By Prince Charles Dickson, Ph.D.
There is a famous crocodile farm story that explains Nigeria better than most economic briefings.
A group of tourists stood by a crocodile pond when the owner announced: “One million dollars for anyone who jumps in, swims across, and survives.”
Everywhere went quiet. Even the mosquitoes paused.
Then suddenly, one man entered the water and began swimming like a man who had just remembered unpaid school fees, house rent, diesel prices, and his wife’s last warning. Crocodiles chased him. He kicked, shouted, prayed in three denominations, and somehow reached the other side alive.
Everybody clapped. The owner called him brave. His wife smiled.
Later, at the hotel, someone praised his courage.
The man replied:
“I didn’t jump. Someone pushed me.”
That, in one unforgettable sentence, is Nigeria’s food story.
Nobody is saying Nigeria has no food at all. This country is too stubbornly blessed for that kind of simple obituary. We have yam that can humble a wrestler, rice that appears at every ceremony like a political appointee, beans, garri, maize, millet, tomatoes, onions, pepper, fish, suya, masa, acha, egusi, and enough soup theology to confuse the Vatican.
In most places, the markets are not empty.
The problem is that the pocket arrives at the market and begins to speak in tongues.
Food dey, yes.
But hunger dey because money no dey reach buy food again.
That is the difference many official conversations pretend not to understand.
A food shortage means food is unavailable.
A food crisis may mean the food is there, but people cannot afford it, cannot safely produce it, cannot transport it, or cannot survive the cost of cooking it.
Hunger does not always wear the uniform of empty barns.
Sometimes it wears the agbada of inflation, insecurity, transport costs, low wages, conflict, climate shocks, market disruption, and government grammar.
This is why recent warnings by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) should not be dismissed as opposition propaganda wearing UN perfume. Their latest Hunger Hotspots report warns that acute food insecurity is expected to worsen in several countries between June and November 2026, with northeast Nigeria listed among areas of highest concern because parts of Borno State could face catastrophic levels of food insecurity.
The Guardian Nigeria similarly reported that Nigeria remains among the world’s most serious hunger hotspots, driven by conflict, violence, economic shocks, funding shortfalls, and climate-related risks.
Then entered Oga Bayo Onanuga, presidential spokesman, with a statement that landed in the national stomach like cold pap without sugar.
He said:
“I don’t see the level of hunger people are talking about,”
explaining that he often asks people who work for him privately how they are coping.
To be fair, he also pointed to government programmes, infrastructure projects, student loans, and credit facilities as evidence that interventions are reaching citizens.
That part deserves to be heard.
Government is not a cupboard where nothing exists.
Roads matter.
Credit matters.
Student loans matter.
Infrastructure matters.
If a road reduces travel time, that is not nothing.
If a student gets help, that is not nothing.
If a worker accesses cheaper credit, that is not nothing.
But, Oga Bayo, hunger is not measured by asking your staff, “How are things?”
In Nigeria, when oga asks that question, the correct answer is not always the truth.
The correct answer is often:
“We thank God, sir.”
That sentence has carried more suppressed national data than many spreadsheets.
A hungry employee does not always brief the boss with the confidence of a World Bank economist.
Sometimes he smiles because salary day is near.
Sometimes she says, “We are managing,” because Nigerians have turned managing into a national language.
Sometimes the person answering is not fine, but home training has taught the mouth another script.
The danger is that official eyes can become air-conditioned.
They see roads, convoys, meetings, airport lounges, and policy slides.
But hunger hides elsewhere.
It hides in a mother reducing the quantity of soup so the children can eat twice instead of once.
It hides in a father pretending he already ate outside.
It hides in a student drinking garri with philosophical courage.
It hides in internally displaced persons’ camps, in farming communities too afraid to enter their fields, in homes where protein has become a Christmas visitor, and in markets where people price fish only to leave with seasoning cubes.
Reuters recently reported that millions of people across conflict-affected northern Nigeria face severe food insecurity, with violence, displacement, and funding shortages pushing hunger to its worst levels in years. Borno State alone accounts for millions experiencing acute food insecurity, including hundreds of thousands facing emergency conditions.
That is not social media noise.
That is not an “Ebi n pawa” remix.
That is data with shoes on.
Still, balance matters.
Nigeria’s problem is not that the country woke up one morning and all the food disappeared.
No.
The problem is crueler—and more Nigerian.
Food is present, but access is broken.
Farmers are willing, but insecurity blocks their fields.
Traders are active, but transport costs bite.
Markets are open, but purchasing power is limping.
Government announces programmes, but households encounter prices.
The macroeconomy may be wearing a suit, but the kitchen is wearing bathroom slippers.
So when government says, “We don’t see hunger,” citizens hear something else:
“Swim faster. The crocodiles are not real.”
But the crocodiles are real.
One is inflation.
One is insecurity.
One is unemployment.
One is displacement.
One is poor policy coordination.
One is climate stress.
One is the cost of fuel.
One is the collapse of trust.
And somewhere beside the pond, someone is still applauding the swimmer instead of asking who pushed him into the water.
The citizen did not jump willingly into this crocodile economy.
Many were pushed by reforms without adequate cushioning.
By insecurity without sufficient protection.
By rising prices without rising incomes.
By promises without corresponding delivery.
Like the man in the story, Nigerians are swimming.
Some are surviving.
Some are even smiling.
But survival is not comfort.
Endurance is not proof that suffering does not exist.
A people who laugh through hardship should never be mistaken for a people who are not hurting.
The honest position is this:
Nigeria is not a nationwide famine theatre, and we should avoid reckless exaggeration.
But neither can we ignore that millions remain vulnerable to worsening food insecurity, especially where conflict, displacement, market disruption, and poverty converge like crocodiles at feeding time.
Denial will not cook rice.
Sarcasm will not plant maize.
Road projects alone will not end hunger unless they connect farmers to safety, markets to affordability, and households to sustainable incomes.
Oga Bayo, food dey.
But hunger dey.
And when a country where food is available still has millions who cannot afford to eat adequately, the problem is not imagination.
The problem is access.
The problem is governance.
The problem is security.
The problem is prices.
The problem is the crocodile pond.
The question is no longer whether Nigerians are brave swimmers.
They are.
The real question is:
Who keeps pushing them into the water?
Who keeps applauding their survival?
And when will leadership stop clapping long enough to build a bridge?
May Nigeria win.
