By Ezinwanne Onwuka
Millions of Nigerians go to bed hungry every night, despite the country’s vast farmland. Terrorism, poverty, and climate shocks have left more than 33 million people facing severe food insecurity—more than the combined populations of Ghana, Senegal, and Liberia.
As the Nigerian government struggles with the pressure of feeding a growing population, Green Yelwa Nigeria Limited, founded in 2015, is pioneering a new approach to farming: an organic, climate-smart fertilizer designed to boost yields, restore degraded soils, and produce safe, nutritious food to boost food security in the country.
A Company Born from Crisis
Vincent Okpala, founder of Green Yelwa, traces the company’s origins to the peak of the Boko Haram insurgency. ‘Yelwa’ means ‘abundance’ in Hausa.”
“Back in 2015, at the height of the Boko Haram insurgency in Northeast Nigeria, the government of the day banned the use of chemical fertilizer in that geopolitical zone, as a means of curbing the production of improvised explosive devices by the insurgents,” Okpala, a Nigerian expat living in Texas, told TruthNigeria.
“A group of farmers from Borno state, reached out to me, a Texas-based practicing emergency physician as well as an environmentally conscious agriculture enthusiast promoting climate-smart agricultural practices in Africa,” Okpala said to TruthNigeria.
Conventional chemical fertilizers often contain high levels of nitrogen and ammonium nitrate, substances that can be misused to make explosives. This danger was tragically demonstrated in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing in the U.S., where approximately 7,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, combined with nitromethane and diesel fuel, were concealed in a rental truck and detonated. The explosion killed 168 people, including 19 children, injured dozens more, and destroyed up to 300 nearby buildings.
Green Yelwa’s products, by contrast, rely on a proprietary blend of beneficial microbes and plant-based nutrients, making it safe for use in homes, schools, and communities.
He explained how affordability challenges led the team to redesign and locally adapt new products using key ingredients sourced from the United States.
According to him, “These first products were named Bio-start and Crop Enhancer and were used in our Northeast field trials, specifically in Borno and Adamawa states… At the end of the 2015 field trials, farmers returned with a message of hope and a bountiful harvest. Based on their experience we would later name the new company Green Yelwa.
Independent trials by the Ministry of Agriculture confirmed the products outperformed chemical fertilizers across multiple food staples.
Nigeria’s Food Crisis
Despite its vast farmland—over 70.8 million hectares dedicated to agriculture—and a sector employing more than 70 percent of the population, Nigeria ranks 115th out of 123 countries on the 2025 Global Hunger Index, with a score of 32.8 per cent.
Agriculture contributes roughly 26.17 percent to Nigeria’s GDP as of the second quarter of 2025, yet food insecurity continues to deepen. On Tuesday, November 12, 2025, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP) listed Nigeria among 16 countries facing rapidly worsening acute hunger.
“It is truly unfortunate that Nigeria is amongst the nine African hotspots mentioned in this alarming report,” Okpala told TruthNigeria. “Green Yelwa loaded the hunger killing gun for the nation since 2015, but the country has vehemently refused to pull the trigger.”
He added, “With an estimated 70 million hectares of agricultural land, and 34 million hectares of arable land, Nigeria should be the food basket of sub-Saharan Africa.”
The Green Yelwa Method
Green Yelwa challenges conventional chemical-intensive farming through ‘climate-smart’ organic fertilizers and sustainable cultivation methods.
Products such as bio-fertilizers, crop enhancers, and bio-start solutions restore soil health, reduce chemical residues in food, and boost yields by 30–50 percent. Sixty percent of the raw materials are sourced from the U.S. to match Nigeria’s soil profile.
“We met an agricultural soil that has been blighted and decimated by various climate unfriendly agricultural practices like deforestation, persistent use of chemical fertilizer/pesticide/herbicide, poor water management etc,” Okpala said.
“Through its soil rejuvenation farm inputs and novel agro-extension practices, Green Yelwa has made organic farming exciting again. Farmers report improved harvest, production of more nutritious, pest-resistant crops, post-harvest residual soil activity due to presence of active soil beneficial microbes in the soil.”
Supporting Displaced Farmers
In 2016, Green Yelwa partnered with Smile Again Africa Initiative to support more than 800 internally displaced persons at Ankoma farm settlement in Karu County, Nasarawa State. The company donated 100 liters of fertilizer to support 100 hectares of cowpea cultivation.
The results were striking: faster germination, lower pesticide use, shorter harvest cycles, and visibly healthier crops.
Commenting on the initiative, Okpala said: “The ‘Adopt an IDP’ program was established in 2016 after we were approached by a group of honey beans farmers majorly displaced from Borno and Adamawa states and resettled in IDP camps in Ankoma and Yelwa communities in Nasarawa State.
“They had seeds and large acreages of cultivable land but no access to fertilizer. It was as if they were abandoned by the government. Green Yelwa went in to support them with the resultant bumper harvest.”
He noted similar work with vulnerable groups in Niger Republic and innovations such as grow-sack yam clusters in response to shrinking farmland and insecurity.
Call for Government Action
Okpala sees Green Yelwa as a potential catalyst for transforming Nigeria’s agricultural economy for decades to come.
“Our vision is to have a healthy farmer, working a healthy soil, healed by Green Yelwa agro-extension practices,” he said.
But he cautions that the full promise of such innovation depends on government action.
“Government is heavy on policy and processes, but light on execution… Farmers who love our products have waited on nebulous government subsidy programs that never came,” Okpala noted, emphasizing the urgent need for effective support to feed Nigeria’s booming population.
Ezinwanne writes special features for TruthNigeria.
