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Consistent with President Yar’adua’s 47th anniversary address to the nation, the Federal Government is committing billions of Naira to its food security programme, which has greater justification today due to the on-going global food crisis caused by several factors, such as competition with biofuel, climate change, population increase and more food demand than supply.

This commitment on the part of the Federal Government raises three interrelated issues:- formulation of the range of state obligation in meeting the right to food, the concept of food security, and to give it content which can accommodate both developmental and legislative perspectives.

The right to food has been recognized internationally both in its broad outline and in more specific terms. The right to an adequate standard of living including food represents the broadest formulation of the rights of individuals; the right to be free from hunger is specified, as the fundamental right of peoples to control their own natural resources is basic to the realization of these rights. The numerous other international resolutions, declaration and conventions have added to the understanding of the need for responses to specific situations in which the right to food may be endangered.

State obligations must primarily address human rights in a national framework, and it must be considered a national goal to secure for all individuals or groups the enjoyment of the human rights concerned. Individual demands must also be reconciled with goals of the nation as a whole.

The focus should be throughout on the individual, who is primarily the subject and only secondly the object of development.

In the process three might be, considerable conflict potential. The international human rights system should function both as a constraint on state action and a guideline to the direction in which state policies should be pursued. National food security, as used in this article, should be considered as the ultimate achievement of security for all members of a nation.

The concept of food security has been given different contents in different connections. FAO South from the early 1970s to work out the basis for the theoretical and practical work with food security for nations; this work was considerably accelerated by the deliberations and recommendations by the World Food Conference in 1974. If nothing else it led to a number of publications on different aspects of food security such as short term and long-term considerations, cereal stock policies implications for specific agriculture, technological and ecological aspects of food security.

The debate in international fora, first of all the FAO on measures towards national food dominated by the security, was for many years dominated by the international dimensions of World Food Security, or the means whereby the international community together could ensure that countries in need would have access to adequate flows of staple foods, mainly grains. This met with a number of difficulties relating to conflicting interests between grain exporting and food-deficit countries. Gradually more emphasis was being given to measures that needed to be taken at national level, reflected in the plan of Action for World Food Security adopted by FAO member states in 1979. This plan spells out a number of ways in which the distribution network can be improved.

Major shifts in mainstream development thinking that occurred during the later parts of the decade, supported and further developed through several international conferences such as the World Conference on Employment, Growth and Basic Needs, the World Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development, 1979, and the UN Decade for Women 1975 - 1985, gave further impetfus to criticisms of the narrow focus on food security in term of national supplies only. In 1982-83 both the FAO and the World Food Council endorsed an expanded definition of the concept, to mean:

a) an adequate food production;

b) an increasing stability in the flow of food supplies and

c) the securing of access at country and at household level to the existing supplies of food.

There are, however, still weakness in the prevailing conceptualization of and practice towards food security. Many still tend to ignored that distribution does not automatically follow from the existence of statistically adequate overall food supplies continues to be given to cereal, including in agricultural research, disregarding many other staple food which in some areas are more important than cereals, as well as other foods needed for a full and wholesome diet, variously called subsidiary, supplementary, minor crops and traditional.

A recent report on food security for Southern Africa, points to the scarcity of research and policy experimentation, at least as far as that region is concerned, on the essential components of food security for people: - food availability and access to food. It emphasizes that moves towards addressing national or regional food security begin at the household and family levels, particularly in rural areas. It also warns against an over-emphasis on poverty factors in economic terms only, since there are many other factors determining food and nutrient demands and which should be addressed.

There are also a host of household and intra-household level determinants of availability of food and nutrients, the most important set of which relate to the status, roles and conditions of women who in many societies are the main procures of food over several decades. Many believe this fact to be the single most important factor behind the gradually worsening conditions of African small holder in agriculture and food production. The male farmers and their more typical domain of commercial agriculture having attracted the primary attention of investors, donors, expatriate and local experts and extension workers. The failure has been recognized in wide circles, the question remaining how to reverse the tide.

It can safely be stated that household food security is only slowly gaining acceptance as an explicit goal for agricultural development Even the recent and in many respects promising Farming Systems Research movement initiated by some of the agricultural research is, although by definition focusing on the smallholder household, mainly geared to Planning for introduction of new technologies. Recently, this approach has been seen as an opportunity to study the links between consumption and food production, within the dynamics of single households’ production ad reproduction patterns, for the promotion of nutrition-relevant extension services.

Challenges of democratic consolidation in Nigeria and the Niger-Delta (IV)

In most democratic theory, accountability is defined in terms of the relationship of the rulers to the ruled, primarily measured through the electoral process and party competition. Accountability also means that there are state agencies and private organizations empowered to oversee government performance and to stop unlawful actions or omissions by other agents of government. Anti-corruption commission, public complaints and national human rights commissions are typical examples of such states institutions.
The Nigerian Constitution, like many other African Constitutions, enshrines an elaborated array of institutions supporting constitutional democracy that serve as a check on political and administrative authority. The efficacy of these institutions is dependent on four factors: - their location and status in the system of governance, whether they have a powerful champion in the governmental system, the unqualified support of the legislature in the exercise of their functions, and the level of their resources. Despite these institutions, the novelty of exercising political power produces major constraints on setting limits on government.
Upholding the rule of law in a democratic society is a necessary condition to establish a just, fair and equitable system of government, where individuals are allowed to express themselves freely and to bring about a change of government should the people so decide periodically as may be provided by law.
In contemporary Africa, the rule of law needs the backcloth of democratic conditions within which to thrive. In Nigeria, however, two democratic experiments in 1963 and 1979 have proved the inability of the Nigerian society to develop a sound and stable political system. This is often exhibited in the form of political maladministration, economic mismanagement, embezzlement of public funds, corrupt enrichment of partymen, oppression of political opponents by government in power, massive rigging of elections when they fall due accompanied by rioting, murder, arson and general destruction of lives and property. These conditions prevalent in any government cannot be said to foster the rule of law principles.
Democratic leaders would have to work to educate state officials and law enforcement agents about the implications or resultant consequence of abuse of legal power. That it is a threat not only to the existence of the rule of law, but also to the corporate existence of the society. It is, in fact, a betrayal of trust of that power. The solution, of course, lies in the eradication of abuse of legal power. Where this is done, a young or growing democracy is bound to survive and flourish.
As much as anything, African States need time to work with and become habituated to democratic institutions, to shape them to fit their particular cultural and political circumstances, and to allow them to sink deep roots of commitment among all major political players and the public at large. Time itself is an important determinant of institutionalization. Political parties, legislatures, judicial systems, civic organizations, and other key structures of democracy cannot develop institutional capacity, coherence, complexity, adaptability, autonomy, and broad support unless they are permitted to operate continuously without undue interruption.
Correlation between levels of Economic Development and Consolidation of Democracy
If one accepts the claim that there is a strong correlation between levels of economic development and consolidation of democracy, then Nigeria’s level of economic development suggests that it has a long way to go to contribute to consolidating our democracy.
The Nigerian economy has, over the years, been experiencing economic crisis of varying degrees of intensity. The prolonged weak growth in the economy has been attributed to policy failures, poor governance, as well as considerable social and political instability which aggravated the worsening poverty situation in the country.
It cannot be overemphasized that a major requirement for the alleviation of poverty in any country is the pursuit and maintenance of a high rate of economic growth at stable prices. The growth pre-requisite is, however, a necessary but not sufficient condition for poverty reduction as the pattern of income distribu tion among the population is also important.
Over the years, poor macroeconomic management in Nigeria resulted in low output and hence low income. The poverty problem was exacerbated by the inadequate provision and non-sustainability of socioeconomic and infrastructural facilities that could improve the condition of the poor. The rise in the rate of inflation worsened the incidence of poverty since the 1990s, except in 1997 to 2000 when the rate was brought down considerably to single digit. Thus, there has been a steady decline in economic performance and a sharp deterioration in living standards. It is the realization of this fact that motivated the present administration into instituting a poverty eradication policy framework as well as programmes for its implementation, monitoring and evaluation.
It is a paradox that Nigeria is a rich country inhabited by the poor. Her poverty profile in statiscal figures according to a recent study indicates that Nigeria is poverty endemic. Poverty incidence increased between 1980 and 1985 and between 1992 and 1996. The trend also shows that there has been appreciable decrease in poverty rates between 1985 and 1992 and 1996 and 2004. In 2004, growth in population almost equals growth in poverty since 1980.
Poverty has predominated in the rural area than in the urban area by 63.30/0 and 43.20/0 respectively. The trends in poverty levels by zones show that in the northern part of the country, the North-East zone has a higher incidence of poverty followed by North-West and North-Central.