20.75% food inflation: Paying recourse to strategic intervention against spurring agents
Food inflation in Nigeria is gradually pitching the Country to the corridor of crisis as the insufficiency of food production to meet population demands continue to wax gross. In its latest report on inflation, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Tuesday (15th November 2021), disclosed that the annual food inflation rate rose for the 24th consecutive month to 20.75 per cent in October from 20.71 per cent in September, owing to further increases in the prices of basic food items. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Inflation Report for October 2021, by the Bureau stated thus: “This rise in the food index was caused by increases in prices of food products, coffee, tea and cocoa, milk, cheese and eggs, bread and cereals, vegetables and potatoes, yam and other tubers.”
While, the NBS report showed that the annual Headline Inflation rate continued on its downward trend to 15.99 per cent in October from 16.63 per cent in September, indicating a steady slow down in price increases across the Country, the heightening of food inflation has continued as the recent development revealed the food inflation rate has risen by 7.38 percentage points since May 2019 when it dropped to 13.37 per cent. The report partly read: “The consumer price index (CPI) which measures inflation increased by 15.99 percent YoY in October 2021. This is 1.76 per cent points higher than the rate recorded in October 2020 (14.23) percent. Increases were recorded in all classifications of individual consumption according to purpose (COICOP) divisions that yielded the Headline index. On a MoM basis, the Headline index increased by 0.98 per cent in October 2021, this is 0.17 per cent points lower than the rate recorded in September 2021 (1.15) percent. The composite food index rose by 18.34 percent in October 2021 compared to 17.38 percent in October 2020.”
The factors spurring the inflation of food prices, as observed, remain deep seated strings of disturbance, which if not addressed only makes a prospect for good omen a facade. Among the matters, the force of insecurity, particularly with the worsening of banditry and herders encroachment and attacks on farmers and their settlements, remain clogs of disturbance which recently have left assurgent misgivings against the farming occupation in the Country. The displacement of farmers from their settlements have brought on a psychology of panic which has left behind an incongruous climate of desertion of farms; the outcome of which could easily be linked with the shortage in productivity and the associated scarcity which has been the spurring ground for food inflation.
As population rise with soaring demands for food, the profile of shortfalls in production as being spurred by displacement of farmers by the force of insecurity, remains irreconcilable. It has only appeared that the Country, if situations tarry beyond manageable limit, could be brought under the clogs of food crisis. The collusion of this defect taking compound impacts with other strings of deformities as infrastructure deficits, drudgery, and poor man-power, pose strains of inconsistencies hostile to productivity.
The metabiotic effects of the clogs of food crisis have begun to posing pressurising impacts on socio-economic and political architectures in the Country. The place of the undesirablility of such strains is incontrovertibly debilitating to the fabrics of the society, as the scourge of poor living standard continue to wax gross with multiplier impacts of socio-economic irregularities as further expression of insecurity. It has thus, become important that the Government look into the necessity of effecting strategic intervention to address the strings of disturbing strains and defective parameters informing the increasing fall in food production in the Country.
