Dayo Sobowale: Food Waste Claims Misrepresent Nigeria’s Real Food Insecurity Crisis
Analyst argues infrastructure gaps not consumer behavior drive food losses and rising hunger across Nigeria.
Analyst argues infrastructure gaps not consumer behavior drive food losses and rising hunger across Nigeria.
ARISE News analyst Dayo Sobowale has rejected claims that food wastage is a major driver of Nigeria’s food crisis, arguing instead that structural challenges such as poor infrastructure, insecurity, and poverty are the real causes of food insecurity in the country.
Speaking during an interview on ARISE News on Tuesday, Sobowale described recent claims by international bodies, including the European Union and United Nations Industrial Development Organization, as exaggerated and disconnected from the lived realities of Nigerians.
“People are hungry… when they see food, you think they will not jump at it?” he said.
He argued that widespread hunger makes deliberate food wastage unlikely, insisting that such narratives fail to reflect the economic hardship faced by many households.
“You don’t just throw food down… and see what will happen,” he added.
While acknowledging that food waste can contribute to environmental concerns such as climate change, Sobowale maintained that the scale of wastage being suggested does not align with Nigeria’s current socio-economic conditions.
“It can never be deliberate or willful,” he stressed.
Instead, he pointed to systemic issues within Nigeria’s agricultural value chain, particularly the challenges of transporting food from rural farming areas to urban consumption centers.
“The cost of transporting food… is getting very high,” he noted.
Sobowale highlighted poor road infrastructure and insecurity in farming regions as key factors disrupting food supply, leading to shortages and rising prices rather than excess waste.
“Where we have our farms, they are being destroyed… and our roads are bad,” he said.
He also underscored the role of poverty in shaping consumption patterns, explaining that many Nigerians operate at a subsistence level where food is consumed immediately due to lack of storage and financial security.
“People eat up whatever they have and prepare for the next day,” he explained.
Although he acknowledged that improved storage facilities such as cold chain systems could reduce post-harvest losses, Sobowale insisted that such solutions are secondary to addressing the more urgent issue of food availability.
“You need to have food before you can store something,” he argued.
He further criticized what he described as the selective framing of data by international organizations, suggesting that some interventions may be influenced by broader geopolitical or economic interests.
“They are not using statistics… in a realistic way,” he said.
On government response, Sobowale stated that while authorities are aware of these challenges, efforts to address them remain insufficient given the scale of the problem.
“Enough is not being done,” he remarked.
He called for a coordinated approach involving all tiers of government federal, state, and local as well as community-level participation to effectively tackle food insecurity and related challenges.
“All tiers of government should be involved… even village communities,” he said.
Sobowale’s analysis reframes the debate on Nigeria’s food crisis, emphasizing that without addressing core structural issues such as infrastructure, insecurity, and poverty, concerns about food wastage risk overlooking the deeper drivers of hunger.
