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Confusion has continued to trail the administration of Muhammadu Buhari as both the President and Minister of Information have given out different dates for the country’s attainment of rice sufficiency.
The President had said during his New Year speech to Nigerians that the country will end the importation of rice in 2018 and be self-sufficient in rice production, while Lai Mohammed, minister of information recently said that Nigeria will become self-sufficient in rice production by 2020.
During the New Year speech, the President made a promise that importation of rice will be completely stopped in 2018 to encourage local production and to fully diversify the economy through agriculture.
“Rice imports will stop this year. Local rice, fresher and more nutritious will be on our dishes from now on,” President Buhari said.
However this statement is conflicting with that Lai Muhammed’s statement on Easter Monday at a press briefing in Lagos.
“Nigeria will achieve self-sufficiency in rice production by 2020 with sustained implementation of the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme,” Muhammed said.
Industry players have attributed their disparity to the statistics that each of them had at that time of their speeches.
“I think two of them are looking at the same coin but from different sides. The president is looking at the statistics he had which gives an impression that we are not importing much rice into the country anymore, so you can simply say we can stop importing rice this year but Lai Muhammad knows that there is still a lot of smuggling based on the statistics that he has,” Emmanuel Ijewere, vice president of the Nigerian AgriBusiness Group (NABG) said in a phone interview with BusinessDay
According to recent data, importation of rice into Nigeria dropped drastically but other neighbouring countries such as Benin, Cameroun, Niger and others have seen their parboiled rice imports increasing.
Ironically, these countries mostly consume white rice (another variant of the staple), whereas they import more parboiled rice which in consideration of their population can last them for a decade, yet their imports continue to rise yearly.
Data provided to BusinessDay by a source preferring anonymity, showed that Benin republic with an estimated population of 11 million people, imported 609,893 metric tonnes of parboiled rice from India in 2017, while Niger, with an estimated population of 21 million people, imported 98,179 metric tonnes, and curiously, Nigeria, with a population of 186 million imported 8,726 metric tonnes.
Also, data by the Thai Rice Exporters Association shows that Benin Republic’s imports from Thailand from January to November 2017 stood at 1.64 million metric tonnes, a 32 percent increase from 1.24 million metric tonnes within the same period in 2016, and an increment of 104.45 percent from 805,765 metric tonnes exported to Benin republic in 2015. Cameroun also imported 663, 667 metric tonnes of parboiled rice from Thailand between January and November 2017, a 47.64 percent increase from 449, 513 within the same period in 2016, and 449, 297 metric tonnes in 2015.
“Rice has been on technical ban before,” said Tunji Owoeye, managing director, Elephant Group Plc, who was previously the chairman of Nigeria’s rice importers association.
“This is not new and has been part of the medium term plan. And in any case, since the inauguration of this administration, there haven’t been rice imports.”
This seems to be normal trend as in the past administration as the Goodluck Jonathan government vowed to end importation of rice before the end of his tenure in 2015, saying the attainment of self-sufficiency in rice production by Nigeria was a top priority of his administration.
“It is pure politics. The same thing that happened during Jonathan administration is what is happening now. They have their political reasons (rice cartels).If the present administration implements this policy, their opponents from other political parties may get the money that the rice cartels are offering,” Africanfarmer Mogaji, CEO, X-Ray Farms, said.
Bunmi Bailey
