Investigating and Quantifying Food Insecurity in Nigeria: A Systematic Review

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (New Reviewer)

In this paper, the authors have reviewed the food insecurity in Nigeria. The following are the comments that need the kind attention of the authors for improvement.

·       Why was Nigeria chosen (103^rd rank out of 121 countries) when other countries are much worse in food insecurity status?

·       Figure 1: Instead of only one year, the GFSI shall be given for multiple years to know the trend.

·       Line 173: Why was the SCOPUS database chosen against the Web of Science? And why was the Google Scholar database not considered?

·       Figure 2: It is suggested to follow the PRISMA chart template.

·       Table 1: It is not clear on what basis the papers were arranged. It is suggested to follow chronological order so that the improvement in methodology and tools can be brought out. Further, this table shall be given as an appendix. The review of these papers shall only be highlighted in the main text.

·       Year-wise number of publications shall be given in the form of a bar graph to know the trend.

·       In the limitation of this review, why meta-analysis was not mentioned?

·       Apart from the aforementioned points, a few typos/missing words and grammatical errors were found in the manuscript, which have to be fixed.

Minor editing is required

Author Response

Reviewers’ comments

Reviewer 1

In this paper, the authors have reviewed the food insecurity in Nigeria. The following are the comments that need the kind attention of the authors for improvement.

• Why was Nigeria chosen (103^rdrank out of 121 countries) when other countries are much worse in food insecurity status?

        Thank you so much for this comment, from our manuscript, while X-raying the food security environment for Nigeria as reported in the GFSI 2022 under the four pillars for food security (Figure 1), indicated that Nigeria had the lowest score (25/100) globally on the affordability category. Also, Nigeria ranked 107^th out of 113 countries and 25^th out of 28 sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries with a GFSI score of 42/100 in the GFSI 2022.

• Figure 1: Instead of only one year, the GFSI shall be given for multiple years to know the trend.

        Thank you so much for this comment. It is good to visualize the trend of Nigeria’s GFSI but this particular figure 1 was not really about trend. This Figure 1 x-rayed all the four pillars for food security and revealed how Nigeria’s overall food security environment had fared in present year 2022. The trend in previous years is already in public domain (already used in previous studies and are part of the references) but this figure 1 is not yet in any paper according to our findings. Thank you.

• Line 173: Why was the SCOPUS database chosen against the Web of Science? And why was the Google Scholar database not considered?

        Scopus and Web of Science are both reputable and globally recognised databases. Any one of the two can be used in this kind of review. From my experience and literature, Google Scholar is wide-ranging but not a comprehensive database especially for systematic review. Thank you so much.

• Figure 2: It is suggested to follow the PRISMA chart template.

        Yes, thank you so much. We have modified Figure 2.

• Table 1: It is not clear on what basis the papers were arranged. It is suggested to follow chronological order so that the improvement in methodology and tools can be brought out. Further, this table shall be given as an appendix. The review of these papers shall only be highlighted in the main text.

Thank you so much for this comment. Table 1 is the snapshot of the insights obtained from the 79 scholarly articles included in this review. It’s already arranged in a chronological order (2006-2023) but the references style used in this manuscript (numbering) was not in arranged format because some of the references have been used before getting to this Table. Table 1 will best left in the main text because it is one of the main thrust of this systematic review and this can be confirmed in a similar work in Australia by reference number 15 (McKay et al. 2019).

• Year-wise number of publications shall be given in the form of a bar graph to know the trend.

        Thank you so much for this comment, we feel the year-wise number of publication may not be necessary for a systematic review because it is not a bibliometric analysis. Also, we want to avoid having many figures in this manuscript.

• In the limitation of this review, why meta-analysis was not mentioned?

        Thank you so much for this comment. It is now included in the limitation section.

• Apart from the aforementioned points, a few typos/missing words and grammatical errors were found in the manuscript, which have to be fixed.

        Thank you so much for this comment. Thorough English language editing was done on the manuscript.

Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)

The article "Investigating and Quantifying Food Insecurity in Nigeria: A Systematic Review" addresses a topic of great interest and, sadly, contemporaneousness in a world where, despite enormous food production capacity unprecedented in history, there are still many countries where food security is not assured for a significant proportion of their population. The article is well written and easy to read. In addition, the methodology and theoretical references are adequate. For all these reasons, it is a manuscript worthy of consideration. However, before it is published, it sould be improved and some of its points clarified. In this sense, I make the following recommendations to the authors:

1) The article has paragraphs marked with yellow color without explaining the reason for this. Perhaps it is because the authors mark paragraphs that they have corrected after a previous evaluation by me. In any case, it is essential that these paragraph markings are removed before publication.

2) Apart from the concept of food security, the authors should also talk about the concept of food sovereignty, since the problems of food insecurity are often due to people's lack of sovereignty over the production of the food they need to survive, which is often due to their inability to decide what food to produce, or to their inability or extreme difficulty in producing it.

3) The Introduction part is well written and contextualizes the problem satisfactorily. However, given that line 58 alludes to the Sustainable Development Goals, it should better explain what is meant by sustainability and sustainable development and mention, even if only briefly, to how these concepts are manifested in the particular case of Nigeria. This is particularly necessary given the high degree of polysemy in the terms ‘sustainability' and 'sustainable development'.

4) Perhaps the data in Table 2 would be better geo-referenced on a map, so that the reader who is not familiar with Nigeria can more easily locate them territorially.

5) What is said between lines 375 and 380 is important because it shows that the problem of Food Insecurity is not only related to the productive capacity of agriculture, but also to the greater or lesser social stability of the areas impacted by that problem, which obviously affects the productive capacity of agriculture in those areas. For this reason, the map that I suggested to the authors earlier instead of Table 2, would not only help the readers to locate spatially, with a simple glance, what is said in this table, but it would possibly also allow the authors to visually relate the data they provide to some available information on the greater or lesser social stability of each of the areas represented, and from there to analyze how the information obtained correlates with the greater or lesser capacity of the State to guarantee what the sociologist Max Weber described as the monopoly of legitimate violence, i.e. the capacity of the State to impose its authority in those areas or, on the contrary, whether that capacity is virtually nil in zones with a preponderance of armed banditry, Boko Haram insurgency, Kidnapping, and cattle rustling.

6) The Conclusions section is too brief given the remarkable length of the article. The authors should go further in this section by clearly synthesizing the findings of their research and trying to make clearer the results of their research and the usefulness of extrapolating them to other similar studies. I recommend this this above all due to fact that the section "Areas for further research" in the current version of the manuscript is too brief and imprecise in its statements.

I hope that the above recommendations, which have a basically constructive purpose, will be useful and orientating for the authors, whom I encourage to make these brief reforms to their work, which is good and of high quality in itself.

Author Response

Reviewer 2 (Comments and responses)

The article "Investigating and Quantifying Food Insecurity in Nigeria: A Systematic Review" addresses a topic of great interest and, sadly, contemporaneousness in a world where, despite enormous food production capacity unprecedented in history, there are still many countries where food security is not assured for a significant proportion of their population. The article is well written and easy to read. In addition, the methodology and theoretical references are adequate. For all these reasons, it is a manuscript worthy of consideration. However, before it is published, it should be improved and some of its points clarified. In this sense, I make the following recommendations to the authors:

• The article has paragraphs marked with yellow color without explaining the reason for this. Perhaps it is because the authors mark paragraphs that they have corrected after a previous evaluation by me. In any case, it is essential that these paragraph markings are removed before publication.

Yes, it will be removed before publication. Thank you so much for this comment.

• Apart from the concept of food security, the authors should also talk about the concept of food sovereignty, since the problems of food insecurity are often due to people's lack of sovereignty over the production of the food they need to survive, which is often due to their inability to decide what food to produce, or to their inability or extreme difficulty in producing it.

Thank you so much for this comment. So as to make the introduction brief and concise (as suggested by previous reviewers), we have focused our study on four pillars of food insecurity.

• The Introduction part is well written and contextualizes the problem satisfactorily. However, given that line 58 alludes to the Sustainable Development Goals, it should better explain what is meant by sustainability and sustainable development and mention, even if only briefly, to how these concepts are manifested in the particular case of Nigeria. This is particularly necessary given the high degree of polysemy in the terms ‘sustainability' and 'sustainable development'.

Thank you so much for this comment. Since the focus of this study is not on SDGs in Nigeria but Food Insecurity research endeavours in Nigeria, we have decided to make the presentation on SDGs in Nigeria to be brief and concise. We have presented the SDG 2 scorecard of Nigeria as x-rayed by the Global Hunger Index (GHI) and Global Food Security Index (GFSI) scores in 2022.

• Perhaps the data in Table 2 would be better geo-referenced on a map, so that the reader who is not familiar with Nigeria can more easily locate them territorially.

Thank you so much for this comment. We have done it and added the Nigerian map (Figure 3) showing the number of research articles on food insecurity in each state and FCT, Abuja.

• What is said between lines 375 and 380 is important because it shows that the problem of Food Insecurity is not only related to the productive capacity of agriculture, but also to the greater or lesser social stability of the areas impacted by that problem, which obviously affects the productive capacity of agriculture in those areas. For this reason, the map that I suggested to the authors earlier instead of Table 2, would not only help the readers to locate spatially, with a simple glance, what is said in this table, but it would possibly also allow the authors to visually relate the data they provide to some available information on the greater or lesser social stability of each of the areas represented, and from there to analyze how the information obtained correlates with the greater or lesser capacity of the State to guarantee what the sociologist Max Weber described as the monopoly of legitimate violence, i.e. the capacity of the State to impose its authority in those areas or, on the contrary, whether that capacity is virtually nil in zones with a preponderance of armed banditry, Boko Haram insurgency, Kidnapping, and cattle rustling.

Thank you so much for this comment. We have incorporated the map in Figure 3.

• The Conclusions section is too brief given the remarkable length of the article. The authors should go further in this section by clearly synthesizing the findings of their research and trying to make clearer the results of their research and the usefulness of extrapolating them to other similar I recommend this this above all due to fact that the section "Areas for further research" in the current version of the manuscript is too brief and imprecise in its statements.

Thank you so much for this comment. We feel it is better for the conclusion to be brief and concise. The conclusion of 185 word-count may not be referred to as “too brief”. We have already modified it in the previous reviews (as shown by the yellow colour). The section of “Areas for further research” centred on the fact that this kind of systematic review may be extend as an African study to further have a comprehensive understanding of food insecurity situation and quantification of food (in) security research endeavours in the region.  

I hope that the above recommendations, which have a basically constructive purpose, will be useful and orientating for the authors, whom I encourage to make these brief reforms to their work, which is good and of high quality in itself.

Thank you so much for these comments.

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I found no contribution to the literature. Therefore, can not suggest it.

Language needs improvement.

Reviewer 2 Report

Introduction

The manuscript addresses an important gap in literature. But the paper is poorly organized with several grammar issues. I recommend that the manuscript be rejected due to the reasons indicated below.

General Comments

There is a need for a thorough edit of the entire to fix many mechanical issues.

e.g line 46 should be, “explains,” not “explained”.

e.g. line 52:-56: “The ripple effect 52 of the war in Ukraine will have numerous implications for global agricultural markets 53 that can worsen the state of food and nutrition security for many nations in the coming 54 years”.  The sentence is too long, and difficult to understand.

Lines 191-193: “However, only scholarly papers 191 published in English were consideration (mechanical issue), while research documents such as; unpublished 192 articles, books, book chapters, conference abstracts, encyclopaedia (spelling error), theses, dissertations, 193 editorials, and reviews were debarred.”

e.g. line 60-63: “Also, in 60 the 2022 Global Hunger index (GHI), Nigeria ranked 103rd out of 121 countries with an 61 overall score of 27.3/100, leaving the country in a serious level of hunger and revealing that 62 Nigeria is not yet on the path towards the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 63 2 (SDG2) target by 2030 [5, 6].”  The sentence is convoluted and difficult to understand.

The import of the text in line 65-74 is not any different from what is conveyed by the text in lines 56-63. There are multiple such examples in the manuscript that need to be edited out.

Another editorial issue is the wrong use of punctuation marks, as evident in the examples below:

Lines 81-82: “The four pillars are important in understanding food security at any levels such as; regional, household, 82 and individual levels [9-15]”. The use of semi-colon is also needless in this sentence.

Lines 95-97: “Generally, conditions that expose people to FI and hunger include; extreme poverty, 95 unemployment, corruption, unstable food access, ill-health, non-existent of social protection programmes, and terrorism [8, 14-19]”. The use of semi-colon is also needless in this sentence.

Introduction

The introduction is too long and contains a lot of needless information. As a result, it becomes difficult to access the gap in scholarship that the study is seeking to address. The introduction ought to have been used to introduce the problem statement that underpins their study. But this is not the case.

Materials and Methods

There is also a need for the authors to be more specific about  how they reviewed the publications that met their inclusion criteria. Even Fig 2 was poorly formatted.  

Results

This part also contains needless information as evidenced by the first paragraph under this section. Some elements in Table 1, especially, “findings”, “FI prevalence” and “measured FI” also fall into the category of needless information.

Also, the presentation of the “findings” is haphazard and difficult to follow. For example, between lines 277-292 and the authors wrote about approaches used in previous studies in measuring food security. At lines 293-295 within the same paragraph, the authors start talk about the food security benchmarks used in the studies that they reviewed.

 

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript  Investigating and Quantifying Food Insecurity in Nigeria: A Systematic Revew  is interesting and is a review of significant meaning.

Some comments/suggestions:

i)    Keywords (food security; Nigeria; measurement tools; malnutrition) should be better specified.  They should reflect the main idea and content of the article with no need to replicate words from the title of the manuscript!

ii)   There is a lack of clarity in describing why only the 79 studies have been in- 229 included in this review.

iii) Table 1 should be move to an Annex and its contents should be rigor analyzed and summarized in the text of the results section.

iv)  conclusion should be improved, reflecting more properly the results and presenting more perspectives on the issues, controversies, problems relate to theme and arguments supporting the manuscript position

v)   Include a section with further research topics.

On the basis of detailed comments sent to the authors, I propose a major revision of the article prior to its publication.

 

Moderate editing of English language required