Bukola Shittu, a 38-year-old trader and a mother of five in Ibafo, Ogun State, has been struggling with her business and can no longer feed her children.

“The continuous rise in the prices of food is making it difficult for us to feed properly. My children now go to bed hungry most of the time because I can no longer afford to feed them three times daily,” she said.

“Sales are dwindling and my shop is almost empty. I spend the little I get daily feeding and taking care of them,” she explained.

She said that her husband, who is a painter, was forced to close the shop owing to low patronage and surging rental fees for the store. His joblessness is making feeding a daily struggle and leaving his family hungry most of the times.

“My husband does nothing now. People no longer paint their houses because they are rethinking their plans due to the current economic situation,” she noted.

Despite declaring a state of emergency on the agricultural sector and Nigeria’s emphasis on stabilising food prices, hunger and malnutrition levels have risen sharply in 2024.

Households are now grappling with the worst cost-of-living crisis in decades, which has deepened since President Tinubu introduced bold but unpopular economic reforms last year.

Tinubu inherited an economy that was already down with record debt, high unemployment, low oil output, worsening power supply and opaque subsidies that drained government finances.

In an effort to improve government finances, restore credibility with investors and kick-start the economy, Tinubu embarked on the country’s biggest economic shake-up by rapidly rolling out market reforms.

However, the reforms are robbing households of their spending power, inflicting more pain and renewing pressure on them.

Latest unemployment data shows Nigeria’s unemployment rate rose yet again, and inflation numbers showed the prices of goods and services are moving at their fastest clip in over 28 years, hitting a record 34.6 percent in November, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

The cost of food, which Nigerians spend the bulk of their income on, rose 39.9 percent in November as against 32.8 percent in November 2023.

Onyinye Anyiwara, a trader at Idumota Market, said prices have been high in the country and survival has been a daily struggle.

“The situation is so bad that my family cannot afford a big loaf of bread anymore. We have resorted to eating ‘swallow’ every morning so it takes us till evening,” the mother of three said.

“This helps us to skip a meal without the children feeling very hungry.”

Read also: Nigeria’s cost-of-living crisis: Policies that must bridge survival and prosperity

Daily Struggles

Daily life in Nigeria is now characterised by a struggle to afford basic necessities. Households are in a dire strait as many are forced to skip meals to survive.

One in three Nigerian households cannot feed, with families skipping meals, as they cannot afford enough food, according to a November report by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

The report stated that the number of households that reported not having enough food to eat owing to lack of money doubled to 62.4 percent in 2023, from 37 percent in 2019.

Nigeria, with a Global Hunger Index score of 28.8 in 2024 ranked 110th out of 127 countries. The index termed the level of hunger in the country as ‘alarming.’

The average food prices have surged by over 100 percent since January to date, according to a BusinessDay survey across major markets in Lagos, on the back of lingering insecurity, climate change, high input costs and an acute dollar shortages.

To halt the continuous surge in food prices across the country and soften the blow of accelerating inflation, which is straining household incomes, analysts say the government must allow the importation of food in the short term while addressing issues that are hindering production and cutting supply in the medium term.

According to them, the federal government will have to make some efforts to stem insecurity, drastically reduce post-harvest losses, fix structural deficiencies across the value chain and increase technology usage on farms to boost local food production in the long run.

Jude Obi, president of the Association of Organic Agriculture Practitioners of Nigeria, said lots of farmers do not cultivate in their farms owing to the worsening insecurity in the country.

“The government must address the issue of insecurity if it is serious about food security and diversifying the economy through agriculture,” Obi, the general secretary of the Soil Science Society of Nigeria, said.