Low agricultural productivity over the years has already been identified as the major threat to food security in Nigeria. This has also continued to cause high costs of food and spiking importation amidst increasing food prices across the world. It is glaring that high per capita consumption, high yields, and low food inflation are key indicators that can support food security in developing economies.

This piece highlights the eleven immediate strategies the new administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has declared to improve food security in Nigeria.

It can be recalled that the president through his special adviser on special duties, communications, and strategy, Dele Alake had declared an immediate State of Emergency on food insecurity to ameliorate the increasing prices of food across the country.

According to Alake, the president has also declared that the pertinent issues of food & water availability and affordability, as essential livelihood items, would be, henceforth, included within the purview of the National Security Council.

The immediate intervention strategies the president declared as actions to be taken to mitigate the lingering problems of food insecurity are as follows:

• The government will immediately release fertilizers and grains to farmers and households to mitigate the effects of the subsidy removal.
• An urgent synergy between the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Water Resources to ensure adequate irrigation of farmlands and to guarantee that food is produced all year round.
• Creation and support of a National Commodity Board that will review and continuously assess food prices as well as maintain a strategic food reserve that will be used as a price stabilization mechanism for critical grains and other food items.
• Engagement of security architecture to protect the farms and the farmers so that farmers can return to the farmlands without fear of attacks.
• The Central Bank will continue to play a major role in funding the agricultural value chain.
• Activation of land banks. There are currently 500,000 hectares of already mapped land that will be used to increase the availability of arable land for farming which will immediately impact food output.
• Mechanization and land clearing- The government will also collaborate with mechanization companies to clear more forests & make them available for farming
• River basins: There are currently 11 river basins that will ensure the planting of crops during the dry season with irrigation schemes that will guarantee continuous farming production all year round, to stem the seasonal glut and scarcity that is usually experienced.
• The deployment of concessionary capital/funding to the sector, especially towards fertilizer, processing, mechanization, seeds, chemicals, equipment, feed, labour, etc.
• Transportation and Storage: The cost of transporting Agricultural products has been a major challenge (due to permits, toll gates, and other associated costs). The government will explore other means of transportation including rail and water transport, to reduce freight costs and in turn impact the food prices.
• Increase revenue from food and agricultural exports: Concurrently work on stimulating the export capacity of the Agric sector while ensuring there is sufficient, affordable food for the populace,
• Trade Facilitation: Transportation, storage, and export will be improved by working with the Nigerian Customs, with the assurance that the bottlenecks experienced in exporting and importing food items as well as intra-city transportation through tolling will be removed.

These immediate actions became paramount considering the worsening annual inflation rate which rose to 22.41 percent in May from 22.22 percent in April, according to the data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). Data from Trading Economics also showed that prices of food, which is the most relevant in the CPI basket, continued to accelerate to 24.82% in May, after jumping by 24.61% in April, mainly on account of vegetables, oils, bread, fruits, meat, and tubers. Prices also rose sharply for transportation (23.9% vs 23.1%), amid fuel shortages caused by the removal of government fuel subsidies by President Tinubu.

It is hoped that the government also consider taking a cue from the key messages of the recent report of the Food and Agriculture Organisation on “The State of Food Security and Nutrition in The World 2023”.

The report laid more emphasis on the changing pattern of population agglomerations across a rural–urban continuum. The existing interface and socioeconomic interactions are reshaping and being reshaped by agrifood systems which are in turn having effects on the availability and affordability of healthy diets, and in turn, for food security and nutrition.