The recent revelation by agric economists that if Nigeria had maintained its export growth rate in the agriculture industry from 1961 till 2011 it would have made an additional N2 trillion instead of far less than N300 billion, should be food-for- thought for our policy makers. Back then, exports from cocoa, cotton, groundnut, cow hide, palm oil and nuts as well as rubber accounted for about 68 percent Gross Domestic Product(GDP) while engaging over 70 percent of the rural populace. In fact, about 80 percent of our export earnings came from the afore-listed.
Similarly, in that golden era of boom in the agriculture sector, Nigeria was responsible for over 60 percent of the global supply of palm oil, 35 percent of groundnut and 25 percent of cocoa. But by 1975 the country had become a net importer of food, no thanks to the oil boom era of the ‘70s. And of course, the wrong shift of government’s policy thrust from that sector to crude oil exploitation and export.
It is little surprising therefore, that as at August 2016 massive importation of food, especially, rice, wheat, sugar and fish, set the nation’s economy back by a whopping N1 trillion. The Executive Secretary, Agricultural Research Council of Nigeria (ARCN), Prof. Baba Abubakar added that Nigerian farmers have limited capacity and use techniques that adversely affect soil fertility, water and biodiversity. Human-induced climate change worsens the matter.
Indeed, according to the former Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Adewunmi Adesina, the food import bill between 2007 and 2010 stood at N98 trillion, with over N635 billion spent on importing wheat, N217 billion on sugar and N97 billion on fish. Specifically, by 2008, at the heat of the global economic meltdown, Nigeria had become one of the world’s leading importers of fish and wheat. By 2011, the agric sector, which used to be the major contributor to the GDP was growing at a dismal rate of 1.5 percent compared to 6.3 for the mining sector, 4.0 percent for the energy sector and 4.9 percent for services sector.
The truth of the matter therefore, is that successive administrations have always treated the critical issue of food security and sufficiency in fits and starts. It was only when revenue from the oil sector started experiencing hiccups in the ’80s that the government of Alhaji Shehu Shagari came up with Operation Feed the Nation. His predecessor, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, then a military Head of State, had introduced Green Revolution; Directorate of Food Roads and Rural Infrastructure (DFFRI) came under the IBB military regime. So, what is the way forward to increase production for export?
With Nigeria leading the world in the production of cassava, yam, cowpea and most of the staple foods in the Sub-Sahara region, efforts on food production must be boosted to impact positively on the rural farmers who should be driving the process. But we must go a step further, not only to increase food production but to put in place mechanisms that would add value to the raw food materials to get the intermediate products which sell at higher prices in the international market.
In essence, we need to enhance the nation’s capacity at:
1. Opening up the rural areas for mechanized farming.
2. Enlightening the rural farmers on food preservation techniques.
3. Providing rural farmers with stable infrastructure-good access roads, constant electric power to facilitate small and medium scale processing and the transportation of their farm produce to the urban centres.
4. Making the Agric Extension Services more viable by equipping the officials to teach the farmers the use of appropriate high-yielding, early- maturing, and disease-resistant hybrid seedlings in addition to the relevant pesticides to reduce post-harvest loss of produce.
5. Forming the rural farmers into cooperative societies that would benefit from soft loans courtesy of Bank of Industry (BoI) at single digit interest rate.
6. Shifting the focus of the farmers back to the use of organic farming methods that are more environmentally-friendly.
7. Linking the rural farmers to market opportunities not only at the food processing companies in the cities but outside our shores where their farm produce could earn much more revenue.
8. Forming a close linkage between the agric cooperative societies, NACCIMA and the Export Promotion Council (EPC).
With all these in place, the next step would be to process the raw materials to the intermediate products at international standards. For instance, from cassava tubers we will get starch, pellets, alcohol and chips, the last of which has got market in China and other South-East Asian countries. From cashew fruit we will get oil and nuts. From the oil palm we will get palm oil, nuts and palm wine. From sesame seed, we could get sesame oil which experts say is costlier than crude oil per litre. The plant grows well in the Middle Belt states of Nassarawa, Kogi, Benue and Plateau. We should also be producing processed cocoa beans that Europe and the United States are waiting for.
This has become economically expedient because foreigners are now capitalising on our lack of processing know- how or application to make more money from our ignorance. Back in 2010 an entrepreneur informed me that most of the raw cocoa, sesame seed, cashew nuts now fill the warehouses of some foreign companies. These are shipped to their parent nations where they are processed and exported back to us as processed foods, just like our crude oil which we buy at exorbitant costs.
It has also become obvious that we need to increase our human capacity building in the areas of food technology, agric engineering and marketing if we want to unleash the immense potentials still waiting to be tapped from our raw agric products. So also is the need to get Nigerian technicians fabricating or producing most of the machines we would be using for food processing and preservation.
In fact, nothing stops the legislator from making laws that would promote the local production of most of the equipment we import. Or, let the plants be established here to increase employment generation. Furthermore, the Federal Government must muster the political will to ban the importation of all items that could be produced locally to stimulate economic growth.
If Nigeria could be a net exporter of cocoa, cotton, rubber, palm oil and groundnut back in the sixties, we should be doing much more now. Agriculture is renewable but oil is not. Besides, the fact that Nigerian oil wells are drying up while raw food materials are now being sourced internationally for bio-fuel in addition to processing and feeding, the wise choice is to divest more money, energy and time to the sector.
Warning! Nigerians should be wary of some foreigners currently traversing the African continent in search of arable land to acquire for massive food production as sources of bio-fuel. We should not give away for pittance what we have, all in the name of foreign direct investment, free trade and all the economic jargon that is nothing better than second slavery.
One other reason why we must invest more in the agriculture sector is that of Nigeria’s fast-growing population. Now at 167 million, it is projected to rise to 250 million by 2025.And as rightly noted by Alhaji Alikjo Dangote, Chairman of Dangote Group and Africa’s richest man, “whether we like it or not, we must face agriculture; not only to sell and make money but to feed the nation. That is where the nation’s wealth and job opportunities lie.” He should know, having capitalised on this secret to shift from import to the local processing of rice, flour, salt and sugar.
Ayo Oyoze Baje
