Nigeria's agriculture sector sits at the centre of the country's economic survival and food security ambitions. It accounts for nearly a quarter of the national GDP and remains the primary source of livelihood for millions of Nigerians, especially in rural communities.
Despite years of rising public spending on agriculture, the country continues to battle worsening hunger, soaring food prices, and declining productivity in critical food crops and this seems to contradict the paperwork that shows a growing budget, but food insecurity deepens.
In 2003, African leaders gathered in Maputo, Mozambique, for a landmark summit under the African Union to confront the continent's growing food insecurity and low agricultural productivity. The meeting, which brought together dozens of African countries, including Nigeria, resulted in what is now known as the Maputo Declaration on Agriculture and Food Security. Member states committed to allocating at least 10 per cent of their national budgets to agriculture and to achieving 6 per cent annual agricultural growth as a means of transforming food systems and ensuring food security across the continent.
Nigeria, as one of Africa's largest economies and agricultural producers, endorsed this commitment alongside other African nations, which signals its willingness to prioritise agriculture as a strategic sector for national development and food sovereignty.
However, more than two decades after that historic agreement, Nigeria's implementation of the commitment remains largely unfulfilled.
Budgetary data over the past decade show that Nigeria's agricultural allocation has consistently remained low, fluctuating between 1 and 2 per cent of the total national budget, far below the agreed 10 per cent target; official data from the budget office confirms.
This persistent underinvestment has exposed a deeper structural challenge within Nigeria's agricultural financing framework: rising nominal allocations without corresponding improvements in food production and affordability. According to the Cadre Harmonisé report, nearly 35 million people in Nigeria are projected to experience acute and severe food insecurity during the 2026 lean season, also indicating that the situation may become worse in some parts of the country, especially in the northern region.
Between 2017 and the proposed 2026 fiscal year, Nigeria's agricultural budget allocation increased from N135.5 billion to N1.45 trillion. On the surface, this appears to reflect a significant commitment to revitalising the sector. However, when measured against the size of the national budget, agriculture consistently received between 1 and 2 per cent of total government spending, far below the 10 per cent benchmark agreed under the Maputo and Malabo Declarations on agriculture and food security in Africa.
In 2017, the agricultural sector received N135.5 billion out of a N7.44 trillion national budget, representing 1.7 per cent. By 2021, allocations rose to N280.1 billion, accounting for 2.06 per cent of the N13.59 trillion budget. Although this marked one of the sector's highest shares in recent years, it still fell drastically short of continental commitments.
The inconsistency became more evident in 2023 when allocation to agriculture dropped to N228.4 billion from N291.3 billion in 2022, despite rising food inflation and worsening insecurity affecting farming communities. Agriculture's share of the national budget that year declined to just 1.05 per cent.
While the proposed 2026 allocation of N1.45 trillion appears historic in nominal terms, its actual share of the national budget is projected at only 2.4 per cent. This means that even with larger figures on paper, agriculture remains relatively underfunded given the scale of Nigeria's food crisis and the sector's strategic importance.
The bigger concern is that increased allocations have not translated into improved food security outcomes and food inflation remains one of the country's most pressing economic burdens, driving millions of households deeper into poverty and limiting access to nutritious food.
Data on selected staple food prices***
The data compares food prices in 2023 and 2026. Between 2023 and 2026, prices of key food commodities in Nigeria rose sharply and widely across all categories.
Staple food prices skyrocketed, with rice doubling from N1,000 to N2,000 (100 per cent) and beans rising from N700 to N1,500 (114.3 per cent). Similarly, yam surged from N2,500 to N8,000, representing a 220 per cent increase, while a loaf of bread climbed from N750 to N2,000, a 166.7 per cent rise. Vegetables and cooking essentials were not spared, with onions up 218.2 per cent, tomatoes up 150 per cent, and palm oil up 150 per cent over the same period.
The most severe inflationary pressure was recorded in animal protein sources. Egg prices recorded the highest increase at 225 per cent, rising from ₦2,000 to ₦6,500, while goat meat rose by 124 per cent and beef by 140.7 per cent. Even relatively stable household items such as vegetable oil still increased by 46.7 per cent, showing that no major food category remained insulated from inflation.
Budget releases and the execution gap
While Nigeria's agricultural budget over the past decade appears to show a steady upward trajectory in nominal terms, a closer look at actual budget releases reveals a deeper and more troubling reality: the gap between what is approved on paper and what is actually made available for implementation.
The available data from the Budget Office shows the total amount released for capital expenditure, while further search for the amount released for recurrent expenditure was unsuccessful, indicating that such information is not publicly available.
However, since recurrent expenditure forms part of the total approved budget annually, the absence of publicly accessible data makes it difficult to conclusively determine whether the total amount released matches the full approved allocation each year.
Nonetheless, the available data on capital releases reveal significant inconsistencies in government funding for the sector. For instance, in 2017, only N68.78 billion was released out of the N135.5 billion budgeted for agriculture, while in 2019, releases dropped sharply to N44.96 billion from an approved allocation of N137.9 billion. These figures suggest that a substantial portion of planned agricultural investments may not have been fully implemented.
Although the amount released improved gradually in subsequent years, rising from N132.33 billion in 2020 to N321.26 billion in 2023, the releases still reflect broader concerns around budget execution and transparency in the sector.
The sharp increase to N695.05 billion in 2024 may indicate improved supplementary releases resulting from the removal of subsidies and the unification of the Naira.
Other challenges in the sector
The impact of insecurity on farming activities has also compounded the sector's struggles. Across several food-producing states, armed conflict, banditry, kidnapping, and farmer-herder clashes have forced many farmers off their farmlands, reduced cultivated hectares, and disrupted rural markets.
According to data from Nextier's Nigeria Violent Conflicts Database, Nigeria recorded 156 violent incidents in May 2026, resulting in 842 deaths and the abduction of 279 people across the country.
In northern Nigeria in particular, where a significant share of grains and livestock is produced, insecurity has directly contributed to declining production levels and rising transportation costs. As a result, even when government interventions are introduced, many farmers remain unable to fully benefit due to unsafe farming conditions and weak rural infrastructure.
Climate-related challenges have further exposed the vulnerability of Nigeria's agricultural system. Flooding, prolonged dry spells, irregular rainfall patterns, desertification, and soil degradation continue to affect crop yields across different regions. Yet investment in climate-smart agriculture remains inadequate relative to the scale of the threat. This has left millions of smallholder farmers heavily dependent on unpredictable weather conditions.
Another critical concern is the growing disconnect between agricultural spending and measurable outcomes. Despite increased intervention programmes and rising allocations, Nigeria continues to rely heavily on food imports to bridge domestic production gaps. The country spends billions annually on imports of wheat, rice, sugar, and other food commodities, placing additional pressure on foreign exchange reserves and exposing the economy to global food price shocks, thereby affecting local production capacity. For instance, rice and maize production have recently declined rather than showing sustained growth. Maize output dropped sharply from 12.9 million metric tonnes in 2022 to about 11 million metric tonnes in 2024, while rice production, after a slight increase in 2023, fell to 5.2 million metric tonnes in 2024. These continue to drive reliance on imports.
Missing pieces: the interventions billions in agricultural spending should have delivered
Beyond the question of how much money has been allocated to agriculture each year lies a more pressing one: what should that money have built by now? Across the ten-year budget cycle reviewed, several critical interventions that could have transformed Nigeria's food system remain underfunded, delayed, or only partially implemented, even as nominal allocations climbed.
Irrigation expansion
Nigeria depends overwhelmingly on rain-fed agriculture, which leaves farmers exposed to a single growing season and to the erratic rainfall patterns that climate change has worsened. Government officials say River Basin Development Authorities have so far developed about 154,000 hectares of irrigable land nationwide, benefiting roughly 1.6 million farmers who now practice dry-season farming, with several new dams and micro-irrigation schemes billed for completion this year. Yet set against the millions of hectares of arable land the country holds, this remains a small fraction of what full-scale expansion would require, and stakeholders reviewing the 2026 budget have specifically flagged continued underinvestment in irrigation and climate-resilient farming systems as a gap the current allocation does not close.
Mechanisation service centres
Mechanisation tells a similar story of ambition outpacing delivery. Successive administrations have signed tractor-supply agreements, including a 2018 arrangement for 10,000 units and a Brazil-backed programme for another 10,000, but budget constraints have kept both from being fully realised, leaving many smallholders dependent on manual labour and informal equipment-hire arrangements that raise production costs and limit the area farmers can cultivate.
Storage facilities and cold chain
Storage and cold chain infrastructure represent one of the widest gaps between spending and impact. Industry estimates suggest Nigeria loses between N3.5 trillion and N5 trillion worth of food every year, a burden that falls most heavily on perishables such as tomatoes, fruits, vegetables, dairy and fish. The country is currently estimated to have only a small fraction of the cold storage and refrigerated transport capacity it needs, and a National Cold Chain Policy adopted in 2023 has yet to translate into the scale of public investment required to close that gap. For a sector where nearly 40 per cent of what is harvested never reaches consumers in usable form, storage is arguably as important to food security as production itself, yet it continues to attract far less budgetary attention than input subsidies.
Agro-processing hubs and Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zones
Agro-processing hubs have moved further than most other interventions, but slowly. The Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zones (SAPZ) programme, jointly financed by the federal government, the African Development Bank, the Islamic Development Bank and other partners, broke ground in Kaduna and Cross River states in 2025 as part of a first phase spanning eight states and the FCT, with plans to link farms directly to processing plants, storage and logistics infrastructure. Officials project that the zones could significantly raise agricultural productivity and create hundreds of thousands of jobs once complete. However, the African Development Bank's own review rated the programme's implementation as unsatisfactory earlier this year, citing a disbursement rate of just 12 per cent of the funding envelope and capacity gaps in the offices meant to run it, an indication that even well-designed interventions can stall without stronger execution.
Other interventions still awaiting scale
Beyond these, several other interventions remain on the drawing board or in early stages, with far less public funding attached to them than the scale of the need suggests:
● Rural road rehabilitation connects farms to markets, which stakeholders consistently cite as necessary to cut post-harvest losses and transport costs, but which competes for funding with broader national infrastructure priorities.
● Digital agricultural extension services, an area where budget lines remain thin relative to the scale of Nigeria's smallholder population, despite growing recognition that farmers need timely, localised advisory support to adapt to changing weather and pest patterns.
● Affordable agricultural credit and crop insurance, where existing schemes run through the Central Bank, the Bank of Agriculture and the Nigerian Agricultural Insurance Corporation reach only a limited pool of farmers, leaving most smallholders without a financial cushion against poor harvests.
● Nationwide farmer registration and digital input distribution, an initiative the government describes as central to eliminating fraudulent beneficiaries and ensuring subsidised inputs reach real farmers. The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security launched a National Digital Farmers Registry anchored on the National Identification Number in late 2025, alongside a planned biometric Government-to-Person card, but reporting from rural communities suggests the registration requirement itself has become a barrier for farmers in remote areas without easy access to enrolment centres.
Expert's Opinion
Experts have repeatedly argued that solving Nigeria's food crisis requires more than yearly budget announcements.
According to Aremu Fakunle, a senior Agribusiness and Policy Advisor, increased budgetary allocation alone cannot automatically translate into improved food security unless spending is timely, well-targeted, transparently implemented, and clearly linked to productivity outcomes.
"Nigeria's agricultural challenge is not merely a funding problem but a systems problem: a large share of public agricultural spending tends to go into recurrent costs, administrative overheads, and fragmented interventions, rather than productivity-enhancing investments such as irrigation, mechanisation, rural roads, storage, research, extension services, input delivery, climate adaptation, and market access," Mr. Fakunle said.
To reverse this trend, Mr Fakunle calls for a more disciplined agricultural investment framework, one anchored on full budget implementation, stronger monitoring of agricultural expenditure, investment in security around farming communities, climate-smart agriculture, irrigation expansion, rural infrastructure, extension services, and structured support for smallholder farmers.
Perhaps most pointedly, the expert insists that agricultural spending must shift from allocation-based reporting to results-based accountability.
"The key question should not only be how much is budgeted, but how much is released, where it is spent, and what measurable impact it delivers on productivity, farmer income, and food availability," Mr. Fakunle concluded.
