Written by Nigeria does not lack food. What it lacks is the agribusiness infrastructure to make that food affordable.
This was the central argument Mr. Kabir Ibrahim, President of the Nigeria Agribusiness Group (NABG), made at the Vanguard Economic Discourse 2026 in Lagos on Monday, May 4, where the session theme was food security and Nigeria’s agricultural rebound.
Mr. Ibrahim said Nigeria must urgently shift from exporting raw agricultural produce to processing and marketing finished goods if it hopes to achieve real food security and economic prosperity.
He argued that while food is largely available across the country, the real challenge lies in affordability, driven by weak purchasing power among Nigerians.
The distinction matters. Most food security conversations in Nigeria centre on production volumes, irrigation deficits and input costs.
Mr. Ibrahim’s argument goes one step further saying production without processing exports the value.
He warned that exporting raw commodities amounts to exporting jobs and wealth to other countries, stressing that Nigeria must retain value locally to create employment and boost incomes.
His prescriptions were structural. He called for a decentralised approach to agricultural development, urging state governments to focus on optimising the production and processing of staple crops within their regions.
He maintained that with abundant arable land and a large domestic market, Nigeria has no justification for widespread hunger and poverty.
The backdrop to his remarks is measurable. Nigeria still spends about $10 billion annually on food imports, including wheat, rice, sugar, fish and tomato paste, according to Sasakawa Africa Association data presented at a separate stakeholders’ workshop in Abuja last month.
That figure represents value chains where Nigeria grows the raw materials but pays other countries to finish the work.
Mr. Ibrahim’s agribusiness argument connects directly to what policymakers are now attempting in parallel.
The World Bank’s $500 million AGROW project, approved recently, is building matching grant facilities specifically to link smallholder production into processing and market access.
The federal government’s livestock roadmap targets similar value retention in the animal protein chain.
Whether those interventions will actually shift Nigeria’s agricultural economy from commodity export toward finished-goods production is the question the Vanguard discourse did not settle, and could not.
What the NABG president did settle is the diagnostic. The problem is not absence of food. It is the absence of the system between the farm and the consumer’s pocket.
if there is enough production there’d be affordability