Nigerian Food Systems Must Remain in Nigerian Hands.
From thousands of hectares being acquired along the Sagamu and Iperu corridors in Ogun State by foreign interests, to foreign buying agents sweeping up grains directly from Dawanau market in Kano, local food supply lines in Nigeria are getting taken over. Scattered across fragmented routes, local operators are getting pushed out of their own economy.
Food is the foundation of daily survival in Nigeria. According to World Bank and NBS data, households spend over 60% of their income on food, climbing to 80% for lower-income families. Yet the supply chain connecting producers to consumers nationwide remains deeply fractured.
Foreign buyers and international trading groups see this gap clearly. They bring in dollar-backed capital to secure thousands of hectares along the Sagamu and Iperu corridors in Ogun, sweep up grains directly at Dawanau market in Kano, and buy up harvests right at the farm gate before local traders can even place a bid.
The issue isn’t that farmers aren’t working hard, or because truckers don’t know how to move product, or because too few people are in the industry. No, millions of folks operate in this ecosystem every day. Agriculture remains the highest employer of labor in Nigeria, with millions trading agro products and its derivatives daily.
The real problem is that there is too much fragmentation, with small players scattered everywhere with no unified coordination that can survive a growing population and how the modern world works. So foreign and non-fragmented players will continue to have a field day. Operating in isolated silos, single traders cannot stand against organized capital. Until local supply lines coordinate across real trade corridors, individual operators will continue to lose ground.