2025 World Food Day (WFD) Celebration: Hunger and Malnutrition Remain the Lots of Poor Households Across Nigeria
FFRC Calls for Massive Investments of Public Fund in Agriculture and Social Sectors by Governments to guarantee Better Foods and Better Future!
As countries globally mark this year 2025 World Food Day (WFD) and the 80th anniversary of the founding of Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) by the United Nations (UN), the Food and Farmers’ Rights Campaigns (FFRC) calls for the total reversal of all anti-poor capitalist economic policies of the Tinubu’s government, including but not limited to fuel subsidy removal and the devaluation of the naira, side by side with increased government’s investments in agriculture and other social sectors to guarantee “Better Foods and Better Future”. The WFD is celebrated every October 16th. This year’s celebration theme – Hand in Hand for Better Foods and Better Future – raises awareness globally about food insecurity and malnutrition.
The FFRC recognizes the need for collective and concerted efforts as encapsulated in this year’s theme, within the context of addressing the dual plagues of food insecurity and malnutrition, currently ravaging thousands upon millions of households, globally, especially in low-income countries of Western Asia and Africa.
However, we are strongly of the view that the burdens of providing a lasting panacea to these challenges rest squarely on the shoulders of the governments of these countries including Nigeria, through intentional implementations of a people centered policy and programmes.
According to the FAO, “one in twelve persons globally still faces hunger. Since the pandemic, worldwide hunger has declined gradually again from 8.7% of the world population in 2022 to 8.2% in 2024 – equivalent to 1in12 people. This still leaves around 700 million people experiencing hunger! In addition, more than a quarter or nearly 2.3 billion experienced moderate to severe food insecurity last year, and only 34% of babies between 6 and 23 months meet the minimum dietary standards in terms of vitamins and minerals”. For us at the FFRC, all this is worrisome and unacceptable, in a world that’s literally ‘flowing with milk and honey’!
Moreover, in the 2025 Global Hunger Index (GHI), Nigeria ranks 115th out of 123 countries with sufficient data to calculate the 2025 GHI scores. With a score of 32.8 in the 2025 Global Hunger Index, Nigeria has a level of hunger that is serious. This GHI score is based on the values of four component indicators: 19.9% of the population is undernourished; 33.8%of children under five are stunted; 11.6% of children under five are wasted and 10.5% of children die before their fifth birthday. This has made Nigeria, the second country with the highest burden of stunted children in the world.
It’s a paradox that despite the fact that Nigeria is blessed with near inexhaustible abundance in both human and natural resources, earning trillions of petrodollar revenues annually, that these grim and sad facts are our living present realities. More so, Nigeria has over 36.9 million hectares of fertile arable land with favorable weather conditions, representing 40.48% of its total land area.
At any rate, the FFRC takes cognizance of, and doesn’t downplay, the deleterious roles climate shocks and other extreme weather events play or might have played in undermining food and agricultural productions in Nigeria and globally, with their multiple attendant effects such as food insecurity, hunger and other corollaries including malnutrition, insecurity, etc. Nevertheless, the devastating havocs being wreaked by natural disasters resulting from extreme weather events and climate shocks could have been mitigated if resources accruable to the country are properly planned and used in the interests of working people, the poor majority and the environment, as against the profit drive of few privileged individuals and local and multinational corporations. It’s an undeniable fact that the anti-poor capitalist economic policies dictated by the IMF and World Bank, subscribed to by Tinubu’s government, including fuel subsidy removal and the devaluation of the naira, since assumption of office, have condemned thousands of millions of households to a life of hunger and hopelessness amidst abundance.
The FFRC notes that these policies have also meant that governments’ investments of public funds in agriculture and other social sectors are deliberately and systematically discouraged and deemphasized. In other words, government views these sectors from the prisms of private business concerns, ceding its responsibility to private individual investors both local and foreign and guaranteeing them super profits on investments through mass exploitation and different waivers. It is this kind of arrangements that are negating the social function of agriculture in particular and social sectors in general, resulting in widespread hunger, food insecurity, out-of-school children, insecurity, hike in fees, high costs of living, inflation etc .
Therefore, as Nigeria joins the world in marking this year’s World Food Day, the FFRC reiterates its call for total reversal of all anti-poor capitalist policies of the Tinubu’s government, and those of state governments across Nigeria. We also call for a renewed commitment by governments to agriculture and other social sectors including health, education, housing, infrastructure etc through massive investment of public funds to make possible better life for the poor majority including food security.
However, on the basis of capitalism it is difficult for the theme: “Hand in Hand for Better Foods and Better Future”, to be realized especially in a neo-colonial economy like Nigeria. Therefore, to guarantee food security and banish hunger on a permanent basis, there’s a need to banish capitalism and its cutthroat competition in pursuit of super profit for a few rich, as against meeting the needs of the majority. This is why the FFRC subscribes to the building of a mass working people alternative political party comprising workers, youths, students, farmers artisans etc, with a socialist programme. When this kind of party comes to power, it will nationalize and take into public ownership, all major sectors of the economy including establishing public integrated massive farms and place same under the democratic control of working people themselves and relevant professional bodies. This would ensure that public resources currently being trapped corruptly in the hands of few rich, in private and public sectors, are freed for a planned and even development of society across all sectors with a view to meeting the needs of all, as against the present arrangement that shortchanges workers and the poor majority.
Eko John Nicholas
National Coordinator FFRC