Successive Nigerian governments have always taken seriously, the issue of food sustainability for citizens. They have never joked about it. Abundant food supply is fundamental to achieving food security, for any nation. Low agricultural productivity has begotten malnourished, sick and disease-ravaged citizens, across many third world and war-torn countries.
To guarantee a physically-healthy population, Nigerian leaders who have piloted the affairs of the nation, at various periods launched vital agricultural programmes that boosted the growth of the country’s food sector. The National Accelerated Food Production Programme, NAFFP, was the first to birth.
It was a policy-based intervention programme designed in the early 60s, by both the Federal and state governments to accelerate the production of grains like maize, rice, guinea corn, millet, wheat, cassava and cowpeas. The initiators of this programme thought that grains are major staple foods, and if produced in abundance, hunger and related food crisis will be put to check.
This was achieved through the introduction of fertilizers, agrochemicals, good storage and processing facilities, high-yielding facilities and provision of credit outlets to farmers. Several research institutes were mandated to develop improved crop varieties and were made popular through extension agents and use of the mass media.
The second one was Operation Feed the Nation, OFN, launched in 1976. It was aimed at addressing the problem of the rising food crisis, rural urban migration and escalating food import bills. The OFN programme attempted to mobilize the general public to participate actively in agricultural production and ensure self-sufficiency in food production.
Strategies used included subsidized production inputs, increased bank credits to farmers, the establishment of commodity boards and fixing of attractive prices for agricultural produce. To replace the OFN, the civilian administration of Alhaji Shehu Shagari in 1979 initiated the Green Revolution, GR, programme.
This was in an attempt to bring about radical changes in Nigeria’s agricultural production and eliminate food problems of earlier governments. The programme provided a number of incentives to large, medium and small-scale farmers in order to boost their level of production. Research institutes were better organized to make them more useful to the needs of farmers.
We also have the National Agricultural Land Development Authority (NALDA), which initiated a national agricultural land development programme aimed at helping farmers utilize their land resources well, so as to lead to expansion. This was proposed as a means of increasing the food production level of farmers.
It was reported by the Central Bank of Nigeria in 1998 that the agency was able to develop 16,000 hectares of land. It also provided services to farmers so they could plant more than they consumed and sell surpluses at the local markets or export to other countries for foreign exchange earnings. There is also the River Basin Development Authority (RBDA) and Agricultural Development Programmes (ADPs), among several others.
It could be said that Nigeria’s agricultural sector has seen its better days, since the aforementioned programmes became defunct. Diverse challenges and issues are now plaguing a sector that was once-upon-a-time the main driver of the country’s economy. The threat of food insecurity looms large.
A worried President Bola Ahmed Tinubu just recently declared a national emergency on the food sector. Farmers across the country have since stopped visiting their farms, as the fear of terrorists and bandits killing and abducting them is the beginning of wisdom. Yearly, seasonal flooding in Nigeria often destroys thousands farmlands, causing farmers to record low yield.
The federal government is still battling to contain smugglers of food crops into the country. Through Nigeria’s porous borders, heaps of foreign rice bags are illegally brought in for citizens’ consumption at the expense of the more safe, healthy and nutritious local rice. Between May 2022 and 2023, it was gathered that the Nigeria Customs Service, NCS, seized a total of N3.02bn worth of smuggled rice.
Data obtained from the Customs Service, through its National Public Relations Officer, Abdullahi Maiwada, indicated that a total of 206,835 bags of rice were seized within the period under review.
This came as rice farmers decried the incessant cases of smuggling of the commodity, as they urged the NCS and the Federal Government to step up the fight against smugglers. Data from the NCS showed that a total of 1,745 seizures were made by service during the 13-month review period.
The investment by the government in the nation’s agricultural sector is still at its lowest ebb. What the federal government budgeted for various agricultural activities and programmes in the past three budgets leaves much to be desired. The Anchor Borrowers Scheme and other credit-support programmes launched for farmers have been yielding fruits. But more still needs to be done to reposition the agric sector, as an alternative revenue source for the government.
There is the need for the government to forge collaborations with key stakeholders in the agro sector, especially the associations of various crop producers/farmers and processors. Even though it is not the only one existing, the Rice Processors Association of Nigeria, RIPAN, is perhaps one of the agro unions steadfast in advocating sound policy reforms for the growth of the food crops’ sector.
RIPAN, under the leadership of Andy Ekwelem, its Executive Director, for years has been canvassing effective strategies that will help boost rice production in the country, with a view to achieving self-sufficiency in the cultivation of the staple food. It has aggressively lent its support to the anti-smuggling fight of the federal government and law enforcement agencies like the Nigeria Customs, against foreign rice importers.
Though it recently declared a state of emergency on Nigeria’s food sub-sector, the FG should resolve to genuinely work with RIPAN and its allied crops’ associations, with a view to actualizing the goal of the food emergency. If necessary, the FG should put in place the necessary framework that will fast-track the signing of Memorandum of Understandings, MoUs, on food production, harvesting, processing and storage, with RIPAN, and a host of others.
A lot of problems that are hampering our farmers’ productivity can be tackled by the time FG and all the agro bodies collectively proffer practical solutions for them, at conferences, roundtable discussions and workshops involving government officials in the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, agencies under the Ministry and stakeholders in the country’s food sector.
As a matter of fact, the envisioned synergy between the government and farmers/processors’ associations has the potential to evolve robust strategies towards tackling smuggling of foreign foods, low crop yield, abduction and killing of farmers, post-harvest loss, and famine, among others, while also boosting agricultural mechanization and commercial food production, in Nigeria.
The ball is now in the court of the Tinubu administration to reset our ailing agricultural sector. And indeed, Mr. President appears not to be oblivious of that task. Perhaps, that is why he wasted no time in putting the country’s food sector under the surgeon’s knife. Let the malignant tumour that will eventually neutralize food and livestock production be removed, now.
Gift Moses is a Mass Communication student of Nasarawa State University, while Farida Mohammed Umar is a Mass Communication of Nile University
