Food and adequate nutrition are among the foundations of human development. No country can achieve sustainable economic progress while millions of its citizens struggle to secure enough nutritious food.

For Nigeria, hunger is not simply a question of whether food exists. It is increasingly shaped by insecurity, displacement, weak agricultural productivity, climate shocks, high production and transport costs, poverty and limited access to nutritious diets.

Against this backdrop, Nigeria’s First Lady, Senator Oluremi Tinubu, on August 18 launched the South-West Zonal National Community Food Bank Programme in Ogun State. The initiative is designed to improve access to nutritious food for vulnerable Nigerians, particularly young children, pregnant women and lactating mothers.

Such support is necessary. Targeted food assistance can protect vulnerable households from acute hunger and help prevent further deterioration in nutritional status.

But food banks cannot, on their own, solve Nigeria’s food-security crisis.

The more important policy question is how immediate food assistance can be connected to a broader system capable of reducing the number of Nigerians who will require such assistance in the future.

Food insecurity is not simply a problem of insufficient supply. It also concerns whether food is accessible, affordable, nutritious and reliably available.

The scale of Nigeria’s challenge remains severe. The World Food Programme says nearly 35 million Nigerians are projected to face acute food insecurity during the June-August 2026 lean season, the highest level recorded in the country in a decade.

The crisis is particularly serious in the northeast. A June 2026 FAO-WFP assessment placed northeast Nigeria among the hunger hotspots of greatest concern, with about 15,000 people in Borno State projected to face catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity during the lean season.

Children face some of the greatest risks. UNICEF estimates that approximately three million children in Nigeria require life-saving treatment for severe wasting in 2026.

The wider African picture also remains troubling. The 2026 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report found that Africa’s hunger rate declined slightly from 20.3 per cent in 2024 to 20 per cent in 2025, the first interruption of the continent’s upward trend since 2017. Yet about 309 million Africans remained undernourished.

Nigeria ranked 115th out of 123 countries with sufficient data in the 2025 Global Hunger Index, with its level of hunger classified as “serious”.

These figures underline why emergency assistance and long-term food-system reform must work together.

Evidence from Ogun State

Recent studies in Ogun State show that food insecurity and malnutrition are not confined to areas experiencing major humanitarian emergencies.

A 2026 community-based study involving 410 mother-child pairs in Ilaro found that 74.6 per cent of the households surveyed experienced food insecurity. The result should not be interpreted as representative of all households in Ilaro or Ogun State, but it points to substantial vulnerability within the population studied.

Another 2026 study involving 320 primary school pupils aged six to 12 in Ikenne Local Government Area found that 28.4 per cent of the children surveyed were stunted and 12.2 per cent were wasted.Again, these findings relate to specific study populations rather than statewide estimates. But they reinforce a wider point: malnutrition can persist even outside the regions most commonly associated with Nigeria’s humanitarian crisis.

Food banks can provide important relief to households under such pressure. The challenge is ensuring that they form part of a system that also addresses why those households are food insecure.

Secure Farms and Food Supply Chains

Agricultural production cannot expand where farmers cannot safely reach their land.

Conflict, insurgency, banditry and communal violence have disrupted farming and rural livelihoods in several parts of Nigeria. Insecurity can prevent planting and harvesting, displace communities, restrict access to agricultural markets and disrupt the movement of food.

Its effects are not limited to areas directly affected by violence. When agricultural production falls or transport routes become unsafe, food supply chains are weakened and costs can rise elsewhere.

Food-security policy must therefore include agricultural security.

Federal and state authorities need stronger preventive security arrangements around high-risk farming communities, agricultural corridors and rural markets. Rural roads must also be rehabilitated so that farmers can move produce efficiently to markets and storage facilities.
Security, infrastructure and agricultural productivity are not separate policy questions. They are parts of the same food system.

Strengthen Resilient Local Production

Nigeria must also increase the resilience and productivity of domestic agriculture.

That requires investment in smallholder farmers as well as larger agricultural enterprises. Climate pressures make this increasingly urgent as unpredictable rainfall, flooding, drought and land degradation add to already high input and financing costs.

Investment should focus on irrigation and water management, climate-resilient seeds, extension services, affordable finance, appropriate mechanisation, storage, processing and technologies that reduce post-harvest losses.

Nigeria could also adapt useful elements of earlier agricultural settlement models without attempting to reproduce them wholesale.

Modern agricultural production clusters could combine access to land, irrigation, extension services, storage, processing facilities, security and market connections within properly governed systems.

The objective should not be to recreate an earlier agricultural era, but to develop production models suited to current economic, demographic and environmental conditions.

The Community Food Bank Programme itself presents an opportunity to strengthen this connection between social intervention and domestic agriculture.

Officials involved in the South-West launch have said the programme is intended to link food distribution with agricultural production through structured procurement and distribution. That approach has considerable potential if implemented transparently.

Purchasing appropriate food products from local farmers and cooperatives can support vulnerable households while creating reliable demand for domestic agricultural production.

The next step is to ensure that this linkage is measurable: how much food is purchased locally, from whom, at what cost and with what impact on participating farmers and communities.

Poverty Is a Food-Security Issue

Producing more food will not eliminate hunger if households cannot afford it.

Nigeria entered 2026 with improving macroeconomic indicators, including moderating inflation and greater foreign-exchange stability, but household purchasing power remains under significant pressure.

PwC’s 2026 economic outlook projects that the national poverty rate could reach 62 per cent, equivalent to about 141 million people. It also estimates that food accounts for close to 70 per cent of consumption among the poorest 10 per cent of Nigerian households.

For families already spending most of their income on food, price pressures can quickly become a nutrition problem.

Households facing financial stress may reduce portion sizes, skip meals or replace more diverse foods with cheaper staples. This means food security must be connected not only to agricultural production but also to poverty reduction, productive employment, household income and effective social protection.

Food banks remain necessary for families experiencing acute hardship. But the long-term objective should be to strengthen households so that emergency support becomes less frequently necessary.

Nutrition Must Remain Central

Food security is not simply about calories.

A household may consume enough food to avoid immediate hunger while still lacking sufficient protein, vitamins, minerals and dietary diversity.

Children, pregnant women and lactating mothers are particularly vulnerable to the consequences of poor nutrition. Malnutrition weakens immunity and can have lasting effects on children’s physical and cognitive development.

The Community Food Bank Programme’s links with primary healthcare therefore have particular value. The programme is designed to operate alongside primary health facilities, creating opportunities to identify children and mothers at nutritional risk and connect food support with health and nutrition services.

But success should not be measured only by the volume of food distributed.

Monitoring should examine whether beneficiaries have more reliable access to nutritious diets and whether nutritional outcomes improve over time.

That would help distinguish a sustainable nutrition intervention from a conventional food-distribution programme.

Turn Existing Policy into Results

Nigeria does not need to design a national food-system framework from scratch.

The Federal Government already has a National Agri-Food Systems Investment Plan for 2026–2027, involving institutions responsible for agriculture, livestock, marine resources, health and the environment.

In July, the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security also announced work on a 10-year Agrifood System Strategy and Action Plan aligned with the African Union’s Kampala Declaration.

These initiatives recognise an important reality: hunger is a cross-sectoral problem.

Agricultural ministries cannot solve malnutrition without the health sector. Health interventions cannot compensate for failing food markets. Farmers cannot increase production if insecurity keeps them away from their land. And greater food production will have limited impact on hunger if poor households cannot afford nutritious diets.

The central challenge is therefore implementation.

The Community Food Bank Programme should be embedded within this broader agrifood architecture and linked clearly to agricultural production, nutrition, primary healthcare, social protection, security, rural infrastructure and local procurement.

Transparent monitoring is equally important.

Authorities should be able to establish who receives assistance, how beneficiaries are identified, what food is distributed, where it is sourced, how frequently support is provided and whether household food security and nutrition improve.

Without such measurement, it will be difficult to determine whether the programme is addressing only immediate hunger or contributing to longer-term resilience.

Beyond Food Banks

Nigeria’s hunger crisis cannot be solved by one programme, one ministry or one administration.

Community food banks can play an important humanitarian and social-protection role, particularly for children, pregnant women, lactating mothers and households facing severe economic hardship.

Their long-term success, however, should ultimately be measured by whether fewer Nigerians need them.

That requires secure farming communities, resilient local production, functioning supply chains, reduced post-harvest losses, stronger household purchasing power, effective nutrition services and coordinated public institutions.

Nigeria must therefore move beyond seeing food security primarily through the lens of food distribution.

The more durable objective is an agrifood system capable of producing sufficient nutritious food, moving it efficiently, making it affordable and protecting vulnerable citizens when economic, climatic or security shocks occur.

Food banks can help Nigerians through today’s hunger.
A resilient agrifood system is what can prevent today’s hunger from becoming tomorrow’s permanent condition.