INSECURITY IN NORTHERN NIGERIA AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR FOOD SECURITY IN NIGERIA

Against the backdrop of increasing security challenges such as terrorism, insurgency, herders/farmers conflict, armed banditry and kidnapping in northern Nigeria. The paper critically examines the implications of these challenges to food security in Nigeria, using a secondary research approach and the human security theory of analysis. It found that despite government efforts using military offensives across the affected areas, several non-state armed groups seem unperturbed in the region, and have continued to unleash severe damage in the region, particularly the rural communities who are predominantly farmers, causing deaths, dislocations and displacement of livelihoods and agricultural productivity. Moreover, the northern Nigerian is the major supplier of food produce in Nigeria, with about 75 per cent of Nigeria’s staple food, such as rice, maize, beans, yams, potatoes, onions, beef, tomatoes, pepper, etc. The implications have been the increasing shortage of food production, supply and access across the country. The study recommended, among others, that the federal government should ensure collaboration between security agencies, community leaders, and local informants to enhance intelligence gathering, threat detection, and conflict prevention; state governments, alongside community leaders should show serious commitment to ending insecurity in their various states by collaborating with federal government security forces to contain the activities of these non-state armed groups