Recent stories in some national and foreign media outlets as well as informal surveys indicate that the prices of some staple food items have been falling across Nigeria. This is noteworthy for three reasons. One, the decline in prices is not all due to seasonality: prices are not falling just because all the affected food items are in season or because there is a glut in supply from ongoing harvest. Two, the Ramadan period usually coincides with high food prices because of surge in demand as most consumers would normally stock up on food for, and in anticipation of, the fasting period. So, a noticeable fall in prices of food items at this period bucks a known trend. And three, a persistent rise in food prices poses a constant risk not just to individuals struggling to feed themselves but also to the stability of the country. Nigerians and Nigeria need this price break.

This is thus a major and welcome relief. And the President Bola Tinubu administration should take the glory, as long as the administration will not try to shift the blame if and when food prices start rising again. I have written many times in the last 20 months or so about the danger of high food prices in a country where food alone accounts for about 60% of household expenditures. With food inflation around 40% (before the CPI rebasing), my greatest fear was a food protest that could spiral in many ugly directions. We narrowly escaped one of such last August. It is therefore important to acknowledge this tasteful moment, give kudos where it is due, and pray and hope that food prices (and cost of living in general) will continue to track down. But we need to go beyond prayer and optimism. We need to fully understand the drivers of this positive trend, and ensure that we pay more serious, systematic and sustainable attention not just to food prices but also to the larger issue of food security. We shall return to this shortly.

A number of media outlets have documented the notable fall in food prices in the last few weeks. I have seen stories and surveys in Daily Trust, BusinessDay, Nairametrics, ThisDay, The Guardian, TVC, Channels and Aljazeera, among others. I have also spoken to a few people in the food business. Prices of most raw food items that in and out season are falling while those of processed and packaged food items and fruits are not falling yet or, in some cases, are still rising. The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) publishes two important reports that should help with concrete data: the Cost of a Healthy Diet (COHD) report and Selected Food Prices Watch. These reports, especially the latter, should have current prices of major food items, and should show shifts in prices on monthly and yearly basis. We look forward to the most current issues of these reports.

Ahead of the release of these reports, we can safely work with the surveys by media houses. Aljazeera reported that the prices of some grains crashed by as much as 40% in the past few weeks. On 26^th February, BusinessDay highlighted noticeable fall in the prices of beans, yam, rice, tomatoes and garri, ranging from a decline of 23% for imported rice to 70% for tomatoes. In its monthly price survey, Nairametrics stated that the price of a 50kg bag of garri fell by 10%, a medium-sized tuber of yam by 15%, a basket of pepper by 29% and a bag of dry onions by 43%. The Guardian, on its part, reported the decline in prices as follows: 39% for a bag of beans, 40% for a heap of 120 yams, 42% for a bag of millet, 66% for a bag of maize and 71% for a bag of sorghum. While prices of certain items like eggs, fruits, beverages and packaged/processed food items are yet to come down probably due to lag effect, the decline in the prices of major raw food items is significant and should be duly recognised. This is more so when it also bucks the global trend. According to the FAO Food Price Index, the prices of globally-traded food commodities in February 2025 increased by 1.6% month-on-month and by 8.2% year-on-year.

The logical question to ask is why the significant and atypical drop in food prices in Nigeria. To President Tinubu and his agriculture ministers (Senator Abubakar Kyari and Senator Aliyu Abdullahi), the answer is straightforward: the administration’s policies and interventions in the sector are working. Another official explanation is that the improvement in security in some parts of the north has translated to increase in food production, which then is leading to supply surpassing demand. It is possible that both are valid and reinforcing explanations. But it will be good to anchor such discussions on data. Policy should not be speaking and working without relevant data. For example, how many more hectares of land have been brought into cultivation due to improved security? And if we are seeing the fruits of Tinubu policies/gains, what particular policies are we talking about and how and by how much have they impacted the total outputs of the different food items? Without data and proper tracking, it will be difficult for government to know which policy is working, what it should do more or less of and how it can sustain the gains.

There have been some other explanations, ranging from the lifting of the ban on importation of food across land borders, the pausing of payment of duties and taxes on some imported food items (that is if that well-lauded presidential promise was allowed to eventually happen), the firming up of the Naira, and reported pausing of bulk purchase of grains that UN and US agencies distribute to IDP camps etc. The combined effect of these factors would be a fall in demand and rise in supply, leading inexorably to fall in prices in line with basic economics. Signalling could also be at play here. The continuous fall in prices could have prompted/nudged the farmers and traders storing up grains and other produces in their warehouses and barns for future higher prices to start offloading their stocks in order to cut their losses in case prices plunge further. This could contribute to increasing supply, further forcing prices down.  

In the absence of actual evidence, we can file all these under speculations for now. However, if one of the factors that have made the difference is the lifting of the ban on food importation/eventual implementation of the waiver of duties on rice, maize and other items, then it is gratifying that common sense finally prevailed. A good case must be made for protecting farmers. But the way to protect farmers is not by punishing the rest of the population with high food prices. If you protect farmers with unbearably high, and consistently soaring, food prices (when it is clear that we are not producing enough to meet demand), you are clearly and gratuitously inflicting pains on the many to protect the few.

Farmers are better protected when they can produce more from the same parcel of land and with the same or less effort or even subsidies on inputs and support services. Most citizens, including farmers, suffer from high food prices because even farmers cannot realistically produce all the food they consume. So, high food prices will catch up with them too. It is bad policy to continue to prioritise the welfare of the producers (farmers) over and above the welfare of the consumers.  We need to balance the two, and we need to constantly keep a trained eye on the risk to national stability. A country with consistently high food prices is just an acre away from trouble.

We need to properly understand the drivers of the current fall in food prices to ensure that it can be sustained. But we equally need to acknowledge that we have a lingering food security challenge. Nigeria steadily ranks low on global measures of food security. Our country was ranked 110 out of 127 countries on the Global Hunger Index for 2024 and 107 out of 113 countries on the Global Food Security Index for 2022. In November 2024, three UN agencies (UNICEF, FAO, WFP) claimed that as many as 33 million Nigerians could be food insecure this year. Also, the Cadre Harmonise projected that 33.2 million Nigerians may experience critical food and nutrition insecurity during the lean months of 2025. This is a 25.3% increase on the figure for the corresponding period of last year.

Despite accounting for 25% of our aggregate GDP and employing more than 30% of our labour force, Nigeria’s agricultural sector is not in fine fettle. It is a sector characterised by low productivity (a measly 1.19% GDP growth in 2024), low yields (our farmers produce less from the same size of land than their counterparts even in the subregion), and lingering supply gaps (we don’t produce enough to meet internal demand for even for food items like yam that we are the world’s leading producer). The sector continues to be hobbled by inadequate support system (extension services, credit, mechanisation, high-yield and pest-resistant seeds) and limited infrastructure (rural roads, irrigation, storage and processing facilities etc), all of which are further compounded by banditry and other forms of insecurity. The sum of all these is that even when agriculture remains our largest employer of labour, it is not pulling its weight. The farmers are operating at mostly subsistence level, struggling to eke out respectable living. Nigeria remains food insecure and the needed structural transformation is yet to happen. You can draw a direct line between the state of our agriculture and the state of economic development of our country.  

While it is important to note and celebrate the unusual fall in food prices now, we should ensure that it is a trend that can continue. But we should not lose sight of the bigger picture. We need to make the agricultural sector more productive, position Nigeria to be more food secure, free up more hands for manufacturing and services sectors, and put Nigeria on a firm development pathway. We need to see fixing our agriculture as a necessary step to fixing Nigeria. We need to upgrade food security to the status of national security. Section 16 A of the 1999 Constitution (one of the amendments of 2023) mandates “the State to promote and sustain activities that enhance food security”. Section 16(2)(d) already affirms a “right to food and food security.” We have to take food security as seriously as other countries that have made progress have. We don’t have to wait for a major upheaval to start prioritising this.