Impact of persistent Rise in Food Prices on the Nigerian Economy

Abstract

When the price of food increases uncontrollably, and some variables like transport fare, fuel prices, insecurity rises, this will affect almost everything else such as house rent, school fees, consumption, mentioning just but a few. The study adopts a survey research design approach to examine the effect of rise in food prices on the Nigerian economy. The population of the study is made up of Civil Servants (CS), food vendors (FV), other consumers (OC), and private sectors’ workers (PS) concerned with concerned with food consumptions. A sample size of 248 persons was selected at random, and was divided into 36 civil servants, 118 food vendors, 59 other consumers, and 35 private sector workers. The paper adopted questionnaire design with 5-likert scale response, structured in line with the questions and hypotheses. The paper further uses the Pearson correlation coefficient to test the hypotheses. The showed that the recent rise in food prices has a negative significant impact on the economic growth in Nigeria, and that there is no improvement on Nigerian economy because the rise in food prices has a significant effect on the purchasing power, and finally the finding showed that there is a significant relationship between rise in food prices in Nigeria and food security. The study recommends that government should expand social protection programs for the poor household in both rural and urban, and also increase their medium-term and long-term investments in agricultural research and extension, rural infrastructure, and market access for small farmers.