The Psychology Of Hunger As An Instrument Of War
By
Nze David N. Ugwu
When the battle for survival consumes the energy of citizens, the struggle for accountability becomes increasingly difficult.
The late Chief Obafemi Awolowo, one of Nigeria’s most consequential political figures, is associated with the grim historical reality that hunger was used as an instrument of war during the Nigerian Civil War. The blockade and deprivation that contributed to the suffering of Biafran civilians demonstrated the devastating power of food scarcity in a conflict. Hunger was not merely a consequence of the war; it became part of the terrible experience through which a population was weakened and its capacity to resist diminished.
Decades later, another political expression entered Nigeria’s vocabulary: stomach infrastructure. Popularized by former Ekiti State Governor Ayodele Fayose, the expression captured a political reality in which food, cash, and immediate material benefits could influence electoral choices. It recognized, however cynically, that a hungry person may be more concerned about the next meal than the long-term promises of politicians.
Between hunger as an instrument of wartime deprivation and stomach infrastructure as an instrument of political mobilization lies a troubling question: what happens when a country’s economic conditions leave millions of citizens struggling to feed themselves? Can hunger, even when it is not established to be deliberately engineered, become a powerful instrument of political influence?
Under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s APC administration, this question has acquired renewed urgency. Since May 2023, the removal of petrol subsidies, exchange-rate reforms, and other economic adjustments have contributed to a painful cost-of-living crisis. Although the government has defended these measures as necessary to correct longstanding economic distortions, their consequences have placed enormous pressure on households already struggling with inadequate incomes.
For millions of Nigerians, the abstract language of macroeconomic reform has translated into an agonizing daily calculation: what can the family afford to eat today, and what must be sacrificed until tomorrow?
Hunger: The Weapon That Attacks the Human Mind
Hunger is more than an empty stomach. It is a psychological condition capable of reshaping priorities, weakening concentration, undermining dignity, and narrowing the horizon of human ambition.
A person who does not know where the next meal will come from has limited emotional and intellectual resources for other concerns. The parent who cannot afford school fees, the worker whose salary disappears before the middle of the month, and the pensioner who must choose between medication and food are all confronting a form of insecurity that extends beyond money.
When this condition becomes widespread, its implications transcend individual households. A society consumed by the struggle for survival risks losing some of the energy required for innovation, civic participation, political scrutiny, and collective action.
This is the psychological dimension of hunger that deserves greater attention in Nigeria’s political discourse. Hunger does not automatically make people submissive, nor does poverty erase political consciousness. Nigerians have repeatedly demonstrated remarkable courage, resilience, and resistance in the face of adversity. Nevertheless, prolonged deprivation can make immediate relief extraordinarily attractive, even when the underlying circumstances demand deeper structural solutions.
A hungry citizen may understand the importance of accountable governance but still accept a bag of rice from a politician. A struggling family may recognize the inadequacy of government policies but welcome a temporary cash transfer because the children must eat. Such choices should not be interpreted as evidence of ignorance or moral failure. They often reflect the desperate arithmetic of survival.
The real scandal is a political environment in which citizens’ legitimate material needs can be exploited instead of systematically addressed.
From Stomach Infrastructure to Economic Dependence
Stomach infrastructure did not invent the relationship between poverty and political patronage. Nigeria’s political history has long featured the distribution of money, food, and other benefits to secure loyalty. What makes the phenomenon troubling is the possibility that temporary assistance may substitute for policies that would enable citizens to live independently and with dignity.
There is an important distinction between social protection and political patronage. A government that provides food assistance to vulnerable households during an economic crisis is fulfilling a legitimate public responsibility. A political actor who distributes relief transparently, according to need, may be helping people survive circumstances beyond their control.
The problem arises when assistance becomes conditional on political loyalty, when public resources are treated as personal generosity, or when temporary handouts are presented as substitutes for employment, affordable food, functioning schools, accessible healthcare, and reliable infrastructure.
A government should not expect applause merely because it provides relief from hardship that public policy has failed to prevent or adequately mitigate.
More fundamentally, a citizen who must depend on the goodwill of politicians for basic necessities is less economically secure than one who earns a decent income, operates a viable business, or benefits from an effective social protection system.
The objective of good governance should therefore be to move citizens from dependence to self-reliance, not to preserve the conditions that make political patronage attractive.
The Tinubu Administration and the Burden of Reform
President Tinubu inherited a country burdened by structural economic weaknesses, including inadequate productivity, heavy dependence on imported goods, infrastructure deficits, revenue challenges, and longstanding distortions in public finance. It would be intellectually dishonest to suggest that Nigeria’s economic difficulties began in May 2023 or that every present hardship can be attributed exclusively to the current administration.
There is a compelling economic argument for reforming an expensive and poorly targeted subsidy regime. Exchange-rate distortions also imposed costs on the economy. In principle, redirecting public resources, improving price signals, and encouraging domestic production could produce long-term benefits.
But the justification for reform cannot rest solely on the correctness of its theoretical objectives. It must also be judged by the quality of its implementation, the fairness of its burdens, the credibility of its safeguards, and the actual improvement in people’s lives.
When petrol prices rise, transportation becomes more expensive. When transportation costs increase, the price of food transported from farms to urban markets often follows. Manufacturers face higher distribution and production costs, businesses struggle with operating expenses, and households discover that their incomes no longer command the same quantity of goods and services.
The consequences can become cumulative. Even citizens who retain their jobs may experience a dramatic decline in purchasing power. Small businesses may reduce their workforce or close altogether. Families may withdraw children from schools, postpone medical treatment, or reduce the nutritional quality of their meals.
In these circumstances, the government cannot simply ask citizens to be patient while pointing to future benefits. Patience is not a substitute for food, and promises of eventual prosperity do not automatically settle today’s bills.
Economic reform requires social intelligence as well as economic calculation. If a policy imposes immediate and substantial costs, government must anticipate those costs and establish credible measures to protect the most vulnerable. Otherwise, a reform designed to restore economic stability may deepen social instability.
When Poverty Becomes a Political Opportunity
The political implications of widespread hunger are serious. Citizens facing economic desperation may become more susceptible to political inducements, not necessarily because they have abandoned democratic values, but because their immediate needs have become overwhelming.
An electoral candidate offering a modest amount of money may appear more tangible than another candidate promising institutional reform. A bag of rice may provide immediate relief, while a pledge to improve agricultural productivity may take years to deliver results.
This creates a dangerous imbalance between immediate survival and long-term national development. Politicians who understand this psychology may be tempted to invest more in distributing temporary benefits than in building institutions capable of reducing poverty permanently.
Yet hunger does not always favour incumbents. Economic suffering can also intensify public anger, destroy trust, trigger protests, and contribute to electoral rejection. Citizens may tolerate hardship for a time, especially when they believe it is necessary and fairly shared. Their tolerance diminishes when they perceive extravagance among political elites, persistent corruption, unfulfilled promises, or indifference to their suffering.
The same hungry citizen who accepts emergency assistance may also conclude that the government has failed to deliver its obligations. Gratitude for temporary relief does not necessarily translate into political loyalty.
This is why any attempt to understand hunger as a political instrument must avoid simplistic conclusions. Hunger can create dependence, but it can also produce resistance. It can weaken the capacity for collective action, but it can equally ignite collective outrage.
What determines the political outcome is partly whether citizens believe their suffering is temporary, fairly distributed, and being addressed—or whether they believe they have been abandoned by those entrusted with power.
The Moral Question of Leadership
Leadership is ultimately tested not by the eloquence of speeches but by the condition of the people over whom authority is exercised.
A government cannot reasonably claim economic success while ignoring the lived experiences of citizens whose wages have lost purchasing power, whose businesses are struggling, and whose children are going hungry. Macroeconomic indicators matter, but they cannot be the only measures of national progress.
Inflation trends, foreign-exchange stability, revenue growth, and investment figures are important. So are food affordability, real wages, employment, school attendance, access to healthcare, and the ability of an ordinary worker to meet basic household expenses.
The government must communicate honestly about the costs and expected benefits of its policies. It must publish credible evidence of progress, explain setbacks, strengthen targeted social protection, and demonstrate that public savings are being used responsibly.
It must also confront food insecurity through measures that increase domestic agricultural productivity, improve rural roads and storage facilities, reduce post-harvest losses, strengthen security in farming communities, and make essential inputs more accessible to genuine producers.
Cash transfers and emergency food assistance have their place, but they cannot replace a comprehensive strategy for raising productivity, creating decent employment, and improving household purchasing power.
Above all, the political leadership must demonstrate sensitivity to public hardship. There is something profoundly damaging to public trust when citizens are told to make sacrifices while perceiving that those who govern them are insulated from the consequences.
The answer is not to abandon every difficult reform. It is to make reform humane, transparent, accountable, and responsive to the people who bear its costs.
Reclaiming the Dignity of the Nigerian Citizen
The deepest danger of hunger is not merely that it empties the stomach. It is that prolonged deprivation can reduce the range of choices available to people who deserve better.
A country cannot build a prosperous economy on the permanent insecurity of its citizens. Nor can democratic participation reach its full potential when millions must devote much of their energy to securing basic necessities.
Nigeria needs a social contract in which citizens contribute their labour, taxes, ideas, and civic participation in exchange for a government that protects their rights, manages public resources responsibly, and creates conditions for a decent life.
Citizens, in turn, must resist the temptation to surrender their political judgment for temporary inducements. Political parties and candidates should be judged by their records, policies, competence, integrity, and capacity to improve the country—not merely by the generosity of their campaign distributions.
Civil society organizations, labour unions, professional bodies, the media, religious institutions, and community leaders also have a responsibility to insist that food security and economic dignity remain central to public policy.
The historical memory of the Nigerian Civil War should remind us of the terrible consequences when access to food becomes entangled with the exercise of power. But the lesson must not be distorted into an unsupported claim that every economic hardship is deliberately orchestrated as a weapon against the population. Intent must be distinguished from consequence, and political criticism must remain grounded in evidence.
Nevertheless, governments cannot escape responsibility merely because suffering was not their declared objective. When policies generate severe hardship, the duty to mitigate that hardship becomes even more urgent.
President Tinubu and the APC administration must therefore recognize that the legitimacy of economic reform depends not only on its stated objectives but also on whether ordinary Nigerians can survive the transition and eventually experience tangible improvements.
The test is straightforward: Are Nigerians becoming more secure, productive, and economically independent, or are growing numbers being pushed into a desperate struggle for daily survival?
Conclusion: Hunger Must Not Become Nigeria’s Political Destiny
Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s association with hunger as an instrument of war belongs to a painful chapter of Nigerian history. Ayodele Fayose’s stomach infrastructure expression reflects a different but equally revealing dimension of the relationship between material deprivation and political power.
Neither historical reference should be used carelessly. Wartime deprivation, electoral patronage, and the consequences of economic reform are not identical phenomena. Yet they illuminate a common truth: control over, or access to, basic necessities can profoundly influence human behavior.
The challenge before Nigeria is to ensure that hunger is treated as a national emergency requiring sustained economic and social intervention, rather than as a political opportunity to be exploited.
A government that reduces hunger strengthens citizenship. A government that creates opportunities for decent work strengthens democracy. A government that makes food affordable and protects vulnerable households strengthens national stability.
Conversely, when citizens are left to fight a daily battle for survival, the promise of democracy becomes painfully distant.
Nigeria must choose between a political culture that manages poverty through periodic handouts and a developmental vision that systematically reduces the conditions producing poverty. One preserves dependence; the other expands freedom.
The ultimate measure of the Tinubu administration will not be how persuasively it explains its reforms, how frequently it announces relief programs, or how effectively it mobilizes political support. It will be whether Nigerians can afford food, educate their children, access healthcare, earn a living, and look towards tomorrow without overwhelming fear.
Hunger should never become the price Nigerians must pay for economic reform. Nor should it become the currency through which political loyalty is purchased.
The proper purpose of government is not to make citizens perpetually grateful for the next meal. It is to create a country in which they can earn that meal with dignity, live without fear, and exercise their democratic rights without the desperation of an empty stomach.
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NZE DAVID N. UGWU IS THE MANAGING CONSULTANT OF KNOWLEDGE RESEARCH CONSULT. HE COULD BE REACHED AT [email protected] OR +2348037269333.
