Chairman, Senate Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Senator Aliyu Abdullahi, has said that 3.7 million people in 16 out of the 36 states of the federation and Federal Capital Territory, are currently faced with food insecurity.
Abdullahi made this known on Tuesday in Abuja at the Second Conference of the “Feed the future Nigeria” agricultural policy project organised by International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
He noted that several factors were responsible for the nation’s challenging food and nutrition outlook.
He said they included civil conflicts, climate change, large scale of displacement, high food prices, poverty and high population.
Abdullahi commended President Muhammadu Buhari for establishing the National Food Security Council to address the challenges in the sector.
He said to ensure sustainable food and nutrition security, there was need to maintain and strengthen the multi-sectoral approach to food security and nutritional policy.
“We need to examine the intricacies of livelihood issues of our citizens to design workable policy frameworks.
“We also need to discuss the role of governance in achieving food security, creating space for interaction between different actors linked by common discourse,” he said.
Abdullahi disclosed that the eight Senate had passed several bills that would support the nation’s food and nutrition security efforts.
He observed that the issue of food security and nutrition was an urgent and continuous theme that must be daily addressed by any government.
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“Food security and nutrition must be tagged urgent because people, population and environmental dynamics will continue to make it so.
“It must be continuous because survival is a continuous issue and as long as humanity exists the subject remains stuck with us,” he said.
He said the move had become imperative because food security had been identified as a huge problem in Nigeria, as the country ranked 84th out of 119 countries on the global hunger index.
Abdullahi said Nigeria came below the Republic of Congo.
The three-day conference is being attended by 100 experts from various sectors of agriculture to work on collaborative research for agricultural policy in Nigeria.
