Food insecurity among households during the COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria

Abstract

Following the recent worldwide crisis brought on by the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing war in Ukraine, food insecurity has emerged as the topic of conversation that is being addressed the most. This study's main goal is to disentangle the relationship between household socioeconomic indicators and other variables that may have an impact on food insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria. Furthermore, Quantile regression was applied and the result shows that some socio-economic factors such as the rural and education level have a negative significant contribution to food insecurity while a household with accounts from financial institutions has a positive significant contribution to food insecurity in Nigeria. The Quantile regression results, however, also demonstrate that the percentage of working adults engaged in agriculture has a negative significant contribution to food insecurity, whereas the percentage of working adults engaged in wage work has a positive significant contribution to food insecurity, suggesting that the higher the percentage of working adults engaged in wage work, the less food insecurity there will be. Consequently, the government need to strengthen the importance of food security by investing holistically in agriculture as well as providing adequate security to farmers to attract more people to agriculture which in turn will contribute to higher food availability, fight poverty and hunger as well as combating the food insecurity among the household in Nigeria.