Nigeria desperately needs to tackle food crisis but youth are fleeing agrarian communities

Nestled between a semi-busy highway and a meandering river, Odo-Omo village lies quietly beside the Ogbomoso-Ilorin old road like a famished drunkard. Some metres away from the road, a young boy whistled along a dusty path that leads to the palace of the village head, beaming with a smile. Amid pin-drop silence, an old woman staggered into an almost dilapidated hut facing the road. Directly opposite the hut, a heap of waste and rubbish occupied a small piece of abandoned farmland that had withered leaves within its barren ridges.

For a first-time visitor, the village looks deserted, bereft of the energy of young people.

Odo-Omo Village

But Abdulkadiri Babalakin, who grew up in Odo-Omo, a village in Asa Local Government Area of Kwara State, said things weren’t exactly like that in the past.

A few years before Mr Babalakin left the village for the city, young men and women straddled the dusty pathways that led to the various farm settlements surrounding the village on weekends. Many of them were traders, hunters and small-scale farmers, even as they attended secondary schools in and around Odo-Omo on weekdays.

“There was an appreciable number of young people – boys and girls – in the village and there were very few reasons for anyone to be desperate to leave here… there was life,” Mr Babalakin, 23, told PREMIUM TIMES in an interview at Odo-Omo.

But things took an ugly turn in recent years when the activities of cattle herders fueled conflicts and tension in the village, forcing some of the farmers to flee their farmlands. That development, in addition to poor access to modern facilities, prompted many young people in the village to abandon their ancestral farmlands and seek greener pastures in the city.

Abandoned farmland Odo-Omo

Herder-Farmer Crises

In recent years, there have been violent struggles between herders and farmers in Nigeria over farmland and pasture. These have led to huge casualties and tensions in agrarian communities in states like Kaduna, Benue, Plateau and Zamfara.

Experts say drought and desertification in Nigeria’s north have forced herders to seek grazing lands further south leading to conflicts over the sharing of resources with farmers.

In many agrarian communities, there have been records of killings and destruction of farm settlements and villages, alarming developments that threaten food security and deepen poverty. In most cases, vulnerable groups such as women, IDPs, and indigenous people are particularly impacted, heightening cases of rural-urban migration, especially among young people who flee villages to earn a living in the city.

The case isn’t different in some of the villages along the Ogbomoso-Ilorin road.

“Many of my friends left when the farmer-herder conflicts became very intense and most of our farmlands were destroyed by cattle. Up until now, our women can’t even go beyond the vegetable farm directly opposite this major road because of the fear of attacks,” Mr Babalakin said, pointing in the direction of the vegetable farm.

Abdulkadir at Odo-Omo

Since returning to Odo-Omo village on a visit, Mr Babalakin said he has lamented the high cost of food items that were hitherto affordable in the village.

“Food and agricultural produce are now very expensive because most farms are deserted and young people no longer stay in the village in their numbers,” he said, head bent skywards.

“Most times, unripe farm produce is destroyed and stolen from the farms, mostly by herders, and that alone discourages many young people who used to come back home to farm during the rainy season.”

The situation at Odo-Omo isn’t any different from the reality of residents of surrounding villages visited by PREMIUM TIMES in March. At Lasoju village, also in Kwara State, farmers lamented the absence of young people who could help with farming activities. In almost all the villages, there is a consensus among farmers and residents: the immediate and direct consequence of rural-urban migration is the rapid reduction in the available agricultural workforce in rural communities.

“They – young people – have all travelled to the city to look for ‘quick money’,” lamented Baba Ajia, a middle-aged farmer around the Banuso axis of Lasoju village.

Lasoju Village

“If they don’t go to Lagos because it is far, many of them go to Ilorin or Abuja. But do you blame them? There are few basic facilities in the village to keep them productive. Even the few ones in the village have abandoned farming; you struggle to convince them to join you.”

At Gambari, on the outskirts of Ogbomoso in Oyo State, an aged farmer, Audu Baba, called for innovative support for young people to develop mechanised farming systems and boost production.

“Young people are running away from villages, yet we need them to help us on the farms, and we also need new equipment that will make farming easier,” he said in a smattering of Yoruba.

At Oloofe, Otte-Oja and Budo-Egba in Kwara State, farmers and off-takers spoke of the need to keep young men (and women) in farming communities amid an unprecedented food inflation crisis.

Oloofe farm

Although studies show that men are more mobile than women and are more likely to migrate between rural and urban areas, young women in rural areas in Nigeria also migrate with attendant effect on agricultural practices and food supply.

In Ilora, Oyo State, PREMIUM TIMES spoke to female fruit sellers and off-takers who lamented the absence of young women who were supporting them in the business. Things took a challenging turn for them after many girls left for the city in search of better opportunities.

“If you go to the farm settlements in Ilora, you will struggle to find young people there. They are mostly aged people around the farms. How much ridges and farm work can those old people do? We have to keep our young people on the farm,” Mama Bolatito, a fruit and vegetable off-taker in Ilora, Oyo State, said.

“We used to have many young girls with us here selling fruits. But we don’t have them that much again; they prefer to go to Oyo or Ibadan and work in big stores or restaurants.”

Food Crisis

Nigeria’s statistics bureau reported that the food inflation rate in May rose to 40.66 per cent, 15.84 percentage points higher than the 24.82 per cent recorded in May 2023.

Although Nigeria has had to face food crises in recent years due to the ripple effect of both local and global concerns like insecurity and the Russia-Ukraine war, the situation deteriorated last year after the Bola Tinubu administration removed subsidies on petrol, which many Nigerians use to power their vehicles and generators. The government also devalued the naira in an effort to unify the official exchange rate to the dollar with what is obtained in the black market.

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu (PHOTO CREDIT: @nosasemota on X)

In July 2023, Nigeria declared a national emergency on food security amid sky-high inflation that made essential foods unaffordable for millions.

Yet an unprecedented cost-of-living crisis exacerbated by conflict, climate change, inflation and rising food prices pushed major meals off the dining tables of many Nigerians. Experts say that persistent violence in the north-east states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe and armed banditry and kidnapping in states across the North-west and Middle Belt regions worsened an already alarming situation.

A recent survey by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) revealed that over 70 per cent of Nigerian households were estimated to be involved in agricultural activities in 2022. The survey, conducted across the 36 states in the country, also revealed that there are about 40.2 million agricultural households in Nigeria.

However, as the nation battles the high cost of food items, a significant number of these Nigerians who cultivate their lands have been pushed out of their farms – and many have fled the rural areas altogether.

“Many of these people fleeing their farms in villages are young people who cannot cope with the poor living conditions in rural areas,” said Babayemi Animashaun, a farmer in Osuntedo village, Osun State.

Indeed, the statistics bureau said in its survey that the majority of the heads of farming households in Nigeria (about 28 per cent) are aged 35-44 years; followed by those aged 45-54 years (25 per cent), while there are only 2.8 per cent of the heads of households aged 15-24 years.

“The young ones are not ready to stay in the village and farm; there are no incentives to keep them and that is the genesis of our food problem,” Mr Animashaun added.

Rural-Urban Migration

According to the World Bank, an estimated 53 per cent of Nigeria’s 213 million people reside in urban areas. Interestingly, the figure is expected to rise to 70 per cent by 2050.

Experts say that persistently high fertility rates and poor incentives to reside in rural areas are the primary drivers of rapid urbanisation, in addition to poor infrastructural conditions that push many people to cities in search of higher incomes and new economic opportunities.

According to the statistics bureau, unemployment is less than 5 per cent in Nigeria but almost half of Nigerians are estimated to live below the national poverty line. With employment opportunities more available in urban centres, amid insecurity in rural areas, most young people move to the cities in search of greener pastures.

The influx of people to urban centres has had negative implications. Heavily populated cities such as Lagos, Ibadan, Ilorin, Kano, Port Harcourt, and Aba face challenges in vehicular traffic, groundwater depletion, air pollution, sewage disposal, high rent costs, and solid waste management.

Efforts to reach the Kwara State Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development, Oloruntoyosi Thomas, was futile as the known telephone number failed to connect. But in 2022, Kwara State Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq vowed that his administration would address rural-urban migration by redistributing wealth and basic infrastructure and paying a premium on the well-being of the people in the rural communities.

Similarly, the Governor of Oyo state, Seyi Makinde, said his administration would control rural-urban migration by ensuring good road networks and interconnectivity in rural areas to improve agricultural practices and boost food production.

Gafar Akande, an agricultural extension analyst, said that since Nigerian farmers largely practice traditional rain-fed, subsistence farming that rests on manpower due to limited access to modern farming techniques, rural-urban migration concern has ripple effect on agricultural practice, available manpower and, ultimately, food production in rural areas.

“The challenge we have with food crises and inflation and all that is rooted partly in how rural-urban migration among young people impacts food production since we still rely on humans for most of our agricultural practices,” he added.

“We can also see the effect of urbanisation and the high cost of living in urban centres. We must decongest our cities, make farming attractive, secure our agrarian communities and reduce rural-urban migration if we want to attain food sustainability.”

Support for this report was provided by the Centre for Journalism, Innovation and Development (CJID)