Divinely endowed but heartlessly mismanaged towards hunger. The men in power owe us an explanation.
Nigeria holds approximately 2.6 percent of the world’s arable land. More than 56 percent of that land sits idle. And as of 2026, the FAO projects that 35 million Nigerians will experience acute food insecurity during the lean season — the worst hunger figures recorded in a decade.
Read that again. The land is there. The hunger is real. The only thing missing is the will to connect the two.
This is not a natural disaster. This is a governance failure wearing a mask.
The Land Is There. The Access Is Not.
Nigeria has 79 million hectares of agricultural land. Yet only 44 percent was under cultivation as recently as 2022, constrained by what researchers politely describe as “land ownership and use challenges.” In plain terms, land that should be feeding Nigerians is locked away.
Much of it sits in the hands of people who have no intention of farming it. Wealthy and politically connected individuals have quietly acquired vast stretches of arable land across Nigeria. It generates nothing. It feeds nobody. It simply appreciates in value while the same government that facilitated those acquisitions claim to be combating food insecurity.
Large expanses of land, such as those suitable for grand agricultural projects, remain unused for years, some for as long as a decade. Not for sale or lease, and no questions are asked of the occupants.
About 95 percent of Nigeria’s agricultural lands remain untitled, effectively making them worthless as collateral for bank loans. A farmer cannot borrow against what he cannot legally prove he owns. So smallholder farmers, who represent the overwhelming majority of food producers in this country, remain chronically underfunded, under-equipped, and invisible to the financial system.
The men in power owe us an explanation.
Insecurity Is Finishing What Bad Governance Started
Those who manage to hold onto their land face a different threat. Since 2015, attacks on farming communities across Nigeria have driven abysmally low agricultural output as communities either abandoned farming entirely or drastically reduced their activities. In 2024 alone, about 165 farmers lost their lives due to farmland insecurity, according to the Association of Nigerian Farmers.
In the northeastern states, nearly 5.8 million people face severe food insecurity in 2026 — in a region that should be one of the country’s food baskets. Farmers in some areas have been forced to pay armed groups just to access their own land.
The government is fully aware of this. It has known for years. The response has been insufficient, inconsistent, and in many cases, completely absent.
The North Central states have become home not just to the incessant bandit attacks, but also to clashes with herdsmen. Open grazing has been a widely discussed issue for years now, but all government resolutions remain in audio form.
The men in power most certainly owe us an explanation.
Where Are the Agriculture Graduates?
Nigeria produces thousands of agriculture graduates every year. They emerge from various universities equipped with knowledge about soil science, crop systems, livestock management, and agribusiness. Then they disappear into any sector that will offer them a means of survival.
This is not a coincidence. It is the predictable result of a sector that offers young professionals no structured entry point, no extension service framework worth joining, no government programme that takes their expertise seriously, and no guarantee that the land they would need to farm is accessible to them.
The crème de la crème from every graduating set step out into a short-handed situation. This does not just raise the unemployment figures high, it breeds a lack of continuity in the industry.
The men in power? They owe us an explanation.
A Country That Imports What It Could Grow
In 2025, Nigeria spent N7.65 trillion on food imports. That figure has grown every single year — from N3.83 trillion in 2023 to N6.58 trillion in 2024, and now to N7.65 trillion. Nigeria imports wheat at 97 percent of its total consumption. It imports rice. It imports food that could, with political will and institutional competence, be grown on the 56 percent of farmland currently doing absolutely nothing.
The agricultural budget, meanwhile, sits at roughly 1.3 percent of total national expenditure. This is far below the 10 percent commitment Nigeria signed up to under the Maputo and Malabo declarations. You cannot fix a national food crisis with 1.3 percent of your attention.
The Explanation Nobody Is Giving
Nigeria is not poor in land. It is not poor in agricultural knowledge. It is not poor in the young people who studied to work in this sector. What it is poor in is the political courage to treat food security as a matter of national survival.
The men who acquired that idle land know what they are doing. The officials who underfund agriculture year after year know what they are doing. The system that trains agriculture graduates and gives them nothing to return to knows exactly what it is producing.
Thirty-five million Nigerians will go hungry this lean season on land that could feed them. That is not a statistic. That is a policy choice. And the men in power owe us an explanation.
Countries such as the Netherlands, Thailand, Nepal, Brazil, and the United States (before the technology boom), among others, anchored their economies on agriculture. The results leave no room for argument. Meanwhile, a highly populated Nigeria with as much arable land still struggles in deep waters.
Again, the men in power owe us an explanation.
