FG tasked to achieve zero hunger SDG in 4yrs

Federal Government has been tasked on achieving Sustainable Development Goal, SDG, 2 in the next four years.

The call was made by the Deputy Director, Center for the Study of Sustainable Development, Dr Limota Goroso Giwa, on the sidelines of the 2026 Ministerial Stakeholders Engagement Retreat on Agricultural Transformation, held at the weekend in Abuja.

Giwa expressed concern over the few years ahead of achieving zero hunger by the Nigerian government looking at various issues affecting food production while she recalled how farmers made huge losses during the outbreak of the novel Coronavirus, COVID-19, pandemic in 2020, as farmers took loans including from the Anchor Borrowers Scheme, and currently, most of them are indebted an depressed.

She said: “Zero Hunger, SDG 2, is about making sure that no Nigerian, no global citizen go home without food in terms of three square meals, nutritional balances. 

“So the question now is, in the next four years, which is the target of SDG 2030, is Nigeria sure that we are going to be part of the nations that will achieve zero hunger in the next four years with our population?”

Speaking further on the issue of food importation including maize imports from Ukraine, she said it is not proper for a huge country as Nigeria to even import maize from a war troubled Ukraine whose population is not up to Nigeria, hence, the Federal Government should reconsider importing maize from Ukraine and look inwards.

“The other issue is that Nigeria has no business in importing food. If we all go back to farm, if Nigerian government can achieve SDG 2, we are going to feed the entire African nations. We have good land. 

“There are countries all over the world that nothing can germinate in their land. We have the population, Nigeria has the population. 

Meanwhile,she expressed optimism that, “If we can close our eyes and say that, okay, 50 per cent of our population should be farmers, we will end up having a lot of foreign exchange. 

“We will feed the other African countries and other people who import food. When the minister was making reference to Ukraine and other countries that have given us maize, I feel like, why do we wait for a small country like Ukraine to give us maize to produce our food? We in Nigeria should feed the whole world. 

“We should feed the African nations. People should be coming here to harvest maize but the challenge we have, I keep saying it, is insecurity, and not insecurity in terms of banditry but in terms of corruption. People are not secured, so people are mass wealth at the expenses of others.”

While acknowledging the efforts of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security to boost food production, she (Giwa) asserted that some of the achievements highlighted by the Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Sen Abubakar Kyari were “not articulated in terms of meeting the indices and indicators from the population.

They have done so much but there is no sign, indices, indicator in the life of many Nigerians. “So they need to translate their achievements in terms of quantifying the number of people who have benefited from the programmes and practices of the Ministry.”