Editorial- Loan for Agric mechanization needs professional inputs

There is no doubt that many Nigerians have  applauded the Federal Government (FG)’s announcement on her new agricultural revolution with the approval of $1.2 billion loan for the execution of the agricultural mechanization centres which are to be located in about 632 local government centres and 140 processing centres for the use of farmers and agro processors.

While we agree that the decision of Federal Executive Council (FEC) to approve a memo seeking approval for a loan facility of $1.2 billion to pursue this mechanization project towards reducing drudgery in farming and processing of agricultural produce is apt at this time, we cannot but mention that some grey areas need to be well sorted out, and that is what necessitated this editorial, it is to call the attention of the government especially the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on some things that should be done before any disbursement is made.

The breakdown of the execution of the projects for which the loan facility is meant is still unclear in the sense that the specification of the type of tractors and other equipment to be imported are not yet spelt out to justify the purpose of the loan, and more importantly the level of involvement of the National Centre for Agricultural Mechanization (NCAM) and Nigerian Institute of Agricultural Engineers (NIAE) who set standards and provide professional guidance to get the best out of the deal are very minimal. 

Although there are indications that a representative of NCAM is a member of one of the committees, the question is why would NCAM  who has legal mandates on any agricultural equipment and ‘tractorization’ certification before importation be just a mere member on a committee set up on an issue like this ?, while NIAE was not even involve in any way.

In the light of the above facts, the questions begging for answer are since the professionals were not consulted before the government asked for and got the loan, then how did it arrive at the approved amount?

We may want to echo here that this loan facility may not worth the while if the purpose is to embark on tractors, implements and other equipment importation to only assemble in this country as that strategy in the face of the current Covid-19 pandemic and high unemployment is equivalent to creating jobs in other countries with our own money.

More so, this shows that all the noise on food importation banning is mere noises without substance. We are not saying that as a country we cannot import equipments, what is very important is that those tractors and other equipment we intend to import must have specifications, and they must be the ones NCAM and other research institutes do not have capacity to produce before such importation can be embarked upon just as adaptability to our ecologies must be considered for proper sustainability and judicious spending of the loan facility.  

Why we are calling the attention of the government to all these is that our lesson from Covid- 19 will amount to nothing if our level of sensitiveness to backward integration is not scaled up to internalising our mechanization strategy to commercialization of the locally produced prototypes machines in our many research institutes and NCAM towards checkmating drudgery in food productivity.

We cannot keep importing power tillers and harvesters that are available in the country and at the same time expect to develop our own agricultural model that will be competitive enough for global market. As much as we appreciate this gesture from the government towards mechanization, we also emphasise that the time has come for us as a nation to give deep thought to all these importations, otherwise we will perpetually remain dependant on other countries for items we can produce locally at the expense of the country’s economy that will be suffering due to unending devaluation of our naira.

It will not be out of place for NCAM and even NIAE to be absolutely involved so as to ensure effective utilization of the facility to the sector’s development in a sustainable mechanization of tractor hiring centres being made closer to farmers and processing machines for processors. It must be noted that NCAM as a government agency purposely set up for such issue as this must be allowed to work so as to justify tax payers’ expenses.

Finally, the concept tractor hiring centres in Nigeria is not a new model as several administrations have done it in the past without much impact basically because most of the imported machines are not very adaptable to our ecologies just as full consultation with technical stakeholders are negated for reasons best known to those administrations. This is why it is important that all precautions are taken this time around in order to make a difference from what it used to be.