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| Sani Sagagi |
We made plans, held daily meetings, workshops, seminars, conferences, bazaars, exhibitions, press conferences, foreign trips, study tours and visits, uncountable foreign investor-teams came, we conducted baselines, thematic, commodities and markets studies,
we surveyed & studied everything, and did all the various chain analysis, we are experts in technologies demonstrations & dissemination, and sustainability models, we have formed several formidable technical expert groups, we have 17 mandates agric research institutes, agric universities and colleges, to cap it all we have one of the most vibrant private sector with uncountable seed companies, industrial-scale fertilizer companies, undocumented agro-chemical importers, and then smallholder farmers are always represented by "all farmer" associations, groups & national farmer leaders, we never lack supporting economic & trade policies, many agric import substitution policies & strategies exist, political statements of agric being the cornerstone of life are being made on daily basis, we have existing laws & bills, any new agric intervention will be based on a model, with its supporting linkages, partnerships, PPPs, best practices, lessons & experiences learned - yet we've to pay to find out what is it we have learned, the current trend is for local, international, public & private institutions to compete in bringing out "innovative and new intervention models & approaches", in our history we never lacked presidential initiatives, 7 of transformation agendas, the CBN schemes - particularly the CBN, it so much believes in the trickle-down approach, the number of technical review committees & retreats we have are beyond me, etc.
Is agriculture development in Nigeria synonymous with a workshop, a conference, a seminar? Can these type of activities ever translate into an improved livelihood for farmers? Is there anything out there yet to be tried, really? Yet after over 70 years of organize public support, by all stakeholders, to our nation's agricultural development, our own very dear farmers are still & overwhelmingly very very poor, doing their own thing without the most basic of improved tools & inputs - no improved seeds or seedlings or fingerlings or any type of germplasm, inadequate and adulterated fertilizers and feeds, prevalence of unsafe agro-chemicals & veterinary drugs. This is the farmer's reality. Whatever anybody says or argued, just go out and verify - go to any farming community and discuss man-to-man with any farmer or small producer - the inputs and tools are not adequate & many a times not available to 9 out of 10 smallholder farmers.
Despite these suffocating constraints, the poor farmer's poor quality produce still occupies about 70% of the total food eaten daily in this country. Just imagine what could happen to our GDP if these farmers have access to these basic & improved inputs! Farmers only daydream about mechanization. What of financial access? your guess is as good as mine. I am just coming out from another h2h round of discussions with representatives of 600 farmer groups from 150 different villages and communities.
The struggles they undergo to remain subsistence producers is better read than listened. Honestly, I couldn't help avoid the feeling that 'am now a salesman for hope, alone. The Farmer are tired of and do not need excuses anymore.
They need appropriate and genuine help, not half baked, half thought-out, inoperable concepts and approaches, unworkable formuli or arrangements. We need to appreciate that farmers are breaking their backs, literally sacrificing their own lives to feed us - aren't we no longer afraid of hunger as a nation? Recently, I saw a figure of 1.26% being the "estimated" budget percentage cumulatively allocated as a nation to agriculture for year 2017.
The 1.26% is the average sum of the combine total from Federal, FCT & 36 States budgets. "My people" whatever it is that we have being doing for over 56 years as an independent nation, is not working agric-wise! We can argue, blame anybody & everybody, or whatever, but collectively, we have failed the smallholder farmer in Nigeria.
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