‘When we import rice, maize and sugar, we are basically creating jobs in other countries …’

President, International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) Chief Kanayo Nwanze

President, International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) Chief Kanayo Nwanze on the Channel TV Sunrise programme speaks on many issues affecting agricultural development in Africa and Nigeria saying policy inconsistency, dilapidated infrastructures and many others are major cause of the unemployment challenges.Excerpts…

What are the essentials for agric transformations…?

Agricultural transformation can go hand in hand with structural transformation. You have to have infrastructure, you have to have a clear governance, you have to have rule of law and all others. Change does not happen by itself, but it must be made to happen as we are part of the change. It has to be a proactive effort of the leaders and the followers. 

Good leadership also depends on good followership and vice visa, when you all have a national pride of being a Nigerian of African. But today we have gone away from where we are 40-50 years ago. We have to regain our dignity as a people; we have to be proud of being Nigerians. But with the way we have squandered our wealth. Could you imagine how much we earn in the oil industry in the last one decade or two? We squandered it, let us be honest. 

Oil has made people poorer. A handful of people are made rich. Nigeria, Angola, Gabon due to corrupt individuals. Also we need to know that government need support of the people. Would you believe in the 60s-70s, no African nation including ours was net importer of food. These are the years we have pyramid of groundnut, cotton, rice, Abakaliki rice etc. At this period, India was described as a hopeless place. There was a time Africa was described was economic hope to the rest of the World. I can say in this period, India was described as a hopeless states likewise as Brazil was depending on food aids. A million Chinese die out of starvation. South Korea has just come out of the wood which was supported by some African countries. Forty years later, these countries are now investors and donors to Africa, China, Brazil, India, South Korea, and aid donors to us. What went wrong is that we discovered oil.

How do we step back to strengthen all these?

You see we have leaders those days who had vision like the Nkrumah of Ghana. We never take advantage of what nature has given us. No other nations of the world are as rich as us, but we let ourselves to be lured into luxury of oil as we squandered billions of dollars annually on food import as we are just realizing that few people have made themselves richer while the larger population is going poorer and poorer.

We have so much but yet this is where we are?                                                                                                               

Yes, we squandered our wealth. Let us get back to reality, let us re-focus in building a nation where people are proud to be a Nigerian. We have all the resources like land, mineral wealth, land, people, sunshine, water to be wealthier gentlemen, but yet we are poor because we do not properly harness the opportunity in this oil to enrich our nation just like in many other resources. It is easy to criticize, but nobody is perfect as if Africa wanted to become what she supposed to be, then our orientation must change. 

Our value system also has to change. The pursuit for individualism consumption attitude has to change. This is just the fact. Do you think that Europe just overnight become what they are today? Or the United states of America become what they are in one day. It took generations to take them where they are today. We have no reason to complain as we are not a poor nation. We have made ourselves poor. Nature has given us all we need to be rich. We have the wealth in terms of agricultural as 50% of our land is cultivable, and yet we still spend six billion dollar every year importing food while Africa spends five billion and which is likely to increase to hundred billion dollar by 2015 importing food. You realized when we import rice, maize and sugar, we are basically creating jobs in other countries to grow the food we can produce by ourselves, and yet we say we have youth population that has no job.
 

There must be remedy to all these as many people are hungry, without food, and agriculture is the key to unlock all these potential. Sadly the rural areas do not have what it takes to feed the nation in terms of infrastructure.

How do we bring back this into our rural communities and make them realize they are the one that owns the key while government should not neglect them?

IFAD project has always been supporting government programmes. The essential impact has to come from the government and private sectors. They are the key and this is why the policy environmentally must be conducive to attract both local and international private sector. The current environment is disincentive because of disability in the country, our currency is almost worthless as N500 exchange for a dollar, and which was just half of that a year ago. 

We have to create an environment that is stable that will attract investors both domestic and foreign. I have given you an example of rural farming programme, I mean (RUFIN), this project is a community- based approach programme which was mostly in the Niger Delta states. This programme basically supported Nigerian youth as eighty something million people benefitted from this project creating almost two million jobs in a year during the operating period. 

The project created a development centres for our young people on the job training on how to do a successful agricultural business. The one I think we have to look at with strong potential because it is working closely with the Ministry of Agriculture is the value chain programme on rice and cassava. These are major crops of Nigeria, and creating the market linkages is very important so as to encourage farmers to increasing their production. But if there is no market outlet and again on the other hand we import cheaper products from somewhere, all these are disincentives to farmers in terms of selling their produce. So we have to look at policy that support farmers and as well encourage them to produce more with market availability. This is where the infrastructure comes into this work. 

One thing for a farmer to double his cassava production where there is no road for him to transport his cassava to the market or where there is no incentive to a buyer who wants to buy in bulk. But in farmers’ organization, by going into cooperative, they are able to have better bargaining power and better influence in local policies that will ensure they have basic infrastructure. I think the past and the present administration are making effort to ensure that farmers have access to fertilizer. Prior the former agric Minister, Dr. Adesina, farmers in Nigeria had no access to fertilizer, and he in 90 days got it fixed as few powerful people are the ones monopolizing the input. 

Today farmers have access to 90% of fertilizer. When you look at the statistics of agriculture and its potential in Africa, basically we are still in the 19^th century when it comes to agricultural system. Do you expect the young men who just finished from the college to go farming with cutlass and hoe? He wants to have access to modern techniques. Our farmers are still using hoes as average farmer in Africa is 60 years old. And come to think about it, 60% of our population is between 15-25 years, and who is going to replace our farmers today. 

What is the average use of fertilizer by our farmers?

 Our farmers are using less than 12kg per hectare while in East Asia, it is about 300kg per hectare. How many of our farmers do irrigation farming? We are not maximizing the basic agricultural technologies of improved seeds. What policy do we have in place that creates incentives for farmers to invest to buying more improved seeds of high breeds, and to apply more fertilizer and to utilize irrigation for farming when rain fails. Would they have market to sell? Or are you going to depress their market by importing products? Do we have more business men and women who are more interested in importing food into Africa and Nigeria the ones we grow locally? Our old value system has to change. No nation was able to transform itself without first transforming her agricultural sector. And if you want to go into agro processing and industry, you have to ensure surplus from your agricultural sector.

I will like us to close on several other issues that have to do with remedies as you have highlighted the problem and given insight into what can be done, and that is what I want us to speak more about just as you have highlighted that the present government is taking up the continuation of the programmes from where Dr. Adesina stopped. But many Nigerians would love to see some speed and action which is different from this slow motion being a nation in recession. What is your take on the issue of slow motion? How can we put speed into action just to see what happens in the fertilizer to farmers, what can be done in some few weeks?

In few weeks’ time, I think definitely our Minister, Chief Audu Ogbeh is making a progress. I have just referred to his Green Alternative Policy on Agriculture which looks at creating access for the rural population who largely are farmers which is the continuation of Agricultural Transformation. I can see a continuity there, but I also understand that it may take years and decades to build a nation while it only takes days to destroy as well. If you understand what I mean, yes we can make it slowly actually, but it is a partnership between the government and the population. 

Government alone cannot build a nation; we have to ask ourselves what we are doing to help our government in her policies to ensuring there is success. As people we all have our roles to play, as people are part of the government. The media are  key because you have the voice of the people. We can identify any bankable project to the government with support to see it through. But if government is not delivering, we can now hold them accountable. 

There has to be an accountability frame work. This is what the other nation do to develop, for example, let us take a simple case of an African nation like Rwanda. For thirty years, there was genocide in the country, but by building all over from the scratch, the nation is now one of the fast growing economies in the continent. Rwanda is 90% rural population as the Government of the country puts agriculture at the front burner of the economy with investment in Information Technology. All this is possible because of the partnership between the government and the people.

Can this Information Technology be done with our farmers in the rural area?

That is why I gave the example, I did not tell from the text book, but I am saying it from what I have seen. I have travelled the world including Africa, Asia, and Latin America while I stay in Europe. I have seen countries standing to improve themselves as farmer’s organizations go into cooperatives supplying food item to big food processing companies and other countries. For example farmers in India were supplying spices and vegetables to Texco or farmers from Waltermalat selling to Wal-Mart.