Why Nigeria may not stop rice importation

There is no indication that serious effort towards increasing rice productivity in Nigeria to checkmate importation is being put in place even at the closure of land borders by the Federal Government (FG). Food Farm News has gathered.

Finding revealed that since the partial closure of land borders by the FG about six months ago, little or no much effort seem to have been put in place as serious commitment to rice acceleration productivity apart from the Anchor Borrower Programme (ABP) of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), which  2018-19 report by the National Agricultural Extension and Research Liaison Services ( NAERLS) revealed as having very few beneficiaries with Bauchi, the highest state recording a little higher than 10,000 farmers while less than 2,000 came from Lagos state. And next to Bauchi state is Adamawa with close to 5,000 farmers.

Food Farm News gathered from 2017 NAERLS report that a total output of 8.02 million metric tons of rice production was recorded which translates to 14.7% increase over 2016 production with land cultivation upscale at 6.9% on an estimated 3.390.3 million hectare that gave  2.4 ton per hectare.

 However the increase in land cultivation may have been attributed to the FG’s initiative on checkmating large importation of rice through promotion of intensive production, but unfortunately this tempo has not been maintained to ensure productivity sustainability according to 2018-2019 report which described rice output as not being increased considerably in all the states of the federation. 

The chart report for 2018-2019 showed a down ward annual production performance as Niger state happened to be the highest with the annual 600 metric tons, while Akwa Ibom had the least figure of almost zero production in rice. It was generally believed that cultivated land and production output did not considerably increase unlike year 2017 that recorded 8.2 metric tons.

Observers believe that the Government’s non total commitment to rice acceleration may not take us any where far from import, stressed that  only unrelenting effort in terms of support and friendly agricultural policies will help to checkmate rice importation from the present shortfall.

The observers who all wanted anonymity pondered on the 2020  lean budget of 1.3% as against 1.5% of 2019, queried that  the allocation for the sector in the new year has contravened the 10%  of the total national budget allocation to Agriculture as being stipulated by the Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP) for the African countries.

They said that year 2020  budget of 138 billion naira for Agriculture was also a strong indication of FG unserious attitude to checkmate food import especially rice that smugglers are ready to do everything to flood the markets saying that enough fund should be made available to increase production with improved inputs along with processing and marketing.

One of them said that ‘’ the policy on rice production has a lot of gaps; CBN is not well positioned to anchor agricultural program. Bank of Agriculture (BOA) is better positioned; the Rice Farmers’ Association of Nigeria (RIFAN) needs to identify genuine farmers who are the input beneficiaries. 

Inputs distribution should come in good time like April to farmers. There should also be monetary attachment to support land preparation and labour to discourage sales and diversion of inputs to raise money ’’

Effort to get the side of the Government from the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) on preparedness to ensure sustainable increased rice production round the year has not yielded any response till the point of this report after over two months of request.

Although some of the officials in the ministry who spoke under anonymous said no activity is ongoing in any of the crop value chains including rice due to lack of fund, but hope the new year would usher in a better implementation strategies  as many major projects have been stopped due to  funding challenges.