Resilience to COVID-19 and Armed Conflict Shocks: Evidence from Nigeria
DOWNLOADAugust 14, 2024 - Nathaniel Siji Olutegbe, Benjamin Olusegun Oyelami, Iredele Ogunbayo, Martina Occeli & Justin George
Print
EmailABSTRACT
Armed conflict has been a major threat to food production and is a factor for Nigeria’s perpetual
status as one of the most food insecure nations globally, in spite of successive government’s efforts.
Also, available evidences show that COVID-19 outbreak of 2020 worsened the country’s already
bad food security outlook and may have weakened household resilience. In this study, we assess the
effects of the interaction of these shocks, and equally provide evidences to validate studies which
have reported their individual impacts on household food security and resilience. We utilize the last
wave of Nigeria’s LSMS-ISA data, three rounds (2, 4 and 7) of the high frequency COVID-19
National Longitudinal Phone Survey, desk-review of state-level COVID-19 containment measures,
local government level COVID-19 cases, and the Armed Conflict Location and Events Data Project
(ACLED), which generated one household-level data-set for the study. We predict household food
security using Poisson model. Using the Cisse and Barrett approach, we estimate resilience as the
conditional variance of household food security amidst shocks experienced. We find that food
security and resilience worsened progressively from the pre-pandemic through the post-outbreak
periods. North-west and North-east zones of the country are least resilient, while urban and maleheaded households are more resilient compared to their rural and female-headed counterparts. We
recommend proactive and integrated policy actions incorporating gender-responsive and regionspecific strategies to boost household resilience against future shocks.
Keywords: Armed-conflicts, COVID-19, resilience, food security, Nigeria, shocks
