Urban Food Security in Nigeria

Abstract

The challenges of urban food security in Nigeria are enormous. The unmitigated rural - urban drift or increase in urban population has made it significantly imperative to address the problem of dearth of or absolute lack of essential foods with balanced nutritional values in most of our urban centers. That apart, the burgeoning crisis of persistent lifestyle changes, the issue of greater emphasis on urban development without commensurate attention given to the important issue of food security, inadequate capacity for urban service provision and delivery, the persistent deteriorating infrastructure for urban food processing and preservation, rapid price changes, environmental contamination and other deplorable conditions that are visible in the urban centres, have made it germane to thoroughly review the problem of food insecurity in Nigeria. Under the present circumstances where urban living has become a matter of chance due to lack of political response to the issue, undue emphasis placed on individual responsibility towards addressing the food insecurity crisis deplorable rural infrastructure and persistent abandonment of well formulated policies on agricultural development, it is necessary to examine concretely these issues shaping up around the problem. The paper also attempts to lucidly locate the food security values and the formal safety nets that could be operationalized to enhance food sufficiency in Nigeria. It also provides some valid conclusions.

Keywords: urban food security, Nigeria, urban drift, agricultural development, food sufficiency