Beyond floods and droughts: How climate change is choking Nigeria’s food system

We’ve all seen the heartbreaking images on the news: vast fields in southern Nigeria submerged under murky floodwater, while sun-baked earth in the north cracks under an unforgiving drought. It’s easy to look at these scenes and think only of the immediate tragedy, the crops lost, the harvests ruined. And while that agricultural damage is devastating, it’s only the first chapter of a much longer, more insidious story.

The real crisis is how this climate shocks trigger a cascade of failures that ripple through every single link of Nigeria’s food system. It’s a chain reaction that squeezes family budgets, silently undermines our children’s health, deepens social divides, and even fuels conflict. To truly understand the threat to our nation’s food security, we need to look beyond the farms to the markets, the dinner plates, and the very stability of our communities.

When a flood washes away a farm or a drought withers a field, the financial pain doesn’t stop at the farm gate. It travels down the road, into the markets, and right into our wallets. Think back to the devastating floods of 2022, which destroyed an area of farmland larger than entire states. The following year, food prices shot up by nearly a quarter. That staggering increase wasn’t just about scarcity; it was about a broken system.

Critical infrastructure roads, bridges, storage warehouses are often wiped out. This creates impossible bottlenecks. A farmer whose fields survived might find his produce rotting because he can’t get it to the city. Processors, from rice mills to tomato canneries, are starved of raw materials. The result is a vicious cycle of scarcity and inflation that hurts everyone, but crucially, it punishes the poorest the most. Families in rural areas, who already spend over half their income on food, are forced to make impossible choices: skip meals, pull their children out of school, or sell the very assets they need to earn a living. In the cities, the struggle is against skyrocketing prices for basic staples. This isn’t just a food crisis; it’s a powerful drag on the entire economy, with some estimates suggesting climate disasters can shrink Nigeria’s GDP by over two per cent.

Even when food manages to get to the market, the climate crisis is creating a silent, second-wave health emergency. Floods don’t just destroy crops; they contaminate the rivers and wells that communities depend on for drinking water, leading to outbreaks of cholera and other waterborne diseases. Here’s the cruel twist: even if a family can afford to buy food, a sick body can’t absorb the nutrients properly. The food is available, but it’s as if it isn’t.

Perhaps more worrying are the long-term effects on our children. There’s growing evidence that rising carbon dioxide levels can reduce the nutritional value of the crops we do grow, potentially leading to increased child stunting. In the drought-stricken north, families are often forced to survive on a less diverse diet, missing out on the micronutrient-rich vegetables and proteins essential for healthy development. This “hidden hunger” creates a vicious cycle: malnourished children are more susceptible to disease, which further hampers their ability to learn and, eventually, to work, locking generations into poverty.

The impacts of these climate disasters are not felt equally. The burden falls heaviest on those least able to carry it: smallholder farmers, who produce an estimated 80 per cent of our food. They work on a knife’s edge, without the financial cushion, irrigation systems, or technology to bounce back from repeated shocks.

Research shows that within this vulnerable group, women and the elderly face even greater hurdles. They often have less access to climate forecasts or loans needed to diversify their livelihoods. This isn’t just an issue of fairness; it’s a threat to our national stability. When traditional livelihoods in rural areas collapse, people are forced to move. This migration to already-strained cities can ignite tensions over scarce resources and jobs, creating a tinderbox for social unrest.

At the heart of many of these clashes is water, the silent, crucial casualty of climate change. Droughts dry up rivers and drain underground aquifers, while floods pollute the remaining sources. In regions like Taraba, an overwhelming majority of residents directly link climate change to their worsening water woes.

This scarcity is the primary fuel for the persistent and deadly conflicts between farmers and herders in the Middle Belt. As desertification expands in the far north, pastoralists have no choice but to move their cattle southwards in search of water and pasture. At the same time, farmers, struggling to protect their own drought-stressed crops, see these herds as an existential threat. What begins as a competition over survival water and land is too often framed in ethnic and religious terms, escalating into a national security crisis that further disrupts the very food system it stems from.

So, what can be done? The problem is that our current response is too fragmented. We have agricultural policies, health initiatives, and security strategies, but they rarely speak to each other. We treat the symptoms but ignore the interconnected disease.

The solution requires a fundamental shift in thinking. We need a unified “National Food Systems Resilience Strategy” that forces the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Health, water resource managers, and security agencies to sit at the same table. Our actions must be as interconnected as the problems themselves.

This means building smart infrastructure, prioritizing investments that build resilience, like water-harvesting projects, climate-proofed roads, and affordable storage facilities to prevent post-harvest losses.

Designing systems that automatically provide support like cash transfers or tax relief to the most vulnerable when a climate disaster strikes, preventing them from falling into irreversible poverty. Ensuring that smallholder farmers, especially women, have access to climate forecasts, drought-resistant seeds, and the finance they need to adapt. Establishing clear, fair, and local mechanisms for managing water and grazing land, moving away from confrontation and towards cooperation between farmers and herders.

The story of Nigeria’s food system is no longer just about the weather. It’s about economics, health, equality, and peace. By looking at the whole chain, not just the first broken link, we can begin to build a system that can withstand the shocks and ensure that no Nigerian has to choose between their next meal and their future.

Amen Halima is with Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution, Abuja

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