Although preceding the Buhari administration, Nigeria had been faced with the challenge of inability to feed its teeming population. This is in spite of its vast arable land for agriculture and a conducive weather at all seasons.
Indeed, it is a paradox that countries you rarely experience torrential downpour and those in complete deserts have somehow managed to conquer hunger taking advantage of technology, while Nigeria is still struggling in spite of its comparative advantages in this area.
Rarely will anyone doubt the popular assertion that a well fed nation breeds a healthy populace. Let’s face it, Nigeria is rich and blessed. Aside the good weather and arable farmland, the country is equally rich in human resources. Nigeria shouldn’t be categorised among nations that cannot feed themselves.
Food sufficiency is the best form of security; a nation that suffers food shortage is the most vulnerable.
Realising this fact, President Muhammadu Buhari had since his election in 2015 sought to cut foreign imports, particularly agricultural products. This, he believes, will expand Nigeria’s farm sector, which is a key pillar of his economic policy.
The fight against hunger has been given a bite with Thursday’s directive by President Buhari to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) not to avail forex to food and fertiliser importers. Experts have hailed this move as a masterstroke and patriotic one for that matter. In line with his personal value, President Buhari would rather ensure that Nigeria empower more local farmers and use agriculture as a means to solve unemployment among youths.
Nigeria cannot continue to do things the old way and expect a different result. Excessive food and fertiliser import have brought untold pressure on Nigeria’s foreign reserves, battering it, as the CBN spends billions of dollars on costly programmes such as propping up the local naira currency despite double-digit inflation.
Good enough, this directive is coming at a time the Nigerian Customs Service confirmed that four companies were given CBN’s emergency approval to import 262,000 tons of maize into Nigeria due to maize scarcity, which had nearly crippled the poultry sector, after the CBN banned the processing of Forms M for maize/corn importation into the country.
Having food security at the forefront of his administration’s agenda, President Buhari chaired a meeting of the National Food Security Council where he expressed concern over the devastating impact of the recent floods on the progress his administration has made so far in a march towards food security. This is the best way to go, if Nigeria must be self-sufficient in food production.
One of the results of President Buhari’s unflinching commitment to agriculture and its value chain is that many younger Nigerians are picking interest in going back to the farm, and they are taking advantage of the immense opportunities in the agriculture and agri-business sector.
President Buhari has also demonstrated his interest in adopting the new trend in agriculture, which increases yield per hectar.
Good enough, the president is upping the security architecture of the country to protect agricultural investments and boost confidence of our farmers. Additionally, thousands of Argo-Rangers are being deployed to protect agricultural investments.
The challenge of hunger amid immense opportunities in the agric sector in a country like Nigeria makes it difficult to ignore any leader that takes the bull by the horns by prioritising agriculture with the aim of making positive impacts both on the people and the country at large. The good thing about Nigeria is that our leaders don’t have to struggle to bring down rain to wet the land as it is done in some parts of the world. The rains are always here.
We don’t even have to rely on any abstract technology to make the land fertile. Nature has graciously blessed us in that regard. Right now, the hunger gap is visible and what is required to fill it is also available.
It is incontestable that more than 70 per cent of Nigerians lives in rural areas; hence, evolving a micro credit scheme that targets rural farmers will suffice to put the country on a steady road to food sufficiency. The cheerful news is that President Buhari has laid out plans to integrate the rural communities to the formal economy by extending access to credit and inputs to rural farmers, and building feeder roads so that they can transport their farm produce to the nearest market with ease.
Like the Biblical seven years of famine and seven years of abundance in Egypt, when the numerous initiatives and interventions by the Buhari government starts yielding fruits, there will be need to store up excess for the future. In this direction, the government has continued to invest heavily in building strategic grain reserves in recent years.
One thing you can’t take away from President Buhari’s style of leadership is his unparalleled show of compassion. In reaching out to the farmers that have lost their farms to flooding in the current farming season, President Buhari assured them that he was working to ensure the losses from this wet season are replaced in the coming dry planting season.
Since 2015, the Buhari administration has initiated programmes aimed at boosting agribusiness like the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme (ABP), established by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), and launched by the president on November 17, 2015. It is intended to create a linkage between anchor companies involved in the processing and small holder farmers (SHFs) of the required key agricultural commodities.
The ABP provides farm inputs in kind and cash (for farm labour) to small holder farmers to boost production of these commodities. At harvest, the SHF supplies his/her produce to the Agro-processor (Anchor) who pays the cash equivalent to the farmer’s account.
Another initiative is Presidential Fertilizer Initiative (PFI). PFI was launched in December 2016 as the outcome of a partnership between the governments of Nigeria and Morocco, and implemented as a Public-Private Partnership in Nigeria, led by the Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA) and the Fertilizer Producers and Suppliers Association of Nigeria (FEPSAN).
There is also the Youth Farm Lab, an Initiative of the federal ministry of Agriculture in conjunction with Synergos, meant to train Nigerian youths on livestock production and sustainable urban agriculture. It seeks Nigerians between the ages of 18 and 35 years who are passionate about Agriculture and believe in its profitability potentials.
There is also the Presidential Economic Diversification Initiative (PEDI) (PEDI) launched in July 2017, which was created to support the revival of moribund industries, especially in Agro-processing, by facilitating new investments, reducing regulatory bottlenecks and enabling access to credit. PEDI has made breakthroughs in the agribusiness sector in Imo and Ondo states.
Ibrahim is director of Communications and Strategic Planning of the Presidential Support Committee (PSC).
