Article Details

Food insecurity and poverty remain among the most consequential socio-economic challenges confronting Nigeria despite the country’s vast natural and agricultural endowments. Between 2015 and 2023, a convergence of economic recession, escalating insecurity, persistent governance failures, and the global disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic dramatically intensified hunger and deprivation across the country. This article examines the concept of the weaponisation of hunger and poverty- understood as the deliberate or structural use of deprivation as a mechanism of political control, social manipulation, and security destabilisation and analyses its implications for national security in Nigeria. Employing Social Contract Theory as its analytical framework, the study argues that when the Nigerian state fails to guarantee citizens’ basic welfare, particularly access to food and economic security, it erodes its own legitimacy and creates structural conditions conducive to violent extremism, insurgent recruitment, and social unrest. Drawing on qualitative historical analysis and secondary sources including government reports, international development data, and scholarly literature, the paper examines the structural causes of food insecurity, the relationship between poverty and political patronage, and the nexus between hunger and armed conflict. The study finds that while hunger in Nigeria is rarely the product of explicit state policy, elite mismanagement, systemic corruption, and institutional neglect have effectively transformed poverty into a durable mechanism for reinforcing political dependency and social inequality. The article concludes that hunger and poverty have become critical national security concerns demanding comprehensive reforms in agricultural policy, governance accountability, social protection, and rural security.

food insecurity, poverty, national security, weaponisation, social contract, governance, Nigeria,