By Faridat Salifu
Civil society organisations on Thursday, September 3, 2026, marched through the Federal Secretariat and its environs in Abuja to protest the proposed $2.5 billion investment by Brazilian meat-processing giant JBS in Nigeria, demanding transparency, environmental safeguards and stronger government oversight.
The march, organised by the Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) in partnership with Animal Protection, HEDA Resource Centre, YARD and Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN), was held under the theme, “March for Food Sovereignty and Ecological Justice.”
The organisations warned that JBS’s proposed expansion into Nigeria through industrial animal farming could have far-reaching implications for farmers, land, water resources, biodiversity, public health, animal welfare, labour rights and the country’s control over its food system.
Joyce Brown, Director of Programmes at HOMEF, said the proposed investment could have significant implications for land, water resources, local communities and farmers, making it necessary for the government to establish adequate safeguards before the company becomes fully operational.
Joyce said HOMEF’s concerns were informed by JBS’s track record in Brazil and other countries where the company has operated, where she said there had been reports of environmental degradation, tax evasion and livelihood challenges affecting local farmers and communities.
She said Nigeria must learn from the experiences of other countries and put structures in place to ensure that Nigerians do not bear the negative consequences of the investment.
“We believe that if we are to allow JBS into Nigeria, we must put structures in place to ensure that our people don’t suffer,” Joyce said.
According to her, Nigeria has previously experienced situations where multinational corporations entered communities with promises of development and corporate social responsibility initiatives, only for communities to complain that such commitments were not fulfilled.
She said the government must therefore establish policies and structures that would ensure large-scale investments benefit local people, strengthen local economies and prevent environmental degradation.
“We want a situation where there are policies in place, structures are in place that ensure that this sort of investment is beneficial to the people, this sort of investment actually builds the local economy and that we don’t have environmental degradation,” she said.
Joyce also raised concern over the absence of evidence that an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) had already been conducted for the proposed JBS activities.
“So far, there is no evidence of any EIA conducted already, but it might just be that land has already been allocated and it is time to have such an assessment conducted to ensure that we are prepared,” she said.
She said an assessment should be conducted before JBS becomes fully established in Nigeria to identify possible environmental consequences and establish measures to prevent or mitigate them.
Joyce said the scale of the proposed investment made such an assessment particularly important because the activities could require large areas of land and affect water resources and communities that depend on the environment for their livelihoods.
She also questioned why the agreement reportedly signed between JBS and the Nigerian government had not been made available to the public.
Joyce said the agreement should be accessible to experts across different sectors for review so that potential negative implications could be identified before the investment is implemented.
“This is something that should be available for experts across the various sectors to review, to ensure that we are not at the receiving end of any negative implications such a large-scale investment can have,” she said.
She stressed that the proposed investment should not be treated as an issue for the livestock sector alone because of its potential implications for agriculture, environment, health, land and water resources.
Joyce questioned whether the Ministries of Agriculture, Environment and Health, alongside other relevant agencies, were adequately involved in the approval process for JBS to begin operations in Nigeria.
“We do not know the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Environment, the Ministry of Health, and other relevant agencies are involved in the approval for JBS to start operations in Nigeria,” she said.
She called for the involvement of all relevant ministries and government agencies in reviewing the investment and urged the National Assembly to provide oversight.
According to Joyce, an investment that could involve large expanses of land and affect water resources and communities requires a decision-making process that cuts across government sectors.
“This is something that different ministries and departments of Nigeria should come together to review and before it is endorsed,” she said.
Joyce maintained that the organisations were not against foreign investment but wanted adequate due diligence to be conducted before the project proceeds.
Also speaking, Mariann Bassey-Olsson, Deputy Executive Director of Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN) and Coordinator of its Food Sovereignty Programme, said Nigerians must look beyond the $2.5 billion value attached to the proposed investment and examine its potential effect on the country’s food system.
Mariann said the announcement of jobs, infrastructure and economic development could understandably generate excitement, but the country must first ask what the investment would mean for Nigeria’s food systems and who would ultimately have influence over them.
“When people hear a company is coming to Nigeria and is bringing $2.5 billion, our first reaction is fantastic — jobs, investments, infrastructure, development,” she said.
“But before we celebrate the numbers, we need to pause and ask a fundamental question: what exactly is this investment?”
She said the proposed six factories — three for poultry, two for beef and one for pork — represented more than a set of industrial facilities because of their potential impact on Nigeria’s agricultural resources and food markets.
“This is more than six factories. This is about our land, our livestock, our people, our communities, our biodiversity, our farmers, our feed, our water, our markets, our food security and our food sovereignty,” Mariann said.
She said the broader question was who would have the power to shape the food system that would emerge around the investment and who would ultimately control the food chain.
Mariann cited the late Burkina Faso leader Thomas Sankara’s statement that whoever feeds people controls them, using it to highlight the importance of maintaining national and local control over food systems.
She stressed that the organisations were not against investment and were not opposed to foreign investors coming into Nigeria.
“We are not anti-investment. We are saying investment must have a people’s face,” she said.
Mariann said investments should protect public interests and be transparent and accountable, particularly when they involve major multinational corporations.
She said civil society organisations had been requesting access to the memorandum of understanding reportedly signed between JBS and the Nigerian government since 2024.
“Nobody knows what MOU JBS signed with the government. We’ve asked since 2024. We want to know what is in this investment. That is why you hear us saying, ‘Disclose the deal,’” she said.
She argued that demanding transparency did not mean being against investment, saying a company genuinely coming to help the people should be open about the terms of its investment.
Mariann said Nigerians needed to know what the investment would mean for the country, including what land had been allocated, whether environmental impact assessments had been conducted, what would happen to water resources and where the resources required for the proposed operations would come from.
“What lands have been allocated? Has environmental impact assessment been done? What will happen to our water? What feed is coming? Where would the land resource for this come from?” she asked.
She said these were basic questions that any reasonable person should ask when a large-scale investment is proposed, regardless of whether they support foreign investment.
Mariann also called on the African Union to pay attention to the proposed JBS investment, arguing that what happens in one African country can have implications for the wider continent.
She said JBS was not a small start-up but a major global meat-processing company with operations across several continents, making Nigeria’s proposed role in its expansion significant beyond the immediate project.
According to Mariann, JBS’s global scale means that its activities in Nigeria should be examined in the context of the company’s wider environmental and corporate record.
She also raised concerns about JBS’s climate commitments, saying the company had previously stated an ambition to reach net-zero emissions by 2040 but had subsequently changed its position on that commitment.
Mariann questioned what such a reversal could mean for Nigeria if the company establishes large-scale operations in the country.
“If a company can retract, what does that mean for Nigeria? The possibility of them going back on their commitments, what does that mean for Nigeria?” she asked.
She said the concerns therefore extended beyond one country or one investment and were about how a major global meat-processing company could influence food production, markets and agricultural systems.
Mariann warned that Nigerian farmers could eventually lose their influence over their own food system if large corporations gained excessive control over production, processing, feed and markets.
She said Nigeria should ensure that its farmers remained active participants in the food system rather than becoming dependent on large multinational companies.
“I hope our farmers become spectators in their own food system,” she said.
Both organisations called for the JBS agreement with the Nigerian government to be disclosed, comprehensive environmental and social assessments to be conducted, and relevant ministries and agencies to participate in reviewing the investment.
They also called for stronger oversight to ensure that the proposed investment protects communities, farmers, water resources, biodiversity and the wider Nigerian food system.
The organisations maintained that Nigeria can attract foreign investment while protecting its environment, communities and food sovereignty, provided that major investment decisions are subjected to proper due diligence, transparency, public scrutiny and enforceable safeguards.
In a vox-pop conducted by a NatureNews correspondent around the Federal Secretariat and its environs, six of the seven people interviewed said they had never heard of the proposed JBS investment in Nigeria.
The finding provides a snapshot of limited public awareness surrounding a proposed $2.5 billion investment that civil society organisations say could have implications extending beyond livestock production to farmers, consumers, communities, land, water resources, food markets and Nigeria’s wider food system.
Of the fifteen people approached by NatureNews correspondent, only six said they were aware of the proposed investment, while the others said they had not previously heard about JBS’s plans to expand its operations into Nigeria.
Although the informal vox-pop does not constitute a scientific public opinion survey, the responses highlight the disconnect between the scale of the proposed investment and awareness among members of the public encountered around the Federal Secretariat.
The limited awareness also reinforces the campaigners’ call for greater transparency and public engagement, as they argue that Nigerians should have access to information about major investments capable of affecting their livelihoods, environment and food system.
For the CSOs, the issue is not whether Nigeria should accept foreign investment, but whether such investments are subjected to adequate due diligence and whether the people who may ultimately bear their social, economic and environmental consequences are sufficiently informed and protected.
