to end the urgly narratives through making agriculture attractive to the youths. 

The lead speaker on the occasion, Dr. Victor Ajero said that Nigeria needs a radical food system transformation to achieve the SDG-2 and the 16 other goals to attain food security in the country, saying that Nigeria is not on course at achieving food security presently.

Dr. Ajero pointed that evolving challenges exist across health and nutrition, but added that a well functioning food system for high quality diet and affordable nutritious food must be instituted in an inclusive, efficient, resilient and sustainable to everyone with high consideration for healthy environment.

According to him ‘’we  lose more than half of what we produce with significant impact on the environment, which points that rebalancing crop and animal production practices with environmental impact and country specific health is the way to go'’

He suggested as a way forward to safe diet a transformative policy reviews with rooted narratives that stand to promote optimum breastfeeding practices, creation of national food system command centre, Scale/ democratize proven innovations, depoliticize, digitalize and modernize social protection scheme for gender transformative impact, ramp up investment infrastructure that supports critical innovations and opportunities.

 Prof. Wasiu Afolabi in his presentation said that increased urbanization with increased infrastructural development had increased rural-urban migrations, ditto new acquisition and taste for modern fast foods that have no nutritious values, thereby responsible for our poor dietary problem in the country.

Afolabi stated that the coming of the Covid-19 pandemic has further compounded the food loses and wastages occasioned by the lockdown and movement restriction across states, pointed that Nigeria recorded a food loses in maize, tomatoes and catfish up to 25 percent to 75 and 34 percent respectively.

He advised that critical value chains must be developed and managed in order to make them more deliverable to better nutrition cum healthy food production policy formulation and implementation.

The president of the Farm and Infrastructure Foundation (FIF) Prof. Gbolagade Ayoola, said that hunger looms as Nigeria falls below the category of severe hungered nations, saying that in absolute terms she spends far more on Agriculture in per capital over other West African nations without any meaningful result to show yet.

                      

Ayoola pointed that policy failure is a major character responsible for the chronic hunger in the country since the 60s, pointed the need for effective synergy between the three tiers of governments in a constitutional way for the development of agricultural. 

Omobowale Oni while presenting his paper on ‘’Advance equitable livelihood’’ stated that 71%  of the population producing food in the rural areas of Nigeria were not  food secured, added that Covid 19 pandemic disease has compounded, and obstructed livelihood opportunities most especially among women. 

Oni said that some statistics have shown long term implications for low productivity and inequality livelihood in the Nigeria’s food system due to mismatch between supply and demand occasioned by labour scarcity, saying that activities on both crops and livestock dropped by 58 percent as a result of Covid-19 pandemic disease.

The Vice President, Prof. Yemi  Osinbajo in his comments through the virtual  commended the timeliness of the summit in view of the need for Nigeria to produce enough food for her growing population in a manner that must give consideration for the environment, saying the food we produce must be environmentally friendly for the future generation.                  

According to him ‘’ it is a significant challenge to produce enough food for a rapidly growing population, especially given the changes required in modernization of farming practices, mechanization, and reduction of post harvest losses. But there are also questions around ensuring environmentally sustainable production practices, creating empowering jobs and livelihood, and building capacities to ensure sustainable and healthy food systems’’ 

Prof. Osinbajo pointed that what climate change could permit in terms of crops or livestock production in an advanced country with high income earnings might not be same in country with low income like Nigeria where more meat needs to be produced for consumption to give balanced dietary and healthy living in terms of micro nutrients in the body, saying ‘’ in a high-income country, it may make sense to talk about reducing meat products and consumption for environmental purposes, but in a low income country such as ours, where we find that protein micro-nutrient are in short supply in our diets, obviously, we should be looking at increasing meat product’’  

In her speech the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Shamsuna Ahmed admitted that Nigeria is in critical crossroad saying ‘’ while we have seen some improvement in recent years particularly in the area of child nutrition and breast feeding, we know that in order for these improvement to yield result, malnutrition and other public health issues must be addressed through the implementation of innovative policies and strategies’’

She stressed that ‘‘we must continue to work collaboratively across the federal and state government hand in hand with the private sector and development partners. This is particularly true giving the dual impact of covid-19 and the drop in crude oil price’.

On Nigeria National Food Systems Dialogues (NNFSD), the minister said that “The NNFSD is required to improve nutrition security, reduce hunger and prevalence of malnutrition in line with the national food and nutrition policy for Nigeria’’