Admin I Monday, July 06, 2026
ABUJA — The African Democratic Congress (ADC) has strongly condemned the President Bola Tinubu-led administration, describing the worsening food insecurity across the country as an “APC-inspired, government-created humanitarian disaster.”
The opposition party’s reaction follows a grim assessment by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), which confirmed that Nigeria is currently battling one of its most severe food security emergencies in nearly a decade.
According to data released by the WFP, over 17 million Nigerians across nine conflict-affected northern states are currently experiencing Crisis, Emergency, or Catastrophic levels of food insecurity. The figure reflects an alarming increase of nearly two million people from previous baseline projections.
A breakdown of the UN agency’s findings shows that Borno State alone accounts for more than three million acutely food-insecure individuals. Meanwhile, the combined tally for the perennially troubled frontline states of Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe (BAY) has risen exponentially to 6.2 million people.
Reacting to the report in a statement, the ADC emphasized that the statistics could not be dismissed as mere political rhetoric.
”These are not opposition figures. They are not campaign slogans. They are the findings of the world’s leading humanitarian agency on hunger,” the party stated.
The WFP identified expanding insecurity, relentless attacks on farming communities, mass displacement, restricted humanitarian access, and a steady decline in institutional support for vulnerable populations as the primary drivers of the crisis.
The ADC argued that these factors are proof of state failure. “The hunger confronting millions of Nigerians today is not a natural disaster.
This humanitarian crisis is the predictable outcome of a government that has failed to secure Nigerian lives, failed to protect Nigerian farmers, and failed to address the cost-of-living crisis that it created,” the statement read.
The unfolding food crisis comes on the heels of the federal government’s controversial economic reforms, notably the removal of the petrol subsidy and the unification of the foreign exchange windows.
While the presidency has consistently pleaded with citizens to endure the hardship, promising that the economic “pain” is only a temporary path to recovery, food inflation has soared to historic highs.
Simultaneously, agrarian communities in the Middle Belt and Northern regions—traditionally Nigeria’s food baskets—have faced persistent disruption from banditry, Boko Haram remnants, and violent herder-farmer clashes, forcing thousands of farmers into Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps.
The ADC expressed bitter disappointment with the presidency’s handling of the situation, accusing government officials of living in “obscene opulence” while ordinary citizens suffer. The party referenced a recent statement by an administration spokesperson who denied the severity of acute hunger in the country.
”While millions of Nigerian families are struggling to eat even one meal a day and parents are forced to decide which child eats first, the Tinubu administration has kept its head in the clouds,” the ADC noted.
Insisting that the crisis was entirely preventable, the opposition party declared that Nigeria’s deep-seated food crisis cannot be solved through ad-hoc palliatives, speeches, or reactive interventions. It advocated for a coherent national strategy that treats food security as a matter of national survival.
Highlighting provisions in its own manifesto, the ADC outlined a blueprint to rescue the agricultural sector. The party promised that under an ADC-led government, food security would be elevated to a permanent agenda item on the National Security Council, ensuring a unified response across federal, state, and local governments.
Furthermore, the party pledged to put smallholder farmers at the center of agricultural policy by investing heavily in high-yield inputs, mechanization, extension services, and structured market access to crash food inflation.
”We will immediately activate the country’s 264 abandoned dams to support year-round irrigation, reduce dependence on seasonal rainfall, and expand agricultural productivity.
“We will also invest in aggregation centres, warehouses, cold-chain infrastructure, and strategic grain reserves to reduce post-harvest losses and stabilize food prices,” the party concluded.