Despite abundant arable land and a youthful agricultural workforce, Nigeria’s aspirations for food self-sufficiency are faltering. The cause is neither climate alone nor lack of ambition; it is a systemic failure to provide affordable, quality agricultural inputs to those who need them most: smallholder farmers.
The country’s food inflation has soared, and yet the underlying reason receives insufficient policy attention. The price of fertiliser in Nigeria has risen by over 100 percent in the past three years, from an average of ₦17,000 in 2021 to approximately ₦45,000 in 2024. Pesticides, improved seedlings, and other key inputs have followed a similar trend. As the cost of farming escalates, productivity stagnates. The economic consequences are visible in markets across the country, where food prices have climbed beyond the reach of many households.
“Instead of focusing solely on large-scale anchor borrowers or high-profile commodity schemes, the policy architecture must centre smallholder farmers and enable them with reliable, affordable access to farm inputs.”
Agricultural experts and sector associations warn that without a meaningful intervention in input supply chains, Nigeria’s food security agenda will remain aspirational. According to Ibrahim Kabiru, president of the All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), the rising cost of fertilisers, labour, and logistics is not only undermining farmers’ capacity to produce but also directly fuelling the price spikes consumers are experiencing.
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Yet, the dilemma is not purely domestic. Countries across sub-Saharan Africa have grappled with disruptions to global fertiliser supply chains, partly due to Russia’s war in Ukraine and rising energy costs globally. But while others are responding with smarter subsidies and stronger extension systems, Nigeria appears stuck in a loop of policy declarations without meaningful execution.
The scale of the challenge cannot be overstated. According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), Nigeria records a meagre yield of 0.9 tonnes per hectare for beans, compared with Egypt’s 2.1 and Ethiopia’s 4.2. This yield gap is symptomatic of a larger malaise: a reliance on rain-fed agriculture, outdated practices, and unaffordable or unavailable inputs.
In the first quarter of 2024, Nigeria imported ₦1.7 trillion worth of food, contributing to a total of ₦2.79 trillion in food imports for the year to date. These figures, released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), reveal a country still highly reliant on external food supplies despite possessing over 36.9 million hectares of cultivable land.
This growing dependence on imports is a vulnerability. It leaves Nigeria exposed to exchange rate shocks, geopolitical disruptions, and import-driven inflation. But more importantly, it reveals a missed opportunity: millions of farmers unable to produce competitively not because they lack will, but because they lack access to credit, to quality inputs, to basic protections against pests and disease.
The case of the tomato crop in 2024 underscores the depth of the problem. The Tuta Absoluta outbreak decimated tomato farms across major producing states, causing prices to double. Farmers lacked the pesticides required to contain the pest, many of which had become unaffordable. Globally, between 20 and 40 percent of crops are lost annually due to pests and disease. Without affordable and timely access to protective inputs, Nigeria will continue to experience preventable food shocks.
This is not merely an agricultural issue; it is a macroeconomic one. High food inflation affects consumer spending, drives wage demands, and puts pressure on monetary policy. More importantly, it erodes public trust in government and contributes to rural insecurity, as desperate farmers abandon land or fall prey to opportunistic violence.
The Nigerian government must therefore reconfigure its approach. Instead of focusing solely on large-scale anchor borrowers or high-profile commodity schemes, the policy architecture must centre smallholder farmers and enable them with reliable, affordable access to farm inputs.
This includes rethinking fertiliser subsidies. For years, government-backed schemes have been mired in inefficiency, corruption, and poor targeting. The use of digital identity and cooperative structures could enable more transparent and accountable distribution systems. There is also a strong case for scaling up local fertiliser production and prioritising domestic allocation over export incentives.
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Extension services, largely neglected in recent decades, must also be revived to provide farmers with not just inputs, but guidance on how best to use them. Agronomic support, disease surveillance, and climate-smart advisories must form part of the support package.
At the state level, more assertive agricultural planning is needed. Local governments are closer to farmers and should not remain passive while Abuja determines the shape and scale of intervention. Nigeria’s size and agro-ecological diversity demand decentralised solutions.
The current situation is unsustainable. Without urgent correction, Nigeria’s demographic dividend, its large, youthful population, will become a liability. A food-insecure population is a restless one. And a country that cannot feed itself cannot claim sovereignty.
It is time to stop celebrating potential and start addressing the barriers that prevent Nigeria’s farmers from delivering it. There is land. There is labour. What is missing is leadership with the discipline to invest in what matters: consistently, transparently, and at scale.
That is how nations feed themselves. That is how food security is won.
