The president elect, Gen. Mohammadu Buhari, has been asked to prioritize the agricultural sector of the nation’s economy through effective budgeting of about 10% of the annual budget to ensure food safety and adequate nutrition for Nigerians.

This advise was contained in a lecture tagged ‘The Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Interface; Advancing the frontier in Nigeria’.

Experts in the field also said that that strong political leadership, clear policy, guidelines, political will at all levels and adherence to international best practices are some of the recommendations needed to address the situation.

According to food and nutrition experts, about 805 million people in the world over are hungry, while 2 million are malnourished with Nigeria having a fair share of this figure. 11 million children under the age of five in the country continue to suffer as a result of this development.

Lack of food security has been identified as the root cause of malnutrition among Nigerians, but experts believe huge investments in agriculture, building an understanding of the best world practices, paradigm shift from primary agriculture practice to secondary and tertiary agricultural practices are recommended solutions that should be considered by General Buhari.

They believe that the future of food security and nutrition in the country is predicated on the ability of a reliable and sustainable budget analysis in order to attract adequate funding from relevant authorities.