In 2025, something paradoxical happened in Nigerian agriculture. Food prices fell sharply — and farmers went broke.
The mechanism was the federal government's import waiver policy, which allowed commodities like rice and maize to enter the country at zero or near-zero duty. For consumers struggling with years of food inflation, the policy delivered visible relief at the market. For the farmers who had invested in producing those same crops domestically — many of them borrowing money for seeds, fertiliser, and labour at elevated costs — the sudden flood of cheap imports was devastating (BusinessDay, February 10, 2026).
At the LCCI 2026 Agribusiness Outlook held recently in Lagos, that episode became the centrepiece of a broader reckoning about the state of Nigerian agricultural policy.
The policy gap
Dr. Muda Yusuf, CEO of the Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise (CPPE), was direct about the damage. The negative impact of the import waiver, he told attendees, was so severe that its effects continue to linger. While citizens celebrated crashing food prices, agricultural investors absorbed heavy losses. He warned agribusinesses against strategising based on policy announcements without first investigating implementation timelines, actual impacts, and underlying processes (BusinessDay, February 10, 2026).
LCCI President Leye Kupoluyi framed the broader challenge: agriculture contributes over a quarter of Nigeria's GDP and employs roughly 35 per cent of the labour force, yet it still faces low productivity, insecurity, weak policy execution, and massive post-harvest losses. He argued that deliberate, productive partnerships between government and the private sector are essential for breaking the cycle (BusinessDay, February 10, 2026).
What would actually work
Ade Adefeko, Director of Corporate Regulatory Affairs at Olam Agri, argued that Nigeria needs to integrate smallholder farmers into its food sovereignty vision through strategic policies oriented toward aggressive growth — not reactive interventions that swing between protectionism and import liberalisation. He called for a national strategic storage reserve with the capacity to accommodate domestic production and reduce the country's ₦3.5 trillion annual post-harvest losses (BusinessDay, February 10, 2026).
AfricanFarmer Mogaji, CEO of X-rays Farms Consulting, pointed to the successful tomato price stabilisation initiative of 2025 — which halted the Tuta Absoluta pest outbreak in the tomato value chain for the first time in twelve years — as proof that coordinated, long-term public-private intervention can work when properly executed (BusinessDay, February 10, 2026).
The bigger picture
The LCCI outlook event took place against a backdrop of historic numbers: food inflation at a fourteen-year low, headline inflation in its tenth consecutive month of decline, and growing expectations that the Central Bank may cut interest rates at its February 23–24 meeting. But the experts in the room were not celebrating. Their consensus: without structural investment in storage, transport infrastructure, farmer support systems, and predictable trade policy, the current relief is a pause — not a turning point (Leadership, February 18, 2026).
At FoodPrices Nigeria, we hear this story from both sides every day. Consumers tell us prices are finally becoming manageable. Agents in Mushin and Mile 12 report that sellers are struggling to cover their costs. Both things are true simultaneously — and that's exactly the tension Nigeria's agricultural policymakers need to resolve. The import waiver taught us that you can't sustainably lower food prices by undermining the people who grow the food.