Prayer warfare on food security?

 A prayer and fasting programme recently called by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security set many tongues wagging. Perhaps so because the nation is far from being food secure, and many apparently wondered if prayer warfare was a nuclear policy option government was adopting as a way out. The ministry swiftly backpedaled on the prayer programme in the face of criticisms. But it is doubtful anyone holds that the divine has no place utterly in human affairs. So, there was more to the jibes against the prayer initiative than just godlessness.

It all began with an internal memo in the agric ministry that got leaked on social media. The memo dated 11th June, 2025 and signed by the Director of Human Resource Management, Mrs. Adedayo Modupe, invited ministry staff to participate in a prayer programme themed ‘Divine Intervention for Protection and National Development’ and scheduled to hold on three consecutive Mondays from 16th June. The circular was addressed to all directors, deputy directors, assistant directors, value chain desk officers and other staff members, and it read in part: “This is to invite all staff of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security to a solemn prayer session for God’s guidance and success in supporting the government’s efforts to achieve food security.”

The circular stated that the prayer sessions would hold in conference hall ‘B’ at the ministry’s headquarters in Area 11, Garki, Abuja, from 12:00p.m. to 12:30p.m. on scheduled dates namely 16th, 23rd and 30th June, and it enjoined the staff to “come fasting” on those days.

When the circular got leaked to the public, people raised queries on the relevance of the ministry’s spiritual response to the food crisis in Nigeria, with many questioning the option’s applicability to rising hunger and high cost of food in the land. Analysts wondered whether the ministry had run out of ideas and was thus invoking the fatalism of religion to defray expectations; some cynically said the leadership of the place should then be peopled by imams and pastors rather than technocrats and bureaucrats. Following that trend of public reaction, the same director who earlier unveiled the prayer initiative, in a follow-up circular, announced its postponement “until further notice” without providing any reason.

Further clarifications came, however, in a statement by Assistant Information Officer to the Director of Information, Ezeaja Ikemefuna, who explained that the proposed prayer programme was an internal initiative of the human resource department in the ministry to address staff welfare concerns and was not a policy measure. According to him, the programme was organised partly in response to a series of sudden deaths among management cadre staff of the ministry and not as a strategy to tackle food insecurity. He added that the human resource department arranged the prayer sessions to address staff well-being “just as the already existing monthly aerobic exercise and establishment of a gymnasium in the ministry are for physical fitness, and as the regular medical check-up of staff is for their health.”

The statement could, however, not deny the stated objective of the prayer initiative to appeal for divine intervention in governance issues; so it said the ministry staff deemed it not out of place to also pray for the country, hence the theme proposed for the programme. Stressing that the initiative should not be misinterpreted, the statement explained: “It must be emphasised that this is NOT an official policy by the ministry to address agriculture and food security issues in the country, but in response to the yearnings of staff members who are apprehensive following the death of some of their colleagues in recent times.

“Factors militating against bumper produce are issues for government to tackle, not for the agric ministry to pray about”

Ikemefuna, in his statement, seized the occasion to outline government’s strides on the policy front and achievements of Agriculture and Food Security Minister Abubakar Kyari. “The ministry has taken delivery of over a thousand tractors to support farmers and has signed the commercialisation phase under the supervision of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Another of his initiatives is the Strategic Grain Reserve and Market Stabilisation of prices, where about 42,000 metric tonnes of grains and an additional 58,200 metric tonnes of milled rice grains were distributed,” he said. The statement added that the Central Bank of Nigeria donated 2,150,000 bags of fertilisers to curb food inflation; besides that government approved the recapitalisation of the Bank of Agriculture to the tune of N1.5trillion, launched the National Electronic Extension Platform, and initiated reforms in the cooperative sector through training and workshops. 

Moreover, the ministry said it had partnered with the World Bank on the $600million Rural Access and Agricultural Marketing Project, rehabilitated 200,000 kilometres of rural roads, and distributed free agricultural inputs nationwide under various schemes, including the National Agricultural Growth Scheme Agro-Pocket, among other measures. Restating its commitment to tangible results, the ministry stressed that the prayer programme was an “internal initiative of staff to address the concern over sudden deaths in the ministry and not intended to replace or downplay the remarkable effort and achievement of the ministry and other stakeholders in achieving food security in the nation.”

It can’t be that the ministry’s statement meant the measures it outlined had resulted in food security, or even impacted significantly in terms of enhancing Nigerians’ access to food. Truth is that they have not, as acute inflation in the cost of food items yet exerts a chokehold on a larger segment of the Nigerian citizenry. Only last week, state governors conferred in Abuja with National Security Adviser Nuhu Ribadu on ways of easing that chokehold. High costs of basic items make food security still a mirage for many people in this country, with recent United Nations (UN) estimates indicating that no fewer than 4.4 million citizens do not have enough food to eat. So, there’s much for the agric ministry to yet work at to live up its name, and it isn’t time even by any stretch of positivism to self-applaud.

But neither is there a good basis, in my view, to hold the ministry to the charge of escape into fatalism. The prayer programme it planned was to hold on three consecutive Mondays for just 30 minutes on each scheduled day. That did not seem like an initiative intended to become a central agenda in the ministry’s operations as to take the place of policy measures, or a conclusive indication of policy failure. In any event, policies typically have gestation periods when implemented before they make discernable impact, and those measures flaunted in the ministry’s statement may well be at that stage before the impact gets felt. Only time will tell, except that the time available is really short and many citizens can’t forebear for much longer. This writer is a firm believer in the efficacy of prayer and the place of the divine in guiding human affairs. So, I see nothing implicitly wrong with the prayer initiative. The question, rather, is how the organisers hoped to harmonise the diversity of faiths among ministry staff within the 30-minute duration of each session as scheduled.

Still, those who argue that solutions expected to the challenge of food insecurity in Nigeria are more practical than spiritual have a valid point. In other words, factors militating against bumper produce are issues for government to tackle, not for the agric ministry to pray about. Farmers have said they want prices of inputs to crash, access to tractors at affordable cost and provision of security to farming communities that are being deserted because of siege by bandits and insurgents. In collaboration with stakeholders, the ministry should devise remedial measures, including providing farmers access to financing, quality seeds, fertilisers and technology.

Security for farming communities is easily the biggest challenge. SBM Intelligence, a marketing and security intelligence consultancy specialising in African affairs, reported that some 1,500 farmers in northern Nigeria lost their lives to bandit attacks between 2020 and 2024. Data from Global Human Rights Nigeria also revealed that 24,816 people were killed and 15,597 kidnapped in Nigeria over the past five years. Any serious effort to ensure food security must address the menace of insecurity and enable farmers to return to their farms.