Sir: Nigeria’s policymakers and business leaders frequently proclaim agriculture as a cornerstone of national development. It appears in budget speeches, economic blueprints and political messaging. Yet, every harvest season, tonnes of tomatoes rot on the roadside, grains spoil in silos, and fresh produce arrives bruised or unusable at markets across the country. The contradiction between rhetoric and reality is unmistakable.

Psychologists have a term for this gap between declared beliefs and repeated behaviour: cognitive dissonance. Leon Festinger’s foundational work describes the deep discomfort experienced when actions contradict stated beliefs, often leading individuals or institutions to rationalise, delay, or ignore necessary change.

Nigeria’s agriculture and logistics sectors today are trapped in this collective dissonance. We elevate agriculture in speeches, but underinvest in the logistics backbone that sustains it. We praise farmers for feeding the nation, yet tolerate systemic failures that ensure much of their output never reaches consumers.

The numbers do not match the narrative
Agriculture is consistently portrayed as a pillar of economic diversification. But the supporting infrastructure tells a very different story.

Studies estimate that 30–50 per cent of Nigeria’s annual agricultural output is lost post-harvest, largely due to poor handling, inadequate storage, bad rural roads, limited cold-chain capacity, and weak processing infrastructure. These losses translate into over N3.5 trillion yearly, a staggering erosion of national value.

Meanwhile, 95 per cent of domestic freight moves by road, yet many of those roads are unsafe or poorly maintained. Congested ports, slow cargo-handling systems, and inconsistent border processes further undermine competitiveness and increase spoilage. The logistics system contradicts the country’s professed food-security ambitions.

This is textbook cognitive dissonance: we claim agriculture is strategic, yet invest as though it were peripheral.

How the dissonance manifests
The agriculture–logistics interface reflects several recurring contradictions:
Policy commitments vs. Public investment
Governments announce ambitious food-security programmes, but capital expenditure on rural roads, aggregation centres, and cold-chain systems remain insufficient. Extension services and quality-control programmes — the backbone of modern agriculture — are often the first to be cut when budgets tighten.

Banking rhetoric vs. lending reality
Banks promote agriculture desks and SME funds, yet actual credit to agriculture is limited, short-term, and high-interest — contradicting the long-life cycle of logistics assets such as cold rooms, silos, and reefer trucks.

Logistics branding vs. operating reality
Many logistics firms describe themselves as “tech-enabled” or “value-chain partners,” but operate with minimal cold-chain infrastructure, fragmented data visibility, and undertrained field staff. The narrative is modern; the operating reality is analog.

Consumer expectations vs. policy discipline
Urban consumers demand affordable food but seldom push for the structural reforms — road maintenance, axle-load regulation, predictable port processes — that would actually lower prices.

Across sectors, stakeholders maintain self-perceptions inconsistent with their behaviours, and the system rationalises rather than resolves the contradictions.

A global mirror: Other nations faced the same contradiction
Globally, one-third of all food produced is lost or wasted yearly, much of it due to weak logistics and cold-chain systems. Many countries have confronted similar dissonance and acted decisively:
India invested heavily in integrated cold-chain corridors linking farm clusters to consumption and export hubs; Kenya developed world-class horticulture export systems by treating cold-chain logistics as strategic infrastructure and China incorporated agricultural logistics into national food-security planning, subsidising refrigerated transport, storage, and multimodal connections.

Their common insight: food security is impossible without logistics security. Policy, finance, and infrastructure must align with stated beliefs. Nigeria has yet to make this transition.

Nigeria’s unique challenge: Fixing the first mile
While the national conversation often focuses on last-mile delivery in urban logistics, agriculture depends critically on the first mile — the journey from farm gate to aggregation centres, processing plants, and wholesale markets.

Here the contradictions are stark: We encourage farmers to increase yields but fail to guarantee the safe movement of the additional output.

We celebrate AfCFTA and export diversification while tolerating port delays, limited reefer infrastructure, and unpredictable border processes.

We push youth into agriculture while preserving a logistics environment that erodes margins and undermines commercial viability. Until first-mile failures are fixed, productivity gains will continue to evaporate.

Breaking the dissonance: Aligning beliefs, incentives and assets
Treat Logistics as Agricultural Infrastructure: Cold-chain assets, rural roads, storage hubs, and multimodal links must be financed like national infrastructure — through blended finance, PPPs, concessionary lending, and dedicated agricultural logistics schemes.

Move Beyond Tech Buzzwords: Apps cannot substitute for cold rooms, trained personnel, and efficient transport networks. Logistics providers must evolve from parcel trackers to end-to-end agri-supply chain managers.

Institutional Discipline and Human Capacity: Long-term reform requires maintenance culture, consistent regulation, and a professionalised logistics workforce — drivers, loaders, warehouse supervisors, and inspectors — whose incentives reward quality and efficiency.

Deploy Targeted Subsidies and Smart Incentives: Many countries have used subsidies not as political giveaways but as market-correction tools:
India offers 50–75% capital subsidies for cold rooms, packhouses, and reefer trucks. The U.S. supports rural logistics through grants, tax credits, and subsidised financing. Kenya deploys duty exemptions and low-interest loans to strengthen horticulture logistics. China subsidises refrigerated transport and grain logistics hubs to secure food supply.

Nigeria can adopt similar mechanisms — capital grants, viability-gap funding, tax credits, duty waivers, and interest-rate buy-downs — to de-risk investment in logistics. Incentives must be transparent and performance-based, tied to measurable outcomes such as reduced losses and improved farm-gate prices. Well-designed subsidies correct structural failures and accelerate transformation.

Towards a more honest national narrative
Nigeria does not lack agricultural slogans; it lacks alignment between what we say and what we do. Cognitive dissonance teaches that when beliefs and actions diverge, one must change. For decades, Nigeria has adjusted its narrative. The time has come to adjust behaviour.

A nation truly committed to agriculture cannot continue losing nearly half of what its farmers produce. The logistics system will determine whether agriculture becomes a strategy — or remains a slogan.

Tonye Preghafi is a logistics and strategy professional with experience in supply chain operations, business transformation, and organisational development in the Nigerian market.