IMPACT OF FOOD CRISIS ON NIGERIA'S QUEST FOR FOOD SUFFICIENCY AND SECURITY IN THE ECONOMY

Abstract

The escalating food crisis in Nigeria poses a substantial threat to the nation's quest for food self-sufficiency and long-term economic stability. This study employed an ex-post facto quantitative research design to examine the impact of Nigeria's food crisis on food sufficiency and security between 2013 and 2024. Secondary time-series data were sourced from the World Bank Development Indicators, the National Bureau of Statistics, the Food and Agriculture Organization. The dependent variable Food Insecurity Prevalence (FIP) was regressed against five predictors: food inflation (FI), agricultural output (AO), food import dependency (FID), a security index (SI), and a COVID-19 dummy variable, using Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression. The findings reveal that food inflation significantly worsens food insecurity (β = -0.487, p < 0.001), while agricultural output emerges as the strongest protective factor (β = -0.568, p < 0.001). Food import dependency independently exacerbates insecurity (β = 0.312, p < 0.01). Additionally, the security index (β = -0.224, p < 0.05) and the COVID-19 shock (β = 0.193, p < 0.05) are also statistically significant contributors. The model explains 87.4% of the variance in food insecurity prevalence across the study period (R² = 0.874). The study concludes that Nigeria's food crisis is structurally rooted in low agricultural productivity, heavy reliance on imports, macroeconomic volatility and pervasive insecurity. Achieving meaningful food sufficiency requires coordinated policy interventions that address price stabilisation, domestic production enhancement, strategic import substitution and rural security as interconnected priorities rather than sequential objectives.