 Insecurity and food crisis in Nigeria. Aribu land which is defined as a percentage of land area in Nigeria as of 2016 is reported as at 37.33%. One of the cardinal campaign objectives of the Buhari-led government is tackling insecurity. However, despite claims by federal authorities of increased security measures and atmosphere of insecurity still lingers, rising cases of banditry, kidnapping, headsman clashes, open grazing becoming a hot debatable issue, are bound with huge amount of ransom being paid. This is excluding PTSD which is the traumatic stress disorder that has suffered, has been suffered by victims according to opposition. There's a huge value chain of opportunities explored by beneficiaries of the rots in the system. According to a premium times reports, a total of 4.62 trillion naira has been allocated to the federal security sector in the past five years despite claims by the Nigeria security forces that they are being underfunded. The recent ensas protests against police brutality in the country led to the discovery and the mass looting of warehouses filled with food items meant to ameliorate food insecurity in the nation. The looting revealing Nigeria's perversive poverty and food insecurity. Food insecurity in Nigeria is continuously being aggravated by my rate of factors including insecurity and most recently the COVID-19 pandemic. About 9 out of 10 Nigerians cannot afford a healthy diet. Nigeria has the second highest burden of stunted children across the globe and millions of children suffer from acute malnutrition. About 3.7 million Nigerians or people across 16 states are food insecure. Other factors driving food crisis include civil conflicts, large-scale displacements, rising food prices, climate change population growth, natural resources degradation etc. Propelled by this certification in security and the loss of grazing land to expand settlement. The south word migration of Nigerians. Hetzmen is causing a lot of violent competition over land with local farmers in some communities. Communities have had to pay bandits before they could harvest farm produce. Rising conflict between Hetzmen and farmers in the country is already 6 times deadlier in 2018 than Boko Haram's insurgency. Food supply to some parts of the south was cut off due to agitation from aggrieved Fulani Hetzmen. Tens of thousands have been firstly displaced, crops and livestock worth billions of naira destroyed at great cost to local and their state economies. To stop the bloodshed, the federal government should bolster security for farmers and the Hetzmen. Should they end impunity for assailants, implement conflict resolution mechanisms and the heisting livestock sector reforms. It should also elaborate the new national livestock transformation plan and the commenced implementation of same. States should also become creative in diversification of IGR. It is worth mentioning that embracing innovation is also becoming imperative. Traditional methods like bush following rotational farming, grafting and agroforestry is being replaced by vertical farming, the drones and the bees. The polly house, polly tunnel, farming, artificial intelligence, internet of things and automation as well as robotics among others. With fluctuation in global oil prices, Nigeria can diversify its earnings by making agriculture attractive through ensuring safety of farmers. If the United States can rank top by volume of exports which is 72 billion dollars then Nigeria can replicate same. You know whenever we talk about this matters on food and insecurity it always comes down to the top point Nigeria as a country does not even know how many Nigerians it hopes to feed. No computer data of the entire people in the country. We are over 200 million people. We are not sure of how many and how many we are. We are not sure. And then secondly we have ignored something the desertification of the upper part of Nigeria that Zampara, Katsuna, Boruno it is causing an issue upon the desertification naturally man moves towards water. So taking away the desertification let me add another bigger problem our borders are insecure. So I were in a quagmire of issues if we do not get right as a country which other simple countries have gotten right we just might be able to never solve our insecurity and food insecurity we will never solve our insecurity and food insecurity I think. And you see what you're saying now someone yesterday who made a statement and the person said listen we're complaining about the rising cost of tomatoes in the market they said he went to he was a lady with a husband they went to the mall and one of the supermarkets and they realized that about he said oh like I assume it's not all majority of the tomato paste that he saw there were all from Nigeria. Now the question is this with the advent of these companies being set up to produce tomato paste have we deliberately increased the amounts of tomatoes that are produced in the north. Because now these people be taking a chunk of the same tomatoes as opposed to circulate around Nigeria to produce tomato paste sell the same tomato paste to us whereas we are left with a smaller quantity than we normally would and we know the the the theory of economics buying and selling and demand and supply thank you. So of course that will increase I think we're not strategic enough in in the way we address food as a security in Nigeria. Someone made a statement they calling me a statement about South Africa I said every year the people wait on government to hear government's policies before the strike especially after an election because they know that is the next big thing that's the next way to make money. Yes government came in and said they want to do a Greek and not just this government even before that we know what Mr Adeshino did how many of us have plugged into a Greek. Now we're complaining about the basins that they want to go discover oil in the north asif bla bla bla and I say fine number one that's the story for another day the money will not be given to the state government you'll be given to NNPC or whoever to explore and it will be shared in normal way of old whatever that is. Now the truth is the people quote unquote in the north often look for a way to resolve their problems we know I mean I'm shocked that we had we've had this headsman crisis in so many years and the question is how many state governors in the south have decided that you know what let's start producing an amount of rice let's start producing an amount of yam let's start feeding ourselves in the south so that if this thing worsens not just that we're self-sufficient but we can even sell food to the north to help them out because they cannot create food we are putting everything back on the federal government which they should take the blame no big deal but what are we doing as a people to make sure that we have food to eat. I think everything has been politicized to a very large extent because you just raised a very valid point we've been there's been headsman crisis for a very long time it's just became I don't even know what now made it brought it to the front burner but it's always been there we've always had cases of people being attacked in their farms we've had cases of cows moving into farms and eating things but you see because everything is about the politics everything um the that the advent the oil boom completely destroyed our capacity to think yeah it shut us down we hibernated we hibernated if at all we did not shut down we hibernated um so we have a minister for agriculture and we don't put in blames pointing fingers but the question is which goes back to that same question what's your developmental plan feme additional opened our eyes to a lot of a lot of things a lot of things kasa labor as a matter of facts which when you listen to feme additional you will not akimu mi addition akimu ma addition sorry akimu ma addition is the reservoir is i'm sorry even family you know where you were talking even family to me are you referring to am i this i'm not talking about you sir so akimu mi additional opened our eyes to huge opportunity in the agri agri agri agri sector um and you will be shocked how many billions of naira has been voted for this that information is not public because guess what karede if the information is made public it's made available if the process of the dissemination of that money is not through government if it was through independent institutions that also exist i am sure my village in ohozara produces rice i recall i recall very well at the time when i was there they will go to rise from they will produce rice when you hear about rice i we am from airborne states and my village produces rice but the process of that production is still is too acute to feed the the club needs our demands to meet that demand why can't we move in automation there why can't they move a factory there but it can be done because there is someone who represents us who will rather keep that conversation at the state house of assembly of federal house you know there was a one time minister of agriculture and i remember he really celebrated that we started exporting koko no it's impressive that we are exporting koko but i would give you the numbers we've always been doing no i'll give you i'll give you the numbers that's of 20s this was 2016 as of 2016 um we we're making as much as three billion dollars from our exports in koko wow but now the normal Nigerian was impressive but we need to pay attention to something our imports of koko derivatives which are koko uh chocolates all the things that was at 9.6 billion dollars meaning Nigeria is running at the deficit of 6 6.3 billion dollars when you have the raw material what is your plan for processing and now this processing deficiency is what Nigeria can feed itself i don't have a doubt about that i've travelled all across Nigeria i've been to every state Nigeria can feed itself Nigeria's problem is storage and processing and storage yeah we don't have no and there's one other thing transportation a lot of these things they just they are there for so long bringing them down here because by the time we look at the the cost the variance in the pricing from the village or wherever it is coming down to the city and even within the city from the amount of something is sold in ikorodu is different from the amount it's sold in probably or relay or somewhere in badagri why is the same legacy but the and the amount is not just little hundred or 200 or at times as much as 500 600 and i always tell them there are there are no headsmen between ikorodu and badagri so you cannot blame headsmen for that men they are headsmen in uniforms no no no in uniform collecting something that's why they are headsmen in uniform i mean i have a friend from benwestates her name is mimi and mimi will tell you that mimi will travel to her village and she will send pictures and she will say this big yam you're seeing is less than 1000 naira and when you see the big yam and she will tell you that yam is probably 400 naira in her village she will bring a basket of tomatoes and tell you this is 1200 naira that same basket goes for 6000 when you arrive i was in i was in just before i came in i don't live in live i was always bragging about that so i was in just and the basket of tomatoes there is 800 it's even less than oh but what happens and i sent to my sister in sister in law and my wife was apparently in Lagos at the time i sent to them and transporting it and if you divide it i was wondering i said why is tomato that expensive in Lagos if i decided to start transporting tomatoes up and down i'll make a lot of money but i'll tell you what Nigeria ignored the most which is pain of our problems with insecurity right now you see the troubles in sub Saharan Africa you asked the question you said how did it move to the front burner the troubles in sub Saharan Africa so when Libya was breaking down Sudan was causing havoc more guns were coming into the system in sub Saharan Africa Nigeria as usual didn't care we're spending money on oil national assembly was buying new cars we refuse to secure our borders what happened is those guns and those borders trickled down remember that our politicians hired some of these people for their little vendettas let me not only put place my hands on the politicians alone our small community referral fights and i'm not going to mention we hired a few of these gun criminals from outside to fight our wars and everybody's wondering all of us how the hell they get here everybody's not your business really and you see like what you're saying is so after that now listen i always we spend we don't understand and we don't take our time to really study about security if we did we realize that Nigeria hasn't done anything now Egypt doesn't have insurrection South Africa doesn't have insurrection Algeria doesn't have insurrection but in terms of GDP they spend more on securing and their military than Nigeria who is suffering and all round does we spend less than i think 0.5 percent or 0.6 percent i think Egypt spends or South Africa spends around 0.9 Egypt 1.2 1.6 uh Algeria is it towards whatever of their of their budget and their budget let's face the facts most likely will be bigger than Nigeria's budget so in terms of the actual amount they spend way more on their military every single year than we Nigerians who are confronted confronted with insurrection across both from the northern part to the southern part and that is military not to talk of the interior security i mean the police and blah blah blah we spend a lot yes and i think one of the challenges people are having is interaction explanation on where this money is going and how it's been done but the cost of funding the military is no joke i was there was this report i came out some years ago that said a fully kid american soldier i mean at war the war from maybe in afghanistan or so i'm not sure i need to confirm that maybe it's worth around is it 40 000 or 30 000 dollars fully kids that's standing full soldier ready for battle and that that amount though if you're not sure we'll come back that same way maybe we'd depreciate to around 20 or 10 or 5000 and when it's going to so funding the military is heavy and we when we say and i when i look at Nigeria and security i laugh because they said all most of our expenses are going to the military the civil defense service we supposed to be the frontline first line of call in the area and all that we're not spending enough even look at their uniform is tatted the police we're not spending on them and they're supposed to be the human have the human face be able to interact with you so these people are hungry we're not spending yet on security you know kia kia kia i tried to bring out on point spending on our military is like securing let me bring it down to basis like securing an entire estate spending on your police is like putting boglar proof on your house that's to tell you the efficiency we have in Nigeria now imagine we have where we approximately give or take as we call ourselves 200 million uh usual number how many people do we have in our police force less than 500 000 of those less than 500 000 250 000 are guarding vital assets be banks cbn etc then another then and politicians then you have 250 000 policing 200 million people un is one policeman to ten in a best situation one to ten Nigeria has one to ten thousand one policemen to ten thousand how are you going to secure ten thousand people as one policeman it is if we like let's spend 500 billion dollars as long as that is the that is the amount of people we have it's not going to be possible to police we always mention state police in our whatever always always come up and i say why do you talk about state police you build from the ground up not from the top down so if you are going to be looking at anything ethnic policing if you grow up in a locality let's say you let me give an example let's say you grow up in etiusa from when you were a child if you join the police at age 20 there's nothing that is going on in etiusa that you will not know you know the bad boys if they still tv you know you you can count probably did it but you can now employ somebody from from a degree to come to leki and expect him to handle it doesn't work that way so instead of us clamoring and i blame the middle class for this for the so-called fictitious state police with state governors ordinary small state state elections board that giving them no rival party can win election state police want to give them the improvs of states so in my position we should go actually be clamoring for local government police in the hands of local government chairman that we can hold responsible let's also remember that local governments are not immune that's the local government chairman is not immune they don't have immunity really if they cross you ah you didn't know ah let me tell you to so you are etiusa chairman your sorrelary you know anytime you just feel they've stolen one money carry them to kut they don't have immunity oh that's good news thank you kule talking about security and delving back into the food and beds now one of the reasons in my view that we're not really transforming in food is because the youth are not fully active the banking sector where it is today is done by the youth movies entertainment is done by you any active sector in Nigeria today is the youth i think it's time for the youth to get involved in food and security amazing up next is kule lawa stay with us