The impact of agricultural corruption was disproportionately great because the sector is the backbone of Nigeria’s non-oil economy
Nigeria, Africa’s biggest economy, has yet to make a big dent in the malnutrition problem plaguing millions of its people, especially children.
The country has high child malnutrition despite the nearly N60 trillion allocated by the Federal Government to the health sector since 2001, as well as trillions of naira in budgetary spending by the 36 states and 774 local governments.
In 2020, agriculture contributed around 24.14 percent to Nigeria’s GDP. It contributed 24.17% to nominal GDP in the fourth quarter of 2021 and accounts for nearly 40 percent of the country’s total economic activities, employing a little above 60 percent of the working population.
Yet, Nigeria’s agricultural productivity is insufficient to meet the food required by its growing population, thus increasing the demand and supply gap in the country.
At the subnational level, budgetary allocation to agricultural interventions is grossly inadequate. The contribution of the public sector investment in agricultural infrastructure is low, with no systematic pattern in government capital spending on agriculture.
A recent OXFAM report found that in nearly all the states where a study was carried out, “agricultural investment is remarkably low and falls short of the 10 percent Maputo declaration recommendation, which has been adopted by the states, with states averaging between 1 and 3 percent”.
The absence of government investment and political will have coalesced to worsen the malnutrition problem in Nigeria, with the country having the second-highest burden of stunted children in the world. Nigeria is facing a crisis of malnutrition and ranks second behind India among all countries with the highest number of stunted children.
Thirty-seven percent of Nigeria’s children under five years, according to a 2021 USAID country profile report, are stunted. The prevalence of stunting increases with age, peaking at 47 percent among children 24 to 35 months, while 70 percent of children ages 6 to 23 months are not receiving the minimum acceptable diet. Twenty-two percent are underweight, with an estimated 2 million children in the country suffering from severe acute malnutrition, and only two out of every 10 children affected being currently reached with treatment.
“Out of 100 patients that we see every day, 99 come from poor homes,” said a health care worker in Kaduna State on the condition of anonymity. “All of them are not getting enough food; they come from large families and are illiterate”.
Nigeria’s public spending on health care, according to a January 2022 World Bank data, is a paltry 3.89 percent of its $495 billion GDP, compared to 8.25 percent in South Africa and 5.17 percent in Kenya. This is far below the 15 percent agreed in the 2001 Abuja Declaration, when African Union member countries pledged to improve spending on their health sector and urged donor countries to scale up support.
More than 70 percent of Nigeria’s health budget is used for recurrent expenditure, including office maintenance, salaries and allowances. About 28 percent dedicated to capital projects including procurement of drugs, and micronutrients, whose shortage constitutes a major public health problem in the country.
Corruption, bad policies and ethno-religious violence are hindering agricultural production and distribution in the country.
A July 2018 Carnegie Endowment report on corruption in Nigeria found that the impact of agricultural corruption was disproportionately great because the sector is the backbone of Nigeria’s non-oil economy, accounting for roughly 30 percent of GDP. “It also has an outsized impact on the country’s poorest citizens,” the report said.
