The recent circular by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security inviting staff to a formal prayer session is not just symbolic — it’s a loud and embarrassing confirmation that government has failed in nearly all areas of governance.
A ministry that should be leading Nigeria’s fight against hunger, malnutrition, rural poverty, and post-harvest losses has reduced itself to organizing fasting and prayers as a response to a national food crisis.
Let’s be clear: Prayer cannot replace policy. Fasting is not a substitute for fieldwork.
We are not in this crisis because of a lack of divine intervention — we are here because of a lack of leadership, poor planning, weak institutions, and policy inconsistency.
The Federal Ministry of Agriculture should not be turning to prayers as a core agenda — it should be turning to:
Mechanized farming policies,
Irrigation infrastructure,
Farmer cooperatives and extension services,
Subsidies where necessary,
Innovative food preservation and logistics systems,
And most urgently, a war against rural insecurity that is preventing thousands of farmers from going to farm.
But it’s not just the Ministry that has failed — the National Assembly must also take responsibility.
The lawmakers, who are constitutionally mandated to provide oversight over Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), have become part of the rot they are meant to regulate. Many legislators collect constituency budgets lodged in the Ministry of Agriculture, yet fail to implement any meaningful agricultural empowerment or infrastructural improvement in their constituencies.
Instead of checking the Ministry’s activities and demanding results, many of them have become quiet collaborators in this broken system — benefitting from agricultural votes without delivering one shovel of impact.
The insecurity crisis is one of the biggest contributors to Nigeria’s food shortage. Communities across the country have become no-go zones for farming because of kidnappings, killings, and violence. A Ministry truly concerned about food security should be leading inter-agency efforts to restore safety to farmlands, not calling civil servants to half-hour prayer sessions.
Countries like Israel — a desert nation — are not calling civil servants to pray for food. They are developing and exporting agricultural technology, practicing precision farming, investing in water management, and supporting their farmers with real policies and infrastructure. They are proof that serious governance, not religious symbolism, delivers food security.
We are not against spirituality. But what we are against is the institutionalization of helplessness.
A government that has failed in education, healthcare, housing, electricity, roads, security, and now food — must not insult the intelligence of Nigerians by pretending that spirituality will solve what responsibility and competence have refused to address.
It is not the duty of government to organize national prayers. It is the duty of government to govern.
We are a nation of believers — but we are also a people that deserve better. Ministries must stop hiding behind prayers to avoid doing the work they were appointed to do — and lawmakers must stop pretending they don’t know where the leakage is happening.
Comrade Ikhuenbor Felix Igbinevbo aka Mr Figo
National Coordinator, National Patriotic Advocacy (NATPA)
Convener, Edo South Matters
+2348063085664.
