The President Tinubu Government has spent a total of N9.74bn on the procurement and distribution of food items as part of efforts to mitigate the impact of the food crisis across the country in 2024.

This is according to data from BudgIT’s platform, GovSpend, a civic-tech organisation advocating for transparency and accountability.

A significant portion of the funds was allocated for the supply of rice, beans, maize, and other staple food items.

The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security spearheaded these initiatives, with multiple payments made to contractors for the emergency supply of palliative foodstuffs to federal constituencies across the country.

Among the key transactions were payments to contractors for the supply of rice, beans, and gari, aimed at alleviating hunger in vulnerable communities.

Payments, often amounting to approximately N85.45m per constituency, were carried out across various regions from February to November 2024.

Data revealed that the same amount of N85,454,545.46 was expended for each federal constituency that benefited from the palliatives in states including Kano, Ogun, Osun, Akwa Ibom, Cross River, Adamawa, Kaduna, Jigawa, Ekiti, Oyo, Lagos, Bauchi, Rivers, Borno, Sokoto, and Enugu, bringing the total expenditure to N9.74bn.

Despite this substantial financial outlay, concerns have been raised about the programme’s effectiveness in addressing the root causes of food insecurity.

An economist at Lotus Beta Analytics, Shedrach Israel, argued that palliatives alone cannot resolve Nigeria’s food crisis.

“While food palliatives are crucial for addressing immediate hunger, they do not tackle the systemic issues contributing to food insecurity, such as inflation and structural deficiencies in agricultural systems.

“We need sustainable economic policies that prioritise increasing local agricultural productivity and improving distribution networks to reduce dependency on external food aid,” he said.

Israel added that the N9.74bn spent on food palliatives could have been invested in long-term agricultural innovations and infrastructure development, which would provide lasting solutions to food insecurity.

Similarly, a Kaduna-based agricultural economist, La’ah Dauda, highlighted the need for a more holistic approach to tackling the food crisis.

“The government’s focus on distributing palliatives is a short-term fix to an ongoing agricultural crisis. While essential, these measures fail to address underlying issues such as inadequate irrigation systems, insufficient storage facilities, and weak market access that continue to hinder agricultural productivity across the country,” he said.