NBS Report Shows Rapid Rise In Food Prices

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), in its recent report, stated that the prices of everyday consumer goods rose across the nation.

From the northeast, northwest, northcentral, southwest, south, and southeast, everyday household items that Nigerians depend on for survival experienced either a moderate rise or an astronomical rise.

The federal and state governments, different agencies, both NGO and non-NGOs in the country and outside the borders of the country, corporate organizations, and many well-meaning Nigerians have put in consorted efforts to improve the agriculture sector of the country.

Despite the Central Bank of Nigeria and various ministries' efforts to increase sectoral funding for livestock and crop production, yields have been unable to meet demand due to several factors.

What May Be Responsible For This Shortage

Insecurity across the nation:  For the past five years, the country has been struggling to deal with the numerous challenges confronting the agriculture sector and its value chain.

From farmers-herder conflict to cattle rustling, to kidnapping of farmers, to bandits or terrorist levies on rural farming communities, and so many other challenges.

This results in a reduction in the supply of agricultural produce to the market, hence the hike in prices. 

FX Imbalance: The disparity in the exchange rate policy has put pressure on the local currency as the black market rate seems to have taken the initiative in dictating the actual direction of the real sector of the country.

What this means is that whatever the black market says about the currency as against the U.S. dollars has more power than the I & E and CBN exchange markets, which currently stand at N416.67/USD and N417.14/USD. So, for example, if the USD goes up, expect the prices of everyday household commodities to go up in worse proportion. 

Population Growth: The nation is growing at an alarming rate. According to the World Bank, the country’s population stands at an estimated 206.1 million people.

However, we cannot take this as official as we await the next population census. In essence, the growth in agriculture is not proportionate to the growth in the population, hence the rise in prices and the need to address the shortage with imports. 

Funding Inadequacies: This administration of President Muhammed Buhari still stands as one of the best and most agriculture-friendly governments in recent times.

The government has implemented many fiscal and monetary policies to support growth in the sector.

From border closure to increased single digit loans to small-scale and commercial farmers to international partnership funding for rural farmers and many others, there is still more in terms of funding the government can do to help accelerate growth in the sector.

Lack of sincere data: We were meant to believe that the country has attained self-sufficiency in rice production. Unfortunately, the disparity in prices in the market for local and imported rice speaks contrary to that assertion.

Many had hoped that the border closure and much of the sectoral funding would have increased the production of rice and forced that price down.

Many had hoped that the price of rice would be as low as N15,000/50kg, but unfortunately, the price is still sold for as high as N25,000 and N28,000 in different places.

Technical Inadequacies: The country farmers still yearn for technical support from the governments, agricultural research and training institutes, colleges of agriculture and international donor agencies to help with pest and drought resistance seedlings that could increase production and revenue.

Apparently, due to the so many challenges bedevilling the country, getting this needed help still pose a great risk.

Seasonal challenges: Most of the crops consumed in the country are seasonal. The technological expertise and capacity to ensure the all-round production of such crops is still deficient in the country.

We believe that the country’s partnership with international and local agencies such as the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the UN, the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in Ibadan, and several others could help address these challenges.

Now that we have highlighted some of the root causes of this price rise it is now pertinent to view the various prices as reported by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

Accordingly, this information was computed by over 700 NBS Staff in all States of the federation supported by supervisors who are monitored by internal and external observers of the NBS.

Prices are collected across all the 774 local governments across all States and the FCT from over 10,000 respondents and locations and reflect actual prices households state they bought those items.

The average of all these prices is then reported for each state and the average for the country is the average for the state.

NBS audit team subsequently conducted randomly selected verification of prices recorded.

Expect more in the days to come.