The House of Representatives has directed four federal agencies to strengthen enforcement across Nigeria's food production chain, after lawmakers were presented with figures showing that unsafe food kills more Nigerians each year than most recognised public health emergencies.
The Resolution
The House adopted the motion on Tuesday, 21 July 2026, urging the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, the Standards Organisation of Nigeria and the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention to strengthen surveillance, inspection and certification across the country's food production value chain, Premium Times reported. The resolution followed a motion of urgent public importance sponsored by Billy Osawaru, who represents an Edo constituency on the platform of the All Progressives Congress.
The Numbers Behind the Motion
Osawaru's presentation put a cost on the problem. He told the chamber that Nigeria "still accounts for high number of approximately 50m foodborne diseases and more than 53,000 deaths caused by unsafe food yearly", figures that translate into 4.26 million healthy life years lost annually to illness, disability and premature death, with more than 80 percent of that burden falling on children under the age of five. Punch also reported his estimate that the country loses about $3.6 billion each year to foodborne illness through lost productivity, medical expenses and trade limitations, particularly across national borders.
The motion drew on World Health Organisation data showing that unsafe food causes roughly 866 million illnesses and 1.5 million deaths worldwide every year, with Africa carrying the highest burden of any region, according to BusinessDay.
Where the System Is Failing
The lawmaker's diagnosis pointed at infrastructure and enforcement rather than at consumers. Leadership reported that Osawaru identified chemical hazards, poor hygiene among food handlers, open defecation, lack of potable water especially in rural areas, weak regulatory enforcement and inadequate infrastructure in markets and abattoirs as the persistent drivers exposing millions of Nigerians to contaminated food. He also cited Nigeria Centre for Disease Control reports linking recurrent cholera outbreaks across states to contaminated food and water, which he said reflected continuing sanitation and infrastructure deficiencies.
The Regulatory Position
The federal government has been circulating the same mortality figure for months. At World Food Safety Day events in June, NAFDAC Director-General Mojisola Adeyeye, represented by Era Edwards of the agency's Food Safety and Applied Nutrition Directorate, restated NAFDAC's commitment to reducing the burden of foodborne disease through science-based regulation, surveillance and a strengthened food control system, the News Agency of Nigeria reported. Measures already announced include national guidelines for sodium reduction, draft NAFDAC regulations limiting sodium in processed foods, regulations to eliminate industrial trans fats in line with WHO recommendations, and work on front-of-pack labelling, per Information Nigeria.
Why This Sits Next to the Price Question
Market and abattoir infrastructure appears in the motion as a food safety failure, but it is the same infrastructure that determines post-harvest loss, spoilage and therefore supply. Food that rots or is condemned never reaches a price tag, and the cost of that loss is carried by the buyer at the stall.
FoodPrices Nigeria deploys analysts to fourteen Lagos markets to capture verified prices at the point of sale. The condition of those markets shapes both what a household pays and what it risks, which makes enforcement at market level a food price story as much as a public health one.
#HouseofRepresentatives, #FoodSafety, #NAFDAC, #Nigeria, #FoodSecurity, #Billy Osawaru, #NCDC, #StandardsOrganisationofNigeria, #PublicHealth, #FoodPolicy, #NationalAssembly