By Rekpene Bassey
Senate President Godswill Akpabio on Tuesday, 27 January, issued a stark warning that Nigeria is drifting toward a full-blown hunger crisis, as soaring food prices and supply disruptions push millions of citizens to the edge and threaten the country’s social and economic stability.
Speaking in his welcome address at the first plenary sitting of the Senate for 2026, following the Christmas and New Year recess, Akpabio framed the situation not merely as an economic challenge but as a national emergency that demands urgent, coordinated action across all arms of government.
The cost of basic staples: rice, maise, garri, beans, and cooking oil, has climbed steadily over the past year, outpacing wages and eroding household purchasing power.
For many Nigerians, food has become the single most significant expense, forcing painful trade-offs between nutrition, healthcare, and education.
Citing a recent United Nations projection, Akpabio warned that as many as 35 million Nigerians could face acute hunger in 2026.
He described the figure as “deeply troubling and unacceptable” for a country endowed with vast arable land, a youthful population, and abundant natural resources.
“Hunger is no longer a distant threat; it is a lived reality for millions,” the Senate president said. “The rising cost of food and the growing threat of hunger now constitute a national emergency. This sobering reality demands a doubling of effort through legislative oversight and collaboration to strengthen food security, protect the vulnerable, and ensure that no Nigerian is abandoned to despair.”
Akpabio’s remarks echo growing concerns among economists and civil society groups that food inflation, driven by currency volatility, high transportation costs, insecurity in farming regions, and climate shock, has become one of the most destabilising forces in the country.
Across rural communities, farmers face rising prices for fertiliser, seeds, and fuel, while insecurity has kept many away from their fields. In urban centres, families are shrinking meal portions and skipping meals altogether, a quiet crisis unfolding behind closed doors.
The Senate president stressed that hunger, left unchecked, is not just a humanitarian problem but a political and security risk. History, he noted, offers sobering lessons about societies where empty stomachs fuel unrest and erode trust in institutions.
From Aristotle’s observation that the stability of the polis rests on the material well-being of its citizens, to Thomas Hobbes’ warning that scarcity breeds conflict, political philosophy has long recognised food security as a cornerstone of social order.
In modern times, economists such as Amartya Sen have argued that hunger is rarely the result of absolute food scarcity alone, but of systemic failures; of access, affordability, and governance. Akpabio’s address implicitly echoed this view, placing responsibility squarely on policy and leadership.
He pledged that the National Assembly would deploy its legislative and oversight powers to support policies aimed at boosting agricultural productivity, stabilising food supply chains, and cushioning the impact of inflation on ordinary Nigerians.
This, he said, would include closer scrutiny of budgetary allocations to agriculture, irrigation, storage infrastructure, and rural roads, as well as oversight of agencies responsible for food reserves and emergency interventions.
Akpabio also emphasised the need to modernise agriculture, moving beyond subsistence farming to climate-smart, technology-driven production that can withstand shocks from flooding, drought, and global market disruptions.
He called for stronger collaboration between the legislature and the executive, stressing that food security cannot be achieved through fragmented efforts or partisan rivalry.
The private sector, he added, must also play a role through investment in agro-processing, logistics, and value chains that reduce post-harvest losses and create jobs for young Nigerians.
Equally important, Akpabio said, is protecting the most vulnerable: children, pregnant women, the elderly, and displaced populations, for whom hunger has lifelong and often irreversible consequences.
Nutrition, he argued, is not merely about calories but about human dignity and national development. A malnourished population cannot learn effectively, work productively, or compete in a global economy.
He urged lawmakers to elevate the fight against hunger to the centre of national priorities, warning that delay would only deepen inequality and widen the gap between policy promises and lived reality.
Akpabio’s address can be read as a test of Nigeria’s governance capacity: whether leaders can translate alarm into action, and rhetoric into results.
The coming months, Akpabio suggested, will require difficult choices, disciplined implementation, and a willingness to confront structural weaknesses that have long undermined food systems.
At stake is more than economic stability. As analysts have argued, a nation that cannot feed its people risks losing not only prosperity but legitimacy.
For Nigeria, addressing the challenge of food security and confronting hunger is both a moral imperative and a strategic necessity; one that will define the credibility of the country’s institutions and the future well-being of citizens.
Rekpene BASSEY is the President of the African Council on Narcotics and a Drug Prevention and Security Specialist.
