Gov Aliyu’s food security initiative as new currency of governance
By Lawal Jet Kaugama
When the Minister of Budget and Economic Planning, Senator Abubakar Atiku Bagudu, travelled to Bodinga Local Government Area to flag off the sale of subsidised food items, he did more than perform a ceremonial duty.
He held up Sokoto State as a template for the rest of the federation. “What you are doing in Sokoto is what every governor should do,” he told Governor Ahmed Aliyu, a rare, unambiguous endorsement from a sitting federal minister, and one that deserves closer scrutiny rather than passing applause.
According to a statement issued by Abubakar Bawa, Director General, Media and Publicity, Government House, Sokoto, the minister praised Governor Aliyu’s initiative for making food more affordable and accessible to low-income earners and rural dwellers, while also commending the state government’s foresight in sourcing the subsidised items directly from local peasant farmers. That second detail is easy to overlook amid the applause, but it is arguably the more consequential policy decision.
Nigeria’s food inflation crisis has two faces. The first is what consumers see at the market: the price of a basket of grain climbing month after month, outpacing wages and stretching household budgets to breaking point.
The second, less visible face is what happens upstream, the farmer who grows the grain but rarely captures the value of rising prices, squeezed instead by poor storage, weak access to markets, and a chain of middlemen who profit while producers struggle.
A subsidy scheme that only addresses the first problem risks becoming a temporary palliative, popular but shallow. Governor Aliyu’s approach, by purchasing directly from Sokoto’s peasant farmers before redistributing at subsidised rates, attempts to address both sides of the equation simultaneously, cushioning the consumer while rewarding the producer.
This is no small feat of coordination. It requires state government machinery capable of identifying and engaging farming communities, negotiating fair purchase prices, storing produce without spoilage, and then distributing it efficiently to junior civil servants and rural households across a state as geographically spread as Sokoto. That such a scheme could be conceived and executed speaks to a level of administrative seriousness that Bagudu’s praise only partially captures.
There is also a political dimension worth noting honestly. Bagudu’s remarks tied Governor Aliyu’s performance to a wider chain of loyalty from the governor to Senator Aliyu Magatakarda Wamakko, and onward to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s national reform agenda. It would be naive to pretend such alignments are incidental in Nigerian politics; they rarely are. But it would be equally illusive to treat the food subsidy programme itself as merely a political gesture timed for visibility. Rural households in Bodinga and similar communities do not eat photo opportunities. They eat grains, and if that grains is more affordable this month because of a deliberate state policy, the material benefit stands regardless of the political choreography around its unveiling.
What should other governors take from this? Not simply the optics of a flag-off ceremony, but the underlying architecture: identify local producers, engage them as partners rather than afterthoughts, and use the state’s purchasing power to stabilise both ends of the food chain.
Nigeria’s 36 states face similar pressures from currency depreciation, insecurity affecting farmland, and the rising cost of agricultural inputs. Few, however, have moved as directly as Sokoto to intervene at the point of production rather than only at the point of sale.
Governor Aliyu still faces the harder test that follows any well-received policy launch: sustainability. Subsidy programmes are easiest to announce and hardest to maintain, particularly as fiscal pressures on state governments show no sign of easing.
Whether Sokoto can keep its food banks stocked and its farmer-purchase arrangements running beyond the current news cycle will determine whether this becomes a lasting model or another well-intentioned initiative that fades from view.
For now, though, the credit is warranted. In a period when many governors are content to respond to food inflation with rhetoric, Governor Aliyu has chosen to respond with a functioning supply chain that touches farmer and household alike. That is precisely the kind of governance Bagudu was right to hold up as an example.
Lawal Jet Kaugama, a commentator on national issues, writes from Kano