NIGERIA: HOW WILL AGRICULTURE FARE UNDER A NORTHERN PRESIDENT?

Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, Minister of Agriculture

Minister of Agriculture Dr. Akinwumi Adesina is laying foundations and bringing new and exciting thinking into re-building Nigerian agriculture, but what happens to us when he and his principal Goodluck Jonathan leave?

Nigerian officials have historically maintained a dubious attitude to agricultural development and farmer welfare. What is said at public places do not usually reflect what is practiced as policy. Nigerian bureaucrats choose always to splash huge sums on grandiose projects with high decibels in publicity but with little or no impact on actual production and development in the sector. Farmer welfare comes last in government considerations.

Huge sums are lost, always, on overpriced contracts, the importation of useless equipment or payouts to Multilateral Agencies and Western Consultancy groups who mean no good to the development of Nigerian agriculture. We bear witness to the cesspools that the River Basin Development Authorities (RBDA) and the Agricultural Development Programme (ADP) championed by the Federal Agricultural Coordinating Unit (FACU), Ibadan, then headed by the zealous Professor Francis Idachaba and sponsored by the World Bank turned out to be, legacies of the “Integrated Development” model of Dr. Robert McNamara, president of the World Bank in the Seventies and Eighties.

Abandoned Rice Processing Plant, Omor, Anambra State.

Agricultural development was to be built around farmers in clusters surrounding the major rivers of Nigeria, the rivers themselves offering irrigation water and drainage all year round.

Fine policy that appeared to be. Trouble was that the billions of dollars offered by the World Bank in credit never got to Nigeria. A full sixty percent of the money was expended on the purchase of overpriced equipment and materials that were unsuitable for Nigerian agricultural practices and farming systems. The requirement to purchase Euro- American equipment was written into the fine prints of the contracts with the World Bank which was the first warning for failure. The balance 40% was mostly purloined by Nigerian officials.

The farm extension services personnel recruited for the projects were ill trained, unsupervised and preferred to gallivant around town with the motorbikes bought for the purpose rather than moving into farming communities as trainers of the farmers in the so-called modern practices.

Something shameful will be remembered of President of Nigeria at the time, Alhaji Shehu Shagari (1979-83) and his political Party National Party of Nigeria (NPN). They clutched at the World Bank projects like life rafts to save a failed agricultural policy. The prop slogan “Green Revolution” ended up creating a huge food deficit and a food import monopoly for party big wigs who brawled over import licenses.

The combined result of the World Bank sponsored projects and the food import license bonanza for the NPN mandarins was to effectively destroy the burgeoning growth in the agricultural sector particularly rice cultivation in Nigeria. Rice, sugar, wheat, corn, etc were labeled “scarce commodities” and put on the special import license list granted only to the NPN party moguls who went on to import these products with graft money from pre-bended contracts. A tidy monopoly was thus created for the few and the cost foisted on the rest of the Nation and its farmers. Thereafter, a dire import dependent food policy and a growing debt burden defined the national economy for the next three decades.

It must be remembered that Shehu Shagari and his NPN nurtured Nigeria’s imported rice dependency syndrome which will be near impossible for the Nigerian population to kick.

Shagari’s successors, Buhari, Babangida and Abacha all military despots and lacking imagination and patriotism and owing no obligation to Nigerians having come to Government through coups d’état, sustained Shagari’s practice of licensed food importation, creating a few billionaires in the midst of an increasingly impoverished farming population, a dangerous dependence on foreign, particularly Asian rice and now a devastated agricultural sector, lacking investment, infrastructure and a disorganized market overrun by imports from Asia.

Typical Rice Mill in Nigeria 2013.

Babangida did worse. He fashioned and implemented an ethnic economic agenda banning wheat importation (a crop not cultivated in Nigeria) to effectively put the

Flour Milling and brewing companies out of business, leading to the loss of nearly a million jobs in the milling, brewing, bakery, pastry and ancillary businesses. He then sold the entire country down the river with a dubious harmattan wheat cultivation project in Northern Nigeria paying out unbelievable sums to Hausa/Fulani contractors who after three years could not have a single bushel of wheat to show for all the tonnes of money.

Determined to crush the thriving poultry industry in Southern Nigeria, Babangida placed an absolute ban on corn and Feed imports into Nigeria, again destroying the Feed Milling industry and sending the entire poultry stock based mostly in Southern Nigeria to forced fire sales and closure.

Accusations of an ethnic agenda to destroy southern agricultural investments and force a dependency on Northern food products were mostly ignored by the Babangida Government. Neither could Babangida deny that Southern dominated poultry meat production was being forced to closure in order to open up a monopoly for Northern cow beef business.

What then will happen to southern agriculture under another northern president? Wait please for the next instalment…………….

'DO ME I DO YOU', ANOTHER KIND OF 'WAR' IN NORTH-EASTERN NIGERIA

LOCUST RITUAL

In Nigeria's far North eastern Borno State, another kind of war is on, man is biting back against the desert locust. Swarms of migrating locusts seasonally strip the semi-arid region of its scanty vegetation and crops. But Gambo Ibrahim, 27, a locust hunter, says the people of Borno have found a way of converting the desert locust's assault into an annual banquet. They eat the locusts which they call "desert shrimps".

ONE BAD TURN

"In Pidgin English, we say 'na do me i do you'," says Mr. Ibrahim, who has been hunting locusts for 8 years. I mean, yes, the locusts are eating up our crops, but we are also eating them up and making money to boot.

"So both man and locusts are losers, but i think they are worse off because we are eating them. I guess you could say one bad turn deserves another," he says with a chuckle.

HUNTING

"Since the locusts fly and man cannot fly, then if man must catch them, he has to figure out a way to engage the locusts on familiar territory - ground. "The locusts tend to fly at night because it is really cold (temperatures drop to 9 degrees Celsius) and dark. That's when we go after them.

"You need safety boots like these ones I have on, which are actually my dad's cast-off military issue and they serve the purpose well" Mr Ibrahim says.

LIGHT TRAP

"in addition to the safety boots and a minimum of three layers of clothes - jeans is the best - you also need a very powerful torch" Mr Ibrahim explains. You use it to see your way in the sahara at night. The torch is actually also a trap. "The locusts are attracted to it and they literally just come flying into your face and all you really have to do is just pick them off.

MONEY SPINNER

"We then put them in bags and head for the market. A bag of live locusts fetches between $26 and $30. Locusts are simply money spinners", Mr Ibrahim says. Most of our buyers are women who in turn dress the locusts, fry them and sell them to members of the public.

SNACK

"We buy the locusts from the boys,"says Esther Daniel who sells fried locusts in Maiduguri town. After that we remove their wings so they can't fly", she says.

Agribusiness-Nigeria: INVESTING IN SHRIMP AND PRAWN PRODUCTION

Agribusiness-Nigeria: INVESTING IN SHRIMP AND PRAWN PRODUCTION: Blonde Prawn No 4 It is time now for the Nigerian Authorities to wake up to frightening realities in the marine fishing i...

INVESTING IN SHRIMP AND PRAWN PRODUCTION

Blonde Prawn No 4

It is time now for the Nigerian Authorities to wake up to frightening realities in the marine fishing industry and begin to enforce regulations governing fishing and trawling activities in the Nigerian waters. The fact that hitherto abundant tropical fish like Croakers, tuna, snappers, shrimps and prawns are now imported into Nigeria by the same Asian companies that over-fished our waters to the death should be sign enough that a serious crisis is on the Nigerian plate in the marine fish industry.

Investments and attention should now begin to move towards evolving a homegrown cultivated shrimp industry while placing and enforcing a five-year ban on fishing and shrimping in Nigerian waters to allow the re-population of seriously depleted marine life. A cultivated shrimp industry located along the large network of estuaries and creeks of the nine coastal states will open up a new frontier for business engagement and mass employment for shrimps and prawns, internationally tradeable products of insatiable demand.

Tiger Prawn No 4

Figures emerging from worldwide trade on cultivated prawns is enough to cause the nation to salivate. Since the 1990's the total production of cultivated prawns have grown at a faster rate than any other agricultural product in the world. 

Shrimp

Since then global shrimp and prawns production has increased by 75% from 2.4 million Metric Tonnes to over 4.2 in 2004 with an annual average growth of 8% since then. Aquaculture i.e cultivated or farmed shrimp currently account for approximately 25% of total world production, a worldwide market valued at USD6 billion at the farmgate and over $20 billion in retail.

REVIVING FISH AND SHRIMP TRAWLING IN NIGERIA 1

Before the new millennium  Nigeria was a significant exporter of seafood particularly prawns and shrimps to Europe and North America from the catches made by fish trawlers on the Nigerian coastal waters.This is not so anymore. Nigeria actually imports shrimps and prawns now to meet its domestic demand.

The depletion of the crustaceans from the Nigerian ocean floor did not happen without warning to the Nigerian authorities. About three decades back, Indian and other Asian businessmen invaded the Nigerian waters with trawlers equipped with gadgetry to comb banned juvenile fish and shrimps from the sea bed with absolutely no control or enforcement of regulations from Nigerian Maritime Authority. The companies deployed illegal nets and other equipment to plunder the coastal floor hauling up juvenile fish, sea horses, turtles and tonnes of other marine life along with the shrimps and prawns they craved.

Fish Trawler

The biggest culprit in this immensely lucrative racket was without a doubt Ocean Fisheries Limited, then the backbone of the Churchgate Business Group. In its heydays Ocean Fisheries cavorted with the high and mighty in Government, owned 52 trawlers prowling Nigerian waters and was permitted to be the sole occupant of the Ikorodu Light Terminal Port in Lagos. Ocean Fisheries also operated the largest seafood processing facility at Odogunyan, 20 kilometres Northeast of Ikorodu.
Here Ocean Fisheries employed more than 5000 women and girls to process fish and shrimps for export to France and the United States. These workers were paid less than a dollar a day. Not only was the fish and shrimps caught free in the Nigerian waters without obeying international regulations, Ocean Fisheries would not pay tax to the Nigerian Government even on the seafood exports. Mr. Mike Hartley, an American and then Managing Director of Ocean Fisheries did say that "Nigeria offers the best free lunches". 

NIGERIA YET TO INVEST IN THE $20 BILLION WORLD PRAWNS TRADE

 The Gulf of Guinea lapping nine (9) states of the Nigerian Federation offers best-in-the-world spawning and breeding waters for shrimp and prawns. Lying so close to the equator in the middle of humid Africa and abutting the largest tropical mangrove swampland, temperatures average 30 degrees Centigrade. The warm tropical water and its vast creeks and ravines habour rich and wild undergrowth's that offer natural  spawning ground for crustaceans and these can be easily adapted for both small and industrial scale cultivation.

 

Despite shrimps and prawns literally popping out of the Nigerian coastal waters even up to the middle seventies, the Nigerian coastal communities never developed the culture of shrimp farming inspite of the worldwide booming trade in the product and inspite of the fact that shrimp and prawns cultivation remain one of the most lucrative farming enterprises in a modern world that has become insatiable for its consumption.

 

 A reason for this cultural and investment failure may be the disruptions and pollution of the waters that oil exploration and production caused in the Niger Delta and the fact that there was no encouragement from the Federal Authorities that had become so unhinged and covetous of Petro-dollars from Crude oil.

BIOGAS PLANT FOR AGBOR DELTA STATE

Dateline: Agbor, Delta State, Nigeria. May 6 2013.
Report by Joshua Ndobu

Agbor, the biggest town of Northern Delta State will soon host a novel investment in the area as a bio-energy firm, BioPower Nigeria Limited prepares to invest N7million on a locally fabricated biogas plant in Ime-Obi along the expressway of Agbor town. The firm plans to harness the abundant animal droppings and waste generated from the many poultry and other livestock firms in the neighbourhood. 

Agbor is home to Phed Breeder Farms, one of the largest poultry companies in Nigeria, and numerous other poultry and piggery farms. Agbor also thrives as the biggest meat processing town in Delta and Edo states with large consignment of cattle, goats and rams and including donkeys transported there by heavy laden trucks daily.
Alhaji Abdulkadir Idris one of the cattle traders at the thriving Agbor Secretariat cattle market claims that nearly 100 animals are slaughtered daily at the market, one of three abattoirs in the town. He said that over 300 donkeys are slaughtered in the abattoirs in Agbor daily with innumerable sheep and goats. 

Biogas model design

Mr. Stevens Umore of BioPower and Project Manager of the proposed Biogas facility expressed the confidence that the company can harvest 20 metric tonnes of bio-waste daily in the town and its environs and that will be more than enough to serve their needs to produce 500 cubic metres of biogas and  more than 10 tonnes of bio-fertilizer daily. The biogas will be sold to the public in metal gas bottles at half the prevailing price of bottled LPG gas.

Mr. Umore said that the land for the plant has been acquired and that plant fabrication and installations will commence in September and test-runs of the fabricated plant will start early in January next year.