Thinking the African Food Crisis - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 780

householdswerepoor(lessthantwohectares),80 percentofstapleswerepurchased,
and65 percentofhouseholdincomewasderivedfromcasualworkandremittances
(USAID2007).Inefect,then,almosthalftheruralpopulationweresemi-proletarians.
Katsina is certainly not the poorest state in the federation, but incontestably it is part
ofavastnorthernregion—aMuslimbloccomparableinsizeandcomplexitytoEgypt,
Turkey,andlargepartsoftheMiddleEast—nowmiredinabjectpoverty.AsLubeck
(2010)hasshown,acrosstheShariastates,malnutritionisalmosttwicethenational
average;thehumanpovertyindexis45.88,comparedto27.8inthenon-Shariastates;
femaleliteracyinthenorthis17 percentcomparedto69 percentinthesouth;theper-
centageofmarriedwomenusingcontraceptionis3.4 percentintheShariastates,com-
pared to 14 percent nationally; and, not least, total fertility rates in the north are over 7
per woman, making for a massive youth bulge (the comparable figure in the Niger delta
is4.7).Overall,thepictureisoneofeconomicdescentanddecliningpercapitaincome
coupled with radically declining health and education standards, but also of a crisis of
legitimacy for the institutions of secular national development, and for northern ruling
classes facing growing hostility from millions of talakawa (commoners).henorthern
pooroccupyaworldofmaterial,political,andspiritualinsecurity(Last2005).
heseenduringweaknessesofnorthernNigeria'sagro-foodprovisioningsystem,it
turns out, is rooted in the political economy of oil. Urban-based construction drawing
laboroutofagriculture,theinlationaryefectsoftheoilboom,anddisinvestmentfrom
agriculture by political classes only concerned to capture oil rents trough contracting,
publicoice,andgrattriggeredthedownwardspiralinrurallivelihoods.Oilwealth
did permit the state the capability to fall back on the global marketplace. Since the
mid-1990s,theNigerianfoodimportbillhasgrowntoassumetrulygargantuanpropor-
tions.In1994,Nigerianfoodimportsamountedto0.67 millionmetrictons(US$0.75
billion);by2001itwasalmost7 million metrictons(US$2billion).Morerecently
(2008-2011),foodimportshavebeenrunningatbetween9and11 percentofmerchan-
diseimports,costingover$3billionannually.InAugust2011theministerofagriculture
solemnly announced that Nigeria was one of the largest food importers in the world. The
foodimportbillofNigeriain2007-2010wasastaggeringN98trillion(almost$8bil-
lion).In2010alone,Nigeriaspent635billionnairaontheimportofwheat,N356billion
onimportationofrice,andN217billiononsugarimports—allcommoditiescultivated
in Nigeria, and for which the country purportedly possesses a comparative advantage.
The persistence of food insecurity in the north is rooted in the commodification of
foodstufsandpatternsofruralinter-householdinequality(socialdiferentiation),espe-
cially patterns of landholding, livestock and other assets, access to inputs, and household
self-suiciencyinstaples(whetherhouseholdsaregraindeicitorsurplus).As Silent
Violence shows, a significant proportion of households were already in grain deficit by
1976.InMatlon's(1977)study,roughlyconcurrentwithmyowninagrainsurplusregion
of southern Kano State, indicates that high grain prices constituted serious threats to
the20 percentofhouseholdsthatweregrain-deicitproducers.Aterstructuraladjust-
mentinthemid-1980s,theimpactofrisesinproductionandreproductioncostscom-
pounded the vulnerability of grain-deficit families. Rising prices of agricultural inputs