By Greg Odogwu
This Monday, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), in its ‘Cost of Healthy Diet’ report, said the national average cost of a healthy diet per adult a day stood at N1,346 in September 2024. This is a 7.3 per cent increase compared to the N1,255 recorded in August. The slide is steady. The June CoHD report showed a 45 per cent increase over six months: from N858 in January 2024 to N1,241 in June 2024. During the same period, general and food inflation climbed to 33 per cent and 40 per cent, respectively. This means that as the days go by, Nigerians sink further into the bottomless pit of hardship and starvation.
To be sure, one does not need the NBS to feel the pulse of the nation regarding hunger. I, for one, carried out a simple survey. I moved around the city of Abuja, to those nooks and crannies usually occupied by the poor and the low-income class, visiting the food sellers where these citizens typically eat. The finding is astonishing and saddening, to say the least. Many people cannot afford to order meat anymore. They just want to fill their stomach and gain energy. There is no thought given to nutrition or similar treats. Just add pepper and oil to the rice and we are good to go.
It is the same story with the fast food joints, the ones known as ‘Mai Shai’ in Hausa – offering noodles, eggs, tea, and beverages. Due to the hardship, few people order eggs. They just want to eat the noodles as it is.
In fact, I was brought close to tears when I witnessed an incident in my street. One morning, a waste evacuation truck arrived, and the attendant collectors swooped down on the waste containers. As is their tradition, they casually scavenge through the bin for preliminary separation of waste. One of them saw a remnant of bread tied in a waterproof bag. He promptly opened the waterproof and started eating the three pieces – of probably spoilt loaves – there and then, I was appalled. His colleagues did not even raise an eyebrow. It was a normal day for them. A bad day for my country!
Before now, even the citizens who could not afford meat, could, at least, afford eggs. In many parts of the city, you would see cooked eggs hawkers with their wares, on hand for the poor to augment their meals with the required protein. The hungry man would simply pick up an egg for as little as fifty naira or less, peel it, drop it on his plate, and then enjoy a fairly balanced diet. Some others might decide to just pop one or two eggs in their mouth as snacks. No matter how they consumed it, the egg was able to enrich their system with the required protein.
There are many benefits of eating eggs. It may look small, but is packed with essential nutrients, including high-quality protein, vitamins A, D, E, B12, and important minerals like iron and selenium as well as healthy fats like omega-3s, making it a balanced and nourishing food item. Regular consumption of eggs can improve brain health, boost immunity, support eye health, and help in muscle building and repair while they are also beneficial for children’s growth and development. Indeed, it was an inexpensive and healthy nutritious food that the poorest of the poor could always count on. This was the rationale behind its addition as a vital item in the school feeding programme.
But not anymore, many Nigerians can no longer afford eggs. They have become expensive, as they are now six times their price, and still rising. As a matter of fact, the Poultry Association of Nigeria has warned that if urgent steps are not taken to support poultry farmers, prices of eggs may increase from the current N5,500 to N10,000 per crate. Without any doubt, this portends danger to the well-being of Nigerian citizens because not only will it take people out of their jobs, but it will worsen the excruciating malnutrition that has come to settle in our clime as a result of the masses not being able to adequately feed themselves anymore.
We are now at that destination too scary to describe. It is called District Kwashiorkor, that place that we only read about in history books. For some of us, it was only a part of an active imagination when we were told the story of starving Biafran children during the Nigerian Civil War. This is because Kwashiorkor is a form of malnutrition that occurs when there is not enough protein in the diet. It is a condition resulting from inadequate protein intake, with early symptoms comprising fatigue, irritability, and lethargy. One could only visualise the lethargic, turgid-tummy, glazed-eyed children staring hopelessly. A condition which only cure was proteins – like milk and egg.
Dr Foluso Balogun, a pediatrician at the University College Hospital, Ibadan, raised this alarm recently, in a Saturday Tribune report, when he said that for the first time in many years, children with kwashiorkor are seen in his part of the country (South West). Kwashiorkor typically affects infants and children, usually from the time of weaning until age five. The illness is prevalent in areas of the world that are impoverished and have extremely high rates of starvation or low supply of food.
He said, “Last year, my pediatrician colleagues in the north were complaining that children were coming down with malnutrition. The implication of the economic reform is real; people are starving. It’s been a long time since we saw cases of Kwashiorkor; we are seeing it again.”
I think the President, Bola Tinubu, should turn his attention to the poultry sub-sector. Herein lies the magic wand to solve malnutrition and unemployment. The average Nigerian diet is moderate in fat and oil intake, rich in carbohydrates and fibre, and relatively low in protein. Usually, the protein source is either a piece of meat, fish, eggs, dairy, or plant-based proteins like beans, melon, and groundnut. Before now, beans were a robust protein source for the poor. But it seems they joined rice in a conspiracy against the masses. What usually was considered poor man’s food is now nowhere to be found. Nobody would ever imagine that a bag of beans would become more expensive than a bag of rice. But that is our reality today.
Secondly, a move to save the Nigerian poultry industry is a strategy for job creation. Agriculture remains the highest employer of labour in Nigeria, and smallholder poultry farmers make up a large chunk of this number. They supply homes their food, and factories their raw materials. The value chain is also far-reaching. It involves production, transport, processing, packaging and storage, and retailing. I believe the government is missing a vital developmental sector by neglecting this. A few years ago, there was egg glut, and because the government ignored it, some major poultry farmers were forced out of the market. Now there is egg scarcity. What is the government doing to ensure that the sector survives?
Moreover, the poultry industry is impacted by climate change, requiring more attention than the livestock (cattle) subsector that the government is fixated on. Poultry is vulnerable. Increasing temperatures lead to heat stress, affecting feed intake, egg quality, and bird mortality. Water scarcity brought about by erratic rainfall patterns and droughts affects water availability for birds and irrigation for feed crops. Also, climate change can ignite disease outbreaks that affect poultry, such as avian influenza, and vector-driven outbreaks. It also affects feed availability and quality.
