The Minister of State for Agriculture and Food Security, Sen. Abdullahi Sabi Aliyu has stated that up to 51% of farming areas in Nigeria are liable to flooding in 2024.
He stated this during the Agricultural Insurance Train-the-Trainer Workshop which held in Abuja recently where the Minister stated that integration of the Agricultural Insurance Scheme into the NAGS-AP program was intended to safeguard the investments and interventions made by both the government and the financing partners against risk such as flooding.
Abdullahi noted that the risks had become central concerns for the government, financiers, and beneficiary farmers, who are the most vulnerable to bad harvests.
He added that such adverse conditions could erase investments, and the labor invested in the program, leading to significant food price inflation, as is currently being observed.
The Minister also highlighted an unfortunate incident during the 2023 wet farming season, where ginger farmers in Kaduna suffered significant losses due to an outbreak of the ginger blight disease, resulting in the loss of over 90% of their total harvest for the season.
He stated, “It was estimated that Nigerian ginger farmers incurred losses amounting to N12 billion due to the catastrophic blight epidemic that decimated their crops in 2023. That is some food for thought and something that we all have to bear in mind; as we are at all times one or two bad harvest seasons away from losing our food supplies.”
“Furthermore, guidance from the 2024 Annual Flood Outlook report, recently released by the Ministry of Water Resources and Sanitation in the first quarter of this year, has alerted us that 148 Local Government Areas (LGAs) in 31 states are high flood-risk areas, while 249 LGAs in 36 States and the FCT fall within moderate flood-risk areas.”
In simple terms, 397 LGAs out of the total 774 LGAs in Nigeria, representing over 51% of our farming areas, are at risk of flooding.”
What you should know
In a related report, the Jigawa State Emergency Agency has disclosed that recent floods have destroyed over 2,000 hectares of farmland across the state.
- Further reports of floods damaging farmlands and residential apartments nationwide could exacerbate the ongoing cost of living crisis and heighten food insecurity. Such events could also hinder efforts to boost food production as the dry season approaches.
- Experts have observed that the current high food prices in the country are a lingering effect of the 2022 floods, which severely impacted regions, particularly in the Northwest, Northcentral, Southeast, and Niger Delta areas.