IAR, NAPRI, NAERLs express impact for agric research

Agric Minister about to give out Federal Government Motorcycle to extension officers from the Northwest zone

·         Minister apologies on poor funding

The four Institutes for agricultural research development under the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) Zaria have presented the achievement of their mandates to food security of Nigeria despite lack of efficient funding and other challenges saying they have positively impacted by making available improved technologies to commercial farming in Nigeria. And the Minister of Agriculture, has consented to their request, and even apologized on behalf of government for inaction especially on funding.

Speaking one after the other, the Executive Directors of these Institutes said there were many improved technologies they have put in the domain of farmers along several crop varieties and animal production across the nation’s ecologies for agricultural development.

The Director, Institute for Agriculture (IAR) Prof. I.U Abubakar stressed that the paucity of fund was a great challenge for research development in Nigeria saying that despite this and many others, the Institute has done so well in the transferring of technologies to farmers even outside the shore of the country far to Ghana thereby making foreign earnings for the country.

Prof. Abubakar pointed that the impact of his Institute was very evident on agricultural development as there were increased productivity, improved food security, improved livelihood with availability of fortified food with vitamins, foreign exchange earnings, saving from reduced import, drudgery reduction and extension services adding that untimely release of fund, staff for critical areas and dilapidated facilities were among other challenges militating against research in Nigeria.

The narrative of the National Animals Production Research Institute (NAPRI) Executive Director, Prof. C.A.M Lakpini was not too far from the above summation, but added that his Institute has a strategic solution to solving herdsmen and farmers’ conflict going by the availability of technologies in his Institute in partnership with other private partners towards making grass available for animals on a 6,000 hectares land already  earmarked for the purposes of grass productivity, and training of the youths for self-employment.

Prof. Lakpini said Nigeria was losing annually 14 billion dollars due to non-harnessing the potential in livestock productivity like country like Agentina adding many lives have been lost to the farmers’ and herdsmen conflict in the recent time.

He pointed that NAPRI in partnership with some private organizations and state government of Oyo and Kano have been able to establish grass plantation that would be used to feed animals in their localities, ranches or colonies models of the Federal government, and the training of the youths would be accessible in this way to job creation thereby urging the FG to harness the potential with political support and funding.

He stated further that the support of the Federal Government would resuscitate a lot of sleeping activities in the Institute, coupled the preservation of the route grazing route, digital tracking of animals and establishment of milk centres adding that funding had been a long challenge for research.

In his presentation, the Executive Director, National Agricultural Extension and Research Liason Services (NAERLs) Prof. M.K Othman said there is need to strengthen the capacity of the ADPs in view of climate change adding that improved funding and recruitment of more personnel would assist the sector towards commercialization as farmers would be well informed with best agronomic practice.

Prof. M.K Othman appealed for federal government financial support that would put the NAERLs’s  national farmers helpline centre in a proactive internet service for the suppose  of helping the farmers to be abreast of better agricultural practice in view of climate change and economic diversification from non-oil sector to commercial agriculture through increased agricultural export.

In response to all these, the Minister of Agriculture, Chief Ogbeh acknowledged his insensitivity to the challenges facing the sector by apologizing to researchers for agricultural neglect including research development that has led to the present deplorable condition, pointed that all hands must be on deck to solve the challenge.

Chief Ogbeh promised a new financial support for research development saying our procurement policy was a serious issue to delaying fund release to the Institutes promising that things would change for better as soon as the senate passed the budget by March as promised.

The full text of the Minister response read thus “  Ahmadu Bello University has been always home since I left more than 46 years ago. I was in Usman Dan-Fodio hall in 1969, went to Dakar to do a year abroad in 1970, came back to round up in 1972 with teaching at the Institute of education for a while, went for my master degree, and came back 1977 to leave for Makurdi as the head, department of languages at the college of Art and Science before I wondered off to this very tricky business of politics.

So it is real joy for me to be here. I cannot thank you enough for your reception, even before then, you have visited last week when i promised to come here this week. I am supposed to have been here before now as I have severally made promises to come. I am sad a bit because I should have started here; having known what has gone wrong here for so many years. Thank you for your reception and staying faithful to your calling as an establishment for all you have done for agricultural impacts. Let me apologize on behalf of the political class whether military or civilian for abandoning agriculture for nearly 30 years.

The problem we are facing today would never have been. We should never have become a nation of importers. How many pound of rice we are bringing in at a time the import bill for rice was five million dollar per day. At a time we have very brilliant philosophy of Structural Adjustment which is all about importation and importation at the cost of 18 billion dollar per annual. Tooth pick, sugar, milk, tomato paste, honey, ice cream powder, cookies and biscuit, and chicken.

Everything we are importing with a ship load until we are broke, and today the present administration is to be blamed for everything we have done in the past. Let me correct one thing here today, nobody can correct a mistake of 30 years in 2yrs. We are happy as we are making progress in agriculture to restore Nigeria back. We cannot do so without you. From the presentations i have seen, am seriously encouraged especially because I am going to need more help from you now than before.

First, our extension services is almost collapse since the end of ADPs World Bank assisted programme. Today we have little or no extension services at the states. As a result we have no capacity to teach our farmers on how to plant essential crops like maize using the best agricultural practices of spacing as being done in other advanced countries like Spain where corn and maize are given 6 inches space apart.

 Here you see maize being planted in a meter apart and the quality of our seeds is so low that it cannot give more than two tons per hectare. We need your help. We are going into Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with your extension and research services to work for us in the next few years. We have ambitious program to work with all extension offices in the local government across the nation, we intend to achieve that in a year or two.

But you will have to help us, as we will look for the fund that will give you means to train the youths in their local languages that will be transferred to training the rural farmers in their different localities on the best agronomics on how to plant, how to harvest, how to dry and all that will be necessary so as to be able to meet the global standard in crop production. We will engage you formally as soon as the resources we are waiting for are formally available. I have heard and seen your presentation, and one topical problem we have today is that of farmers and herdsmen. If we don’t deal with it quickly, we run the risk of damaging the harmony and co-existence of Nigeria as a country.

The killings are getting too many and in an attempt to solve the problem, we have proffered certain solutions. But perhaps we are not sensitive enough to Nigerians fragile sensitivity and suspicious. When we spoke of colonies, we are immediately greeted with reactions as if it was an attempt to siege Nigeria land, and give it to the Fulanis to colonize. Nothing can be far from the truth. The intension is not for Fulani’s or anyone to colonize any territory. It is to provide a level for cattle to graze in peace under control environment so as to prevent the constant conflict between the farmers and the herdsmen.

If there are any suspicions, it is regrettable; we do not intend to seize anybody’s land by force. And to make the point very clear, early last year, we wrote letters to states government asking how many of them are interest in the program. A large number of them replied while some did not, as some said they have no land to give. But sixteen of them said they were interested in such program. Some did not reply, and some said they had no land to lease, but sixteen of them are willing to surrender as much as five hectares in their states.

So government will not force any state to surrender land, will not force any state to do what she does not want to do because the land is under the supervision of the state government. But those who have agreed to give land will work together with us to create a new culture of cattle rearing that is different from what we have today.

We are told it is a culture for herdsmen to be moving animals around, but between you and i as an academics and scientists, we all know the current culture of open grazing is creating a very serious challenge and not too efficient. First it does not allow us to harvest milk, second the yield of our milk is one of the lowest in the world.

Less than a litre per day is not what a cow produce per day, and it can give more. Third, the cows are not well fed and fourthly, cows really don’t like to walk round except we made them and what they are going through is like a torture to the animals. They want to be well fed, good water to drink and good veterinary services as a living animal. If we can create a new environment for cattle, give them what they need and protect them against rustlers, the herdsmen will do more better than what they are doing now by making far more money than what they are doing now.

So we need folders, we need grazing areas; we need water and protection. And you can help us provide them, so please standby because only yesterday, a committee was set up by the Vice President with six members that are state governors discussing the way to resolving the challenge as states that are interested will begin work on the matter as soon as possible within one week. We will engage you to participate, to help us in developing folders and settling these cattle as quickly as possible to reduce this tension.

One problem we are facing is that not all the cattle are indigenous to Nigeria. Some of them walk in from other countries. Only last Friday, there was crisis in Ghana. A court gave a ruling that herdsmen should vacate a land. The herdsmen refused and the army and policemen came to evacuate the cattle, and two soldiers were shot and killed by the herdsmen in the process. Of course the army was moved in as they killed about 200 cows, only God knows how many herdsmen they shot.

A week earlier, it happened in Ivory Coast and also last year in the country, about 37 persons were killed in similar circumstances. So it is indeed a regional crisis that we need to solve. If we succeed in improving breeding cattle here, then the rest of West Africa will learn from us. Kenya had the same problem as far as 1942 and China the same in the past. What they did is what we are asking you to help us do as soon as possible.

We will provide the resources for you to be able to move into the site on contract, just as you will be able to earn some money for your Institute. This is because there is nothing foreigner can do which you cannot do. You know the climate and very familiar with many other challenges relating to livestock than any one. So stand by and get ready for work because the result for hard work is always more work. For those of you in these institutes, and in this centre that have done so much, we will give you more work to do.

There are many things you are doing here that is going to earn us more work and money to create job for the youths and solve the crisis of poverty in Nigeria. Somebody spoke about goat; there is a demand for goat meat in the Middle East to the tune of 120,000 tons carcasses per week.  Can we produce? Also we need milk, and a billion dollar is annually spent to import milk and its products. If we stabilized the cattle productivity with milk extraction and processing to meet the international standard, then we can be talking of meeting our local demand. We talked of bio gas that can be produced from the waste of cattle and I am already doing that in my farm at Kuje, Abuja.

We run a 7KV generator with chicken waste to produce the bio gas. Talking about your machine that has been vandalized thereby hindering the milk preservation; we will need to find out what is wrong with it so as to able to fix it as quickly as possible. Talking about empowerment of the youths, which is one of the most dangerous problems facing Nigeria today. About 16 years ago in Kaduna, I gave a warning in a lecture titled “North and the future of Nigeria” that there will be violence wearing the face of religion. People said I was duly being academic.

 I said that the violence is going to come from anger, alienation and hopeless among the youths and it was going to be violent on a scale we have never seen. Few people saw my point, but the majority said I was being unduly intellectual, but what we have now is Boko Haram, and we don’t want another one. Right now the degree of kidnapping and armed robbery in the North being engineered by the young Northerners who say  managing business the way their parents did is not a better business when compared to kidnap of people. This is a threat to our existence as it is increasing violence and unemployment coupled lack of hope among our youths.

So wrap up your program for youth training, as you will receive many more of them. Youths do not need to have university degree before they can earn a living anymore. We can train them to be useful to start earning for a living and have more fame. One wonderful thing about agriculture is that it sobers the human character and gives mind discipline because it ties one down to lecture. I grow up following my father to the farm from age five, and I have never forgotten agriculture as a farmer. I do a bit of poultry, I have hatchery that does a million day old chick per week.

I keep some cattle, and the only processor of castor oil factory in the whole of continent of Africa. This is why we will like to engage you in helping us to improve on the seeds of castor in Nigeria because its oil yield is a bit low. We have capacity of 15,000 tons of seeds per annual, and we are not getting enough seeds towards our intension target to engage 15,000 farmers on one hectare each to give us castor seed to produce castor oil that will be sold to the power companies that are making transformers. It is a good business. We also produce cashew nut and we have just returned from Vietnam, the largest processor of cashew nut in the world. Africa produces the raw nuts and exports them to Vietnam as she is making 3.4 billion dollar per annual being only a quarter of what we could have earned if we had been roasting the cashew by ourselves.

But as we go forward, there is a lot of what you need to do for us. We need to export more, and we are already doing well as Nigerian export is up with 55% in the last one year. Tin can Island has recorded increase of 150% in agro export in the last one year. We have reduced rice importation by 95% in the last one year. But we still have work to do as Chika Brown chicken of National Animal Production Research Institute (NAPRI) must be brought alive, a very drought resistant product and we need to know what you need to get you back on track. Some mention hibiscus flower called “sobo”as about 35 million dollar worth of it was exported to Mexico, but we need to improve on the quality and its drying.

I will charge you here to come up with dryer made with stainless steel to double production and export because I saw sobo extraction in Vietnam being converted to tea just as the demand for Shea butter, banana and coconut are very high. Also pawpaw and pineapple demand are high with cocoa. But we noticed cocoa production position of Nigeria has dropped to number seven in the list of producing nation.

This is an embrassment. I am hearing and excited about your micro finance bank. Your 100% loan recovery excited me. Please do me a summary report of what you have done for onward presentation to Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) for a demand. Actually the Governor was in my office two days ago and we discussed about how credit would be given to farmers at a single digit rate of five percent on agriculture.

The CBN see it logical because worldwide, it is only in Nigeria that interest rate is 9, 11, 25, 31% etc, otherwise averagely it is not more than 3.5% worldwide. We cannot do it differently and hope to get a better result. So if I had summary of what you need, I shall lobby for your access to fund so as to be able to give more loans to farmers for production and repayment in six months.

Let me round up by congratulating you for what you have all done so far, your threshers, dryer , harvesters are going to be needed in larger quantity because when the cattle are now put together in ranches, colonies or center, we will need to harvest all our agro waste and process them. I was in India two months ago, there was a book written by an Indian Doctor called “I too have a dream” by Dr. Kuria who used rice stalks as basic feed for cattle. He used these machines to cut down the stalks be it maize, millet and even cassava leaves. He was the father of India milk revolution.

We cannot afford to keep importing because we have no money again. We need to cut down and increase local production. By importing we are exporting our dollars by bring in goods along with poverty, unemployment and hunger.

Champagne and red wine are not our priority now. If they were, then we should produce them here. Our priority is food, machineries, medicines and intellectual property. But as long as we are hungry and angry, none of these things are achievable. So I am very proud of you because you are already dealing with issues that touch our lives while my advice for you is to try harder as we really regret what happened last year about the budget.

 The budget was signed on the 12^th of June, procurement made six pieces of adverts, two months of tender and we started receiving money November. So you had nothing to repair your machines, but we hope it does not happen this year. The procurement law caused the delay in the release of fund last year and that was while you cannot get fund early enough to get many of machines repaired. We hope it will not happen again this year as the Senate has promised to finish the budget by the end of March.

 We hope so because when such delay happens, we cannot do anything. But some of these reforms have tended to deform growth in Nigeria. This kind of reform has ruined education in Nigeria. For example we cancelled primary school teachers’ training school and wondered into all kinds of reforms.

But today a secondary school leaver cannot write a letter because the foundation from the primary school has been totally destroyed. How can you teach if you were not trained? Teachers’ training colleges were abolished and this has affected our development and growth including your research institutes. We could not vote money to you because we have no access to the money and the whole year passed without anything, and agriculture is seasonal. If what you must do in January is not done, you cannot catch up with it. So we apologize as we are finding ways to improve on this.

Let me round up by asking if your extension services can help us out in training extension officers to spread out across the country. Let me also see how we can help you by funding your radio and television programme to reach out to more farmers. I cannot make any concrete promises now, but I will tell you that something would be sourced. Let me thank you for receiving us. Like I said the most powerful legislator in the world is stomach. And if our population is getting to 450 million in 2050, which is over 25% of humanity, then if we cannot eat well, then welcome to Armageddon. May God forbid. Thank you all”.