Editorial- Food prices hike, and remedies

The food prices unstoppable increase have become a thing of great concern to us and many other Nigerians despite all the financial effort going to billions of naira being expended on the sector alone to make a better food secured nation. All have been to no avail at this most critical time with the recently released statistical figures of some food items by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) which revealed the scenario in more pathetic way that has generated our concern for what needs to be done.

Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) through its Anchor Borrower Program (ABP) alone for food production had claimed to have expended over ninety three billion naira spread across food crops which today are not within the reach of many Nigerians due to outrageous food prices.

 Apart from CBN ABP, there are many other funding into agriculture food productivity through budgetary allocations and support from development partners which by now supposed to have all come to bear.

NBS 2022 July statistics report declared average price of 1KG of white beans to have risen to 23.22 percent from N444.21 in July 2021 to N547.38 of the July 2022, while the average price of tomatoes increased on yearly basis by 7.71% from N414.83 in July 2021 to N446.81 of the same month of the year 2022. Also, the average price of groundnut oil stood at N1, 078.17 in July 2022 with an increase of 40.24% from N768.81 in July 2021, adding that 1kg of local rice had shot up on yearly basis by 13.55 percent from N411.97 in July 2021 to N467.80 in July 2022 with palm oil stood at N890.67 in the July of the same 2022 showing an increase of 40.19% from the N635.31 in July 2021.

 To our mind, this is a reflection that there has not been any positive meaningful productivity impact on food sustainability system within the pandemic period of COVID-19 till date. This to us is very pathetic considering the fact of billions of naira that have gone into the system either through the CBN or from any other international agencies which we had quite numbers of them assisting Nigeria.

We have severally queried the implementation process of agricultural policies which in most cases are not even transparent enough to give way for a well visible monitoring because they were intentionally made to be secret from the public for obvious reason best known to those that are concerned.

With all national silos spread across the  24 states of the federation, we see no reason why the hike in prices of grains and other food items should be going up on monthly basis according to NBS as releases from these storage facilities should have given a puffer to cushion the effect of food inflation on the people.

We are strongly suggesting that both States and Federal Governments should as a matter of urgency go into alliance especially in the areas of food preservations and storage against scarcity mitigation that will make food prices to go down to the reach of people thereby fulfilling the principle of food security of accessibility, affordability and availability.

 The insecurity situation in the country as it is, has to be really tackled to allow people to confidently go back to their farming business towards achievable food sustainable system without any further delay as serious attention to this will also ensure easy evacuation of agriculture produce from the farms to the areas of need like markets and agro processing centres. All these are handy remedies that must be quickly considered against food inflation.