https://www.thehopenewspaper.com/hunger-at-a-time-of-climate-change/

By Adetokunbo Abiola

Demola Ogundele looks unkempt and gaunt. Amidst the cries of children at the background of the youth home in Akure, he trudges as though a weight rests on his shoulders. As he approaches, he licks his parched lips, plastered into a dusty and sweaty face on the May afternoon. He rubs his chin as he comes near, and on reaching me, he says without a sense of shame, “Please, give me N50 to buy food.”

At the leper’s colony at Ago Ireti, Oba-Ile, Akure, the same scene of desolation and unkempt surroundings pervades the place. Shina Ekundayo, a man in his sixties, sits amidst the noise of a nearby television set, pulling his nose, chewing a stick, looking as though he’s about eighty. The smell of dust hangs in the air as Shina gives a dry cough. “No water,” he states. “nothing, no food.”

The cry rings through the lepers’ colony, “No food.” In the taxi cabs prowling Oba Adesida Road in Akure, other vulnerable people, too, complain about the absence of food, their faces filled with desolation, their dress unkempt. Hunger shines in their eyes, and though they look fatter than Demola and Shina, the same sense of shamelessness about hunger clings to them like glue, their tempers short and nasty. The victims of hunger include the destitutes, the disabled, the unemployed, and others.

Since 2021, hunger worsens in Akure. In September, prices of food such a beans, rice, maize, and others rose, yet again. A 20-kilogramme bowl of gari cost N5,000, but with the Nigerian inflation rate rising to 16.82% in April, the prices of food take an upwards swing, and now a bowl of gari goes for N6,500, thereby creating a big hole in the monthly budgets of many.

Folasade Olorunlana teaches at the Department of Geography and Planning Sciences at the Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba-Akoko. A study she conducted explains the reason for the inflation and why the prices of food stuff take an upwards swing. According to Olorunlana, climate change through drought negatively affects the production of popular food crops like rice, yam, beans, and others.

In addition, investigations reveal that the Russia’s attack on Ukraine impacted on the availability of wheat, leading to a hike in the price of bread. But climate change forms the underlying factor, through drought, late rainfalls, and temperature rises.

In other words, climate change affects the production of food crops, making the quantity of harvest to nosedive. With small-holder farmers unable to harvest as much as before, market women pay more to get the food at their disposal. To make profits, market women hike up the prices of their food products, sending thousands of people like Demola and Shina to face the challenge of starvation.

The consequences of climate change on food production prove very serious for the disabled, destitutes, the unemployed, and others in Akure and surrounding areas. Basil Johnson and Folorunso Awoseyila teach at the Rufus Giwa Polytechnic, Owo. Jointly, they wrote a study titled Vulnerability Analysis of Rural Households to Food Insecurity in Ondo State.

“Results from the study also showed that majority of the respondents eat less preferred food as one of the coping strategies employed to cushion the effects of economic shock in the study area,” they wrote.

For others, stealing becomes a strategy to outwit hunger. At Ibillo, members of a local vigilante group arrested two men for stealing a 2.2 KVA generator set, sold for N75,000 to N80,000. When asked the reason for the theft, one of the thieves said, “We did it because of hunger.”

Food insecurity, along with the associated severe hunger, pervades the state, according to Damilola Tobiloba Adereti and Oluwatosin Fasina, in their study titled Gender Analysis of Food Security Status of Rural Households in Ondo State.

“The HFSSM revealed that 45.8% of households were food insecure with severe hunger, while 34.7% were with moderate hunger, 8.3% of the respondents were food insecure without hunger. Though 8.3% of the households were food secure, another 2.8% were food secure at risk,” Adereti and Fasina wrote.

For some who are at a risk, they raid farmlands in order to survive, as was the reported case of a 30-year-old man arrested by the Ondo State Police Command for stealing 200 tubers of yam in Okitipupa Local Government Area of the state. When asked for the reason of the theft, the man said, “It’s hunger.”

Due to the hunger, some young men pilfer commodities with proceeds hardly able to sustain them for a day. For people who face food insecurity and don’t steal, life becomes rough. To cope, they eat less preferred food as a coping mechanism. Some, however, busy themselves thinking about how to cope with the climate change, which affects food security.

“Food security in Nigeria still demands for a serious concern, given a global food security index of 43.0%, which is far below the average world level of 88%,” wrote Johnson and Awoseyila.

Aderetie and Fasina agree, especially on the aspect related to food security.

“Our study recommends well-planned and focused food security programmes and intensification of rural empowerment schemes,” they said.

Scholars such as Olorunlana say for food security to be strengthened agricultural extension workers need to be educated on current information pertaining to climate change. Through this, she argues, the extension workers could enlighten farmers about adaptive strategies as related to climate change. But the extension workers need to undergo a fast training, as climate change breeds more people like Demola and Shina every day, afflicting embattled people with starvation and hunger.



"This story is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story."

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