The Yoruba have a saying: “Bí ebi bá kúrò nínú iṣẹ, isẹ buse.” Loosely translated, it means that once hunger is removed from poverty, poverty has largely been defeated. It is a profound observation. A poor person who can feed his family, send his children to school, and live with dignity is far better off than a poor person trapped in constant hunger. Hunger is the sharpest edge of poverty. Remove hunger, and society becomes more stable, more productive, and more hopeful.
That is why the rising cost of food in Nigeria should concern every policymaker far more than it currently appears to. Food is not just another commodity. Food is the difference between stability and desperation. It is the difference between hope and frustration. It is the difference between a nation moving forward and a nation slowly consuming itself.
Yet every time food prices rise, Nigerians are subjected to the same tired explanations. We blame farmers. We blame traders. We blame middlemen. We blame insecurity. We blame climate change. We blame the exchange rate. Everyone becomes a suspect. Yet somehow the real culprit often escapes attention: Nigeria has allowed the systems that move food from farms to consumers to deteriorate.
Food is expensive because moving food is expensive.
It is worth reminding ourselves that this was not always the Nigerian story.
There was a time when Nigeria possessed one of the most extensive railway networks in Africa. Goods moved from Lagos to Kano, from Port Harcourt to Maiduguri, and from the southern ports deep into the agricultural heartlands of the North. Kaura Namoda, now remembered mostly in history books and nostalgic conversations, was once a thriving rail terminus linking agricultural communities to larger markets. Groundnuts, cotton, grains, livestock, and other commodities moved efficiently across the country. Farmers had access to markets. Traders had access to supplies. Consumers benefited from lower transportation costs.
The railway did not solve every problem. But it solved one critical problem: movement.
Today, much of that system lies abandoned, underutilized, or disconnected from the realities of modern commerce. Instead of moving agricultural products through efficient rail corridors, Nigeria attempts to move nearly everything by road. Tomatoes travel on roads that resemble obstacle courses. Livestock travel on highways plagued by congestion. Food trucks spend days navigating routes that should take hours. Every breakdown, every checkpoint, every pothole, every delay, and every litre of diesel eventually appears in the price paid by the final consumer.
Then policymakers express surprise when food inflation rises.
Why?
A basket of tomatoes harvested in Kaduna has no choice but to travel through a gauntlet of inefficiency before reaching Lagos. By the time it arrives, transportation costs, spoilage losses, security costs, fuel expenses, and multiple layers of markups have been added. The consumer sees only the final price. Hidden behind that price is an entire infrastructure failure.
Even more disturbing is what happens before the food reaches the market.
A significant proportion of Nigeria’s agricultural produce never gets consumed at all. It rots.
Fruits rot. Tomatoes rot. Vegetables rot. Fish spoils. Grains deteriorate. Farmers lose income. Consumers face scarcity. Prices rise.
This should be viewed as a national scandal.
How can a country complain about food shortages while allowing enormous quantities of food to perish after harvest? How can governments declare agricultural emergencies while neglecting storage facilities, cold-chain systems, and preservation infrastructure?
The answer is simple: because ribbon-cutting ceremonies attract more attention than cold storage warehouses.
Yet cold storage facilities do more to lower food prices than speeches.
Modern food systems depend on what economists call the cold chain: refrigerated storage, refrigerated transportation, and temperature-controlled distribution networks. These systems preserve food, reduce waste, stabilize supply, and lower prices. Across much of Nigeria, they remain the exception rather than the rule.
As a result, food becomes abundant during harvest seasons and scarce shortly afterward. Farmers are forced to sell quickly because they cannot store produce. Consumers then face shortages months later. Everyone loses except inefficiency.
There is another uncomfortable reality that policymakers rarely confront directly. Nigeria’s food markets often function in ways that leave both farmers and consumers disadvantaged. Farmers frequently sell products at low prices because they lack storage, access to market information, or bargaining power. By the time those same products reach urban centres, prices have multiplied several times.
This is not an argument against traders or middlemen. Every successful economy needs distributors, wholesalers, transporters, and retailers. The problem arises when markets become opaque, uncompetitive, and dominated by a handful of powerful actors. When farmers have no alternatives and consumers have limited choices, prices become distorted.
The solution is not blame. The solution is competition.
Give farmers access to aggregation centres. Give them storage facilities. Give them digital access to market prices. Strengthen commodity exchanges. Encourage cooperatives. Improve logistics. Increase transparency. When markets work efficiently, prices become fairer for both producers and consumers.
The tragedy is that none of these solutions are mysterious. They are well known. The challenge is political will.
The Federal Government must stop measuring agricultural success by the number of policy announcements issued from Abuja. State governments must stop organizing agricultural summits while neglecting the roads connecting farms to markets. Local governments must stop pretending that rural infrastructure is someone else’s responsibility.
Nigerians should demand measurable results.
How many kilometres of farm-to-market roads were completed this year?
How many cold storage facilities became operational?
How many agricultural corridors were linked to rail transport?
How much was post-harvest loss reduced?
How much did transportation costs decline?
How much cheaper did food become?
Those are the numbers that matter.
Not press conferences.
Not slogans.
Not PowerPoint presentations.
The uncomfortable truth is that Nigeria does not have a food production crisis as much as it has a food movement crisis. The country grows food. The challenge is getting that food safely, efficiently, and affordably from where it is produced to where it is needed.
A nation that cannot move food cheaply cannot keep food cheap.
The next great agricultural revolution in Nigeria will not begin on the farm. It will begin on the roads. It will begin on the railways. It will begin in warehouses. It will begin in cold storage facilities. It will begin in transparent and competitive markets.
Until policymakers understand this simple reality, Nigerians will continue paying not merely for food, but for decades of neglected infrastructure, poor planning, and policy complacency.
And hunger, the cruelest face of poverty, will remain an unnecessary companion in a nation blessed with abundant land, abundant people, and abundant potential.
Garbs
June 11, 2026