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A Critical Discourse Analysis of Language and Food Security in Nigeria

Cite this article as: Umar, S. A. (2025). A critical discourse analysis of language and food security in NigeriaSokoto Journal of Linguistics and Communication Studies (SOJOLICS), 1(1), 165–171. www.doi.org/10.36349/sojolics.2025.v01i01.020

A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF LANGUAGE AND FOOD SECURITY IN NIGERIA

By

Shema’u Abubakar Umar

shemauari@gmail.com

Department of General Studies,

Isa Mustapha Agwai I Polytechnic, Lafia -Nasarawa State

Abstract

This paper explores the intricate relationship between language, power, and policy communication in shaping public understanding of food security. Drawing on Norman Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis framework and a qualitative research design, the paper examines selected government speeches, policy statements, and media texts from 2015 to 2024. The findings reveal that linguistic framing, metaphorical expressions, and rhetorical structures significantly influence how food security is perceived and prioritized in Nigeria’s policy landscape. Government discourse often employs technocratic and abstract language that obscures accountability, while media narratives tend to politicize or dramatise food insecurity, thereby shaping public emotions and expectations. The paper argues that language is not a neutral medium but a powerful social tool that constructs, legitimizes, and sometimes distorts policy realities. It recommends adopting clearer, inclusive, and multilingual communication strategies to bridge the gap between policymakers and the public. The research contributes to the growing body of knowledge on language and development by demonstrating that sustainable food security in Nigeria depends not only on agricultural productivity but also on how policy meanings are linguistically produced and disseminated.

Keywords: Critical Discourse Analysis, language, food security, Nigeria, communication, policy discourse.

1. Introduction

Food insecurity and malnutrition remain central challenges within global development discourse, most visibly articulated through Sustainable Development Goal 2 (Zero Hunger) and sustained international monitoring by United Nations agencies. Recent editions of The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World reveal that undernourishment is not only persistent but worsening in many regions, with declining diet affordability, widening inequality, and a growing financing gap for resilient agri-food systems (FAO et al., 2024). These trends are driven by intersecting global shocks including climate change, armed conflict, economic instability, and escalating food prices, all of which undermine the availability, access, utilisation, and stability dimensions of food security (FAO et al., 2024; World Bank, 2024). Within this volatile global context, attention has increasingly shifted beyond purely biophysical and economic explanations of hunger to the role of language and discourse in shaping how food insecurity is understood, communicated, and addressed.

Language plays a critical role in food-security governance because policy priorities, public perceptions, and institutional responses are largely constructed through discourse. Government speeches, policy documents, media reports, and humanitarian narratives do not merely describe food insecurity; they frame responsibility, legitimise particular policy choices, assign blame or credit, and shape public consent for interventions (Kerins et al., 2023). Competing narratives such as food insecurity as an outcome of “external shocks” versus a product of “domestic governance failures” reveal that discourse is a site of ideological struggle where power, expertise, and moral claims are negotiated. Consequently, how food insecurity is talked about has direct implications for donor financing, policy implementation, citizen participation, and the uptake of agricultural and nutrition interventions.

In Nigeria, these global pressures manifest with particular intensity, making the analysis of food-security discourse especially urgent. The country is repeatedly identified as having one of the largest absolute populations of food-insecure people globally, a situation exacerbated by conflict, displacement, climate stress, and persistent food inflation (FAO et al., 2024; WFP, 2024). Rising food prices have translated into worsening child malnutrition, deepening reliance on humanitarian assistance, increased rural out-migration, and heightened social tensions across affected communities (WFP, 2024; The Guardian, 2024). Against this backdrop, the language deployed by political leaders, policymakers, development agencies, and the media becomes consequential, not only in shaping national and international perceptions of the crisis but also in influencing whose experiences are recognised and whose voices are marginalised.

Over the years, successive Nigerian governments have introduced a range of policies aimed at improving agricultural productivity, food availability, and nutrition outcomes. Initiatives such as the Agriculture Promotion Policy (APP, 2016–2020), the Agricultural Sector Food Security and Nutrition Strategy (2016–2025), and more recent emergency responses to price shocks and supply disruptions reflect evolving policy priorities and governance approaches (FMARD, 2016/2017; IFPRI, 2016; Reuters, 2024; World Bank, 2025). At the same time, humanitarian actors continue to play a critical role in conflict-affected areas where state capacity remains limited (WFP, 2024). Despite these efforts, food insecurity persists, raising questions not only about economic and security constraints but also about how food problems are discursively framed, communicated, and acted upon.

While economic, climatic, and security factors dominate most explanations of Nigeria’s food crisis, comparatively little attention has been paid to the role of language in shaping perceptions of the problem and responses to it. Government and media discourses often present hunger as an unavoidable consequence of global forces, thereby downplaying structural inequality, governance failures, and accountability (Kerins et al., 2023). Moreover, the dominance of technocratic, bureaucratic, or elitist language in food-policy communication frequently alienates rural populations and smallholder farmers who are central to national food production (Environews Nigeria, 2025). This discursive gap between policy narratives and lived realities can weaken policy effectiveness, limit citizen engagement, and reproduce power asymmetries within the food system.

Against this background, this paper adopts a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) perspective to examine how food security is constructed, communicated, and contested in Nigeria. CDA views language as a form of social practice through which power relations, ideologies, and institutional interests are produced and reproduced (Fairclough, 2015; van Dijk, 2018). Drawing primarily on Fairclough’s three-dimensional model of CDA, and informed by the ethical insights of Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach, the study treats food security not merely as a technical or economic issue but as a deeply social and political phenomenon shaped by discourse. Language is understood here as a social resource that frames reality, structures policy debates, and influences who is considered secure or vulnerable within society (Halliday, 2004; Ahearn, 2021; FAO, 2022).

The main purpose of this paper is therefore to critically examine how language is used to construct food-security issues in Nigeria across policy documents, official speeches, and media narratives. It seeks to identify dominant linguistic and discursive patterns, uncover the ideological assumptions and power relations embedded in these texts, and analyse their implications for public understanding, policy implementation, and national development. By interrogating how meanings of food security are produced and circulated, the study aims to contribute to more inclusive, accountable, and culturally sensitive ways of framing food security, approaches that empower citizens, enhance participation, and support Nigeria’s broader sustainable development goals.

2. Literature Review

Several studies have interrogated the linguistic dimensions of governance and public communication related to food crises. Onoja, Bebenimibo, and Onoja (2022) examined audience reactions to media reports on farmers-herders’ conflicts through a critical discourse lens. Their study revealed that online comments often reproduce ethnic stereotypes and emotional narratives that exacerbate food insecurity by worsening intergroup mistrust. Using secondary data from Facebook discussions, they employed Fairclough’s model of CDA to highlight how social media discourses reflect ideological divides. However, while insightful, their work paid limited attention to institutional or governmental discourses that influence structural aspects of food security.

Similarly, Funke (2024) investigated the intersection of financial literacy, farmers’ welfare, and food security among rural communities in Nigeria during the cashless policy reform. Drawing on primary data collected from 400 farmers and analysed through a mixed-method design, the study found that limited access to financial information and poor communication channels deepened food insecurity. While the research emphasised communication and education, it overlooked how linguistic framing by policymakers affects farmers’ perception of such economic reforms, a gap that the present paper intends to address through CDA.

In another Nigeria-based analysis, Nnamani and Mbaeyi-Nwaoha (2023) explored the political framing of food insecurity within Nigeria’s national discourse between 2010 and 2020. Their qualitative analysis of policy documents and media reports revealed that political leaders often deploy populist rhetoric that obscures systemic issues such as poor distribution networks, corruption, and infrastructural decay. The study’s findings underscored that language is not neutral; it is a tool of governance used to maintain legitimacy in the face of economic hardship. Nevertheless, their analysis was confined to political rhetoric, excluding community and media interactions that might reveal the multi-layered discourse of food security.

Ugwu (2024) contributed further insight by analysing how Nigerian media invisibilize ecological and environmental dimensions of land conflicts that affect food production. Through CDA of environmental communication reports, Ugwu’s study found that non-human factors, such as land degradation and deforestation, are linguistically marginalised in news framing. By privileging human-interest narratives, the media indirectly weakens advocacy for sustainable food systems. This omission demonstrates how the power of language extends beyond human actors to ecological representation, providing a critical entry point for discourse-oriented studies like the present one.

Kerins et al. (2023) reviewed how food insecurity is framed in news media across high-income countries. Their rapid review of 120 publications between 2010 and 2022 revealed that Western media tend to depoliticise hunger, framing it as an individual or household issue rather than a structural problem. This framing minimises public pressure for systemic reform. While the context differs from Nigeria, the study highlights the universal role of discourse in shaping food policy agendas, a thematic bridge to Nigeria’s situation, where official narratives also downplay institutional responsibility.

Segbefia et al. (2023) analysed the relationships among population growth, economic development, and food security across selected African nations using secondary data and econometric analysis. The study revealed that language and communication strategies used in policy dissemination often mediate the public’s understanding and compliance with agricultural interventions. Their findings affirm that discourse is not merely descriptive but performative; it influences behaviour and policy implementation. However, their quantitative approach left unexplored the qualitative, ideological nuances that CDA can uncover.

Thomas (2023), in an IMF policy paper, assessed Nigeria’s food-supply dynamics from 2015 to 2023. Using secondary data, the study concluded that linguistic optimism in government communications, phrases such as “agricultural revolution” and “feeding the nation”, often misrepresents the ground realities of poverty and hunger. The report highlighted discrepancies between official claims and actual food supply data, indirectly pointing to how political discourse sustains false narratives. Yet, as a policy report, it lacked theoretical engagement with language or discourse analysis, leaving a gap for scholarly interrogation.

Adebayo and Yusuf (2023) also examined official speeches and media campaigns on food policy between 2015 and 2022. Using Fairclough’s CDA, they found that government narratives of “empowerment” and “agricultural transformation” often serve to legitimise elite interests rather than address grassroots realities. While rich in political discourse analysis, the study neglected everyday communicative contexts such as farmers’ perceptions and community-level language use, dimensions that this present paper aims to integrate.

Devereux and Allen (2023) investigated humanitarian discourse on African food crises. Their CDA of international NGO reports and media coverage found that Western agencies often construct Africa as a passive victim, reinforcing dependency narratives and North-South hierarchies. While not Nigeria-specific, the findings underscore how global power structures influence the language of food insecurity. This has implications for how Nigeria’s own discursive strategies interact with or resist such global representations.

Together, these studies reveal a consistent recognition of language as a critical instrument in constructing the realities of food insecurity. However, most research either focuses on media framing or economic policy without integrating both linguistic and socio-political dimensions. None explicitly examines how language practices at multiple levels, governmental, media, and community, intersect to sustain or challenge food insecurity narratives in Nigeria. This gap forms the foundation of this paper, which applies Critical Discourse Analysis to uncover the power relations, ideologies, and communication strategies that underlie Nigeria’s food-security discourse. By bridging the discursive and socio-political dimensions, this paper contributes a more holistic understanding of how language functions as both a tool of governance and a site of resistance in the struggle for food security.

3. Methodology

This paper adopts a qualitative research design, which is appropriate given its emphasis on exploring underlying meanings, ideologies, and communicative patterns rather than producing numerical generalisations. Since Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is centrally concerned with the relationship between language, power, and ideology, a qualitative approach provides the most suitable analytical framework for this investigation. The study draws on both primary and secondary data sources. Primary data consist of official speeches, press releases, and media interviews delivered by Nigerian policymakers and government agencies, notably the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and the National Bureau of Statistics, within the period 2015–2024. Secondary data include published reports from international organisations as well as selected Nigerian newspapers, such as The GuardianDaily Trust, and Punch, which offer additional perspectives on the public discourse surrounding food insecurity.

A purposive sampling technique was employed in selecting texts relevant to food-security discourse. This approach is particularly suitable for CDA because it prioritises discourse samples that reflect dominant ideologies, contested narratives, or instances of strategic linguistic framing. The dataset comprises ten official speeches, five newspaper editorials, and three televised interviews by senior government officials, all selected on the basis of their thematic relevance and their influence on public understanding of food security. Data were collected through documentary analysis and archival retrieval. Official texts were sourced from government websites, press archives, and verified media platforms, while newspaper materials were retrieved using keyword searches such as food securityagricultural transformation, and famine within Nigerian contexts.

Data analysis was conducted using Norman Fairclough’s three-dimensional model of Critical Discourse Analysis, which examines discourse at three interconnected levels: textual analysis, discursive practice, and social practice (Fairclough, 2010). This model enabled a systematic examination of linguistic choices, patterns of production and consumption of texts, and the broader social and institutional contexts within which food-security discourse is constructed and circulated.

The scope of the paper covers Nigerian government and media discourses on food security from 2015 to 2024, a period corresponding with major agricultural and economic reform initiatives such as the Agriculture Promotion Policy (Green Alternative) and the establishment of the National Food Security Council. The analysis focuses primarily on national-level discourse rather than regional or grassroots communication, although implications for community engagement and policy implementation are discussed where relevant.

Ethical considerations were carefully observed throughout the study. As the analysis relies exclusively on publicly available documents, including government speeches, policy statements, and media reports, no direct human participation was involved, thereby eliminating concerns related to informed consent or confidentiality. Analytical neutrality was maintained by avoiding partisan or ideological bias, with emphasis placed on linguistic structures and social meanings rather than political alignment. Sensitive materials were handled with due respect for institutional ownership and contextual integrity. Overall, adherence to these ethical standards strengthens the credibility of the study as a responsible and objective scholarly inquiry into how language shapes the framing and understanding of food security in Nigeria.

4. Analysis and Discussions

The discussion of findings reveals that a dominant pattern in Nigeria’s food security discourse is the metaphorical framing of food insecurity as a “war” or “battle,” particularly in political speeches and government press releases, where expressions such as “fighting hunger,” “the war against poverty,” and “agriculture as the new oil” recur frequently. While these metaphors dramatise urgency, they also construct citizens as passive spectators and position the government as the central “hero,” thereby masking structural problems such as inadequate infrastructure, weak mechanisation, and poor policy execution, a pattern consistent with Fairclough’s (1995) argument that discourse constructs social reality and legitimises power relations. The analysis further shows a clear linguistic disconnect between official policy language and citizens’ lived experiences, as government institutions rely heavily on technical and bureaucratic expressions like “agricultural value chain integration” and “agro-industrial clusters,” which many rural farmers, particularly in Benue and Kano States, find inaccessible, reinforcing Ayeomoni’s (2021) claim that complex policy discourse alienates intended beneficiaries and weakens implementation. Media discourse similarly prioritises political controversy and sensational headlines over practical solutions, supporting Wodak’s (2001) view of discourse as both persuasive and ideologically loaded, often favouring short-term political narratives rather than long-term developmental concerns. Anchored in Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Theory and Van Dijk’s Socio-Cognitive Theory, the findings demonstrate how shared beliefs and cultural frames, exemplified by idioms such as “man must wack,” normalise food hardship and reduce citizens’ capacity to demand accountability. Regional and linguistic variations further shape perceptions of food security, as Hausa and Yoruba expressions embed moral, cultural, and health-related meanings into food discourse, confirming Oluwole and Musa’s (2023) position that multilingual sensitivity enhances policy communication. In comparison with earlier studies, the findings align with Ogundele and Abubakar’s (2022) critique of elitist government discourse but extend it by showing that linguistic framing itself constitutes a major barrier to policy uptake, while complementing Bello et al. (2021) by adding a linguistic dimension to explanations of inequality. Finally, the relative absence of empowering and participatory language, in contrast to resilience-focused narratives identified by Miller and Cooper (2020), suggests that Nigeria’s food security discourse emphasises crisis and deficit over collective agency, thereby limiting citizen-driven agricultural innovation and engagement.

5. Findings

The findings, therefore, demonstrate that language not only reflects but also reproduces social and economic inequalities in food access and distribution. Government communication tends to centralise authority and obscure accountability through euphemistic language. Meanwhile, citizens’ discourse, expressed through idioms, humour, and local proverbs, reveals resilience but also a sense of resignation. Expressions like “God will provide” or “na condition make crayfish bend” (Pigin English for “circumstances force adaptation”) reflect a linguistic acceptance of hardship, thus sustaining a passive orientation toward policy engagement. Such findings underscore the critical insight of CDA that discourse both reflects and constructs reality.

In conclusion, this analysis reinforces the argument that food security in Nigeria is as much a linguistic challenge as it is an economic one. Effective communication, inclusive language, and culturally grounded discourse can help bridge the gap between government intention and public understanding. The paper, therefore, recommends that policymakers integrate discourse analysts and communication experts into agricultural planning teams. Simplifying policy language, translating official documents into major Nigerian languages, and promoting positive narratives of self-reliance could enhance the effectiveness of food security interventions.

6. Conclusion

This paper examined how language shapes the discourse and public perception of food security in Nigeria and established that linguistic choices in government communication, media narratives, and everyday interactions significantly influence policy framing, public understanding, and citizen engagement. Drawing on Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), the study demonstrated that language does not merely reflect social realities but actively constructs them, often reinforcing power relations and masking structural weaknesses in policy formulation and implementation. The central objective of the study was achieved by showing how metaphorical framing, lexical choice, and ideological positioning in official and media texts condition how food insecurity is understood and addressed in the Nigerian context.

The findings indicate that sustainable food security in Nigeria requires more than agricultural and economic reforms; it equally demands a transformation in communicative practices. Government agencies need to adopt clearer, more accessible, and multilingual modes of communication that resonate with Nigeria’s diverse linguistic communities. Media institutions should move beyond sensational and politically charged representations towards developmental reporting that frames food security as a shared national responsibility. In addition, educational institutions have a role to play by integrating discourse analysis and language awareness into agricultural and communication-related curricula to strengthen policy literacy and critical engagement.

The study underscores the importance of language as a strategic tool for inclusive governance and participatory policy-making. By bridging linguistic theory with food policy discourse, it contributes a new dimension to understanding food insecurity in Nigeria beyond purely economic or environmental explanations. Future research may extend this line of inquiry through comparative discourse analyses across African countries or by examining digital and social media narratives on food security in order to capture emerging linguistic trends in an era of globalisation and technological mediation.

 

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