The Insight by Lateef Adewole
There is a saying in Yorubaland that “tí ebi bá kúrò nínú ìsé, ìsé bù se” (when hunger has been taken out of poverty, poverty has ended). Although, it has been modified to: “….. ìsé sé péré” (meaning that …poverty is reduced… not eradicated, as in the initial saying). The point of this is that, for human existence and survival, food takes a critical part of it. After the need for air that human beings breathe, from where we get oxygen that is required for our bodily organs to function and be alive, the next is food. Every other need has alternative except food. In any situation, “man must chop”.
This Monday, 16th of October, 2023, marked another occasion of the day that the United Nations, Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), earmarked for creating awareness about hunger and the need for food as an important need of humans. That date was chosen in 1979. The day is referred to as World Food Day. The theme for this year is: “World Food Day: Water is life, water is food – Leave No One Behind.”
Many might wonder why water should take the centre stage in this year’s theme when we are talking of food’s day. Can there be food without water? In the first instance, no food can be produced without water. All foods require water directly or indirectly. Also, like it is said that “water is life”. It has been proven that human beings can survive longer on water without eating than eating without water, hence the essence of this year’s theme. It is aimed at raising the global awareness about how important it is to manage water wisely, given the speed at which global population increases, with attendant economic development activities, rural development and urbanisation, and climate change that followed. All these have become threats to availability of water for humanity.
It is ironic that while the earth is made up of 71% water, we are still talking about lack of adequate water. Why? It is because the larger part of all these waters are not usable (consumable) for human purposes. Only 2.5% of all these is fresh water that can be used for drinking, agricultural purposes and industrial usages. Among these demands, agriculture alone accounts for 72% of fresh water withdrawal.
The continous decline in the fresh water availability and quality is due to poor use and management, over-extraction, pollution and climate change. Water is not an infinite resource. It is limited, hence, the competitive demands. About 2.4 billion people have challenge accessing usable water globally. Over 600 million people, who partially depend on aquatic food systems, are affected on daily basis.
Like in Nigeria, it is funny that most riverine areas have no fresh water that is suitable for human consumption. People who live on top of water, surrounded by water, but have no water to drink, cook, farm. This is the reality of millions of Nigerians, like in other parts of other world. I watched a video documentary some years ago about what some rural communities in Kwara state were experiencing with regards to water. They had to be digging any muddy area to extract very dirty water.
There was another place, I can’t recollect precisely now, where water is “recycled”. This is not in that sense of the “advanced recycling”. What happened there was that, when people bath, they do so inside a big bowl to collect the water. This water is later used to wash clothes and for other purposes. There are areas with worse situations than described above. It will be incomprehensible for anyone who has had water available to them at all time. These water difficulties are not peculiar to rural communities alone.
In Lagos, while the highbrow areas on the highland in Lekki- Ajah axis suffer for same water, despite the opulence, because of the salty nature of the underground water in many areas that made sinking boreholes useless, many low-cost areas have their problems too. With the collapse of public water system, people living in many areas buy water from borehole owners or water truck pushers called “mairuwa”. That is in Lagos, the most cosmopolitan city in Nigeria. This is to show that water problem is not about poverty alone. Many Lagosians buy the water they drink (sachet or bottle water). Many do not don’t drink from their boreholes. Same as in many cities across Nigeria.
All these underscore the importance of water and reason why governments at all levels should pay more attention to providing usable, portable water, through public water supply system, for the people. If the government plans to combat hunger specifically, and poverty in general, one place they can start is looking into the water problems.
As part of the Renewed Hope agenda of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, poverty eradication is one. There is plan to tackle this in multi-dimensional ways. Food security is one. How can this be attained? The government is redirecting its focus and efforts on agriculture. Tinubu’s government has been nicknamed “agbado and cassava” government. This was due to his emphasis on these two crops during his campaign. He believes that we have reasonable advantages in cultivating them to produce the foods that we eat, raw materials for industrialisation and also earn forex through export. True to his promises, certain amounts were approved for their cultivation in the recent palliative programmes. This is a good development.
However, like many other problems in Nigeria, throwing money at problems won’t get them solved. Not with the level that our society has degenerated because of corruption. We are all witnessing revelations about how the past Anchor Borrowers Programme for rice farmers was abused and trillions of Naira mismanaged. With the level of interventions of the CBN under Godwin Emefiele, through the programme, and some others, Nigeria was expected to have become self-sufficient in rice production by now, and possibly, a net exporter, which they actually claimed to have attained. But, where is the rice?
They were so brazen in their fraudulent act that they even did “Rice Pyramid Exhibition” in Abuja, in January 2022. The moment I saw that charade, I knew it was fraud. All these are coming into the open now with the price of rice gone through the roof at almost N50,000. for a 50kg bag. That is outrageous. This was something we bought about N7000. just eight years ago. Which way Nigeria?
This situation has further pushed more Nigerians into poverty and difficulties of hunger. It is understandable that the current administration is trying to retool and re-engineer the country, but how soon should we expect results? Sincerely, people are hungry. With the skyrocketing in cost of living, basic goods needed for daily survival are getting out of reach of the ordinary Nigerians. A hungry man is an angry man. Governments at all levels must act expeditiously to address this, in short term, while working on the medium and long terms.
In the immediate, what should government do? In as much as opening up our borders can be seen as having the tendency to affect local manufacturing, there is need to do proper evaluation and balancing of the pros and cons of the continuous closure. These borders have been closed for over four years now. Has it achieved its aims? At that time in 2019 when the borders were shut by Buhari administration, we were told it was to curb crimes by reducing the proliferation of small arms smuggled through the borders. But, was that achieved? Capital no!
In fact, the insecurities escalated further after then, till the end of that administration, and they are still being battled by the current one. So, what was needed to tackle the insecurities were more than just border closure but political will of the leadership of the country at the time. Did we see that? I can say no to that again. Therefore, it was just an exercise in futility.
Another reason was to prevent cross-border smuggling of Nigeria petrol to neighbouring countries, which led to the criminally outrageous subsidy payments on reported daily consumptions. Yet, after the border closure, the NNPC was still reporting between 65 and 100 million litres as our daily petrol consumption, up to May 29 this year, before subsidy was removed. So, it is either the smuggling continued unhindrered or some people were simply reporting the figures they liked and stealing the subsidy money all these years.
The encouragement and protection of local production of goods, especially farm produce which rice farming topped, was another excuse for the closure. Were there substantial increment in local production due to that? I just discussed that rice issue up there. So, of what use has the border closure for the past four years been? It simply made life difficult for many genuine businesses, whose operations involve transnational movements of goods and services.
Therefore, it is time for government to consider reopening the borders fully. What is critical is for the government agencies engaged to man the borders to live up to their responsibilities, to prevent smuggling. Food items, which we do not produce here already or which we do not have sufficient capacities to meet local demands, should be allowed into the country legally. Afterall, most of them are being smuggled into the country. This made their prices to be very high while Nigeria loses duties that would have been collected on them. This will stop or be drastically reduced. The prices of these foods will then go down reasonably.
On the medium and long term, the interests in boosting agricultural activities and agribusinesses should be preceded by solving the prevalent insecurities in most of our rural and farming communities. The boko haram and ISWAP terrorists, the bandits, killer Fulani herdsmen, kidnappers and other notorious criminals operating in the northern region have drastically affected farming and agricultural activities across the northern states. They have permeated down south too. They kill, kidnap for ransom, burn down communities and farmlands, confiscate lands and take them over.
Therefore, many farmers have abandoned their farms and even ancestral homes due to these fears. What amount of money pumped into such venture will solve the problems if the security concerns are not addressed? Government should handle this first.
Then, financing agriculture for the current practices of peasant farming and labour-intensive low capacity ones to be upgraded to mechanised farming, is necessary. In the USA, just about 1% of the population engage in agriculture that feed the nation and have excess for export. This is made possible by advanced mechanised farming and highly industrialised agribusinesses. This should be the direction which government should face.
There is need to provide the enabling environment for industries in the agricultural value chain to be established. It amounts to collosal waste to harvest farm produce and send them for export in raw forms. This does not make adequate return for value of the farming efforts. Worse still, we sometimes, import back into the country, finished products obtained from such raw farm produce. Starch is now being imported when we have one of the best soil for cassava plantation. We import custard but export dried maize. Isn’t that senseless?
So, government need to incentivise investments, both local and foreign direct, in agricultural value chain. Establishment of farm settlements, which I read as part of the plans of this administration, is a welcome development. Also, the planned establishment of commodity board has become imperative. The sweat of farmers should be turned to “gold”. When there is assurance to all farmers that their goods will be purchased and at profitable rates, as guaranteed by government through the commodity board, existing farmers will be encouraged to remain and expand, while many new people will enter into the business too.
There is need for overall review of our school curriculum as related to agriculture. “A country that makes the study of English Language compulsory but Agriculture optional, will have her citizens speak good English on empty stomach”. I read this statement somewhere. When we were young, most of us were involved in farming, whether at home or in schools, or both. All students were trained in farming. Songs were composed to eulogise farming. One of such was “ise agbe, ise ile wa, eni ko sise, o ma j’ale….” (farming is our indigenous vocation, whoever doesn’t work, will become a thief…).
That was a time when public schools were very standard, before the adulteration of our educational system by so many private schools, as we have now. This was ingrained in our psyche. The old regional governments led by our founding fathers relied on agriculture as the source of internally generated revenues for the regions and nation. Many monuments were built, many strides were achieved, with agric money. All these continued until the petrol-dollar boom. It destroyed everything and set the country backward, despite the humongous revenues generated from it in the last six decades.
While I am not saying we should return to that era, we can borrow from the focus, commitment and dedication of such time. There is need for our education to be tailored to our needs. We have some of the best brains globally. We have many scholars in various fields. But, we have not accorded them, the attention and respect that those in agric sector deserve. If survey is done about the courses that students seeking admissions into higher institutions filled in their JAMB forms, those who chose Agric courses will be minute. Why? Because we are not setting our priorities right. Many find themselves in courses in that field as alternatives. This is not good enough.
Existing scholars in the field should also continously innovate the practice of agriculture in Nigeria, in operations, quality of farm seedlings used for better yields, human capital development and so on. But, is the government ready to support them in researches and implementation of whatever they develop? These are the problems.
The lower tiers of government in states and LGs should be more involved and take responsibility for all of these. The lands are held in trust by state governors for the people. Federal Government has no control over land, based on the Land Use Act of 1978. Then, why do we all focus on federal government majorly for solutions and supports in agriculture? In fact, it should have been exclusively the responsibility of state and local governments, but for politics.
The Commissioners of Agriculture in all the states of the federation, with their governors’ backing, need to take responsibility for this. Federal Government can provide the framework for operations and guide but each state should be ultimately responsible.
As this year’s World Food Day is marked again, it should trigger the interest and commitment of all the stakeholders to realise how important it is to have well-fed, well-nourished citizens. A healthy nation is a reflection of the health of her people. Today, Nigerians cannot be said to be healthy, not with the level of hunger, deprivation, penury and despondency that people are experiencing now. All people in government, elected, appointed or employed, should act fast in their efforts to alleviate the suffering of the people.
Let the hungry people not turn their anger on governments and office holders, especially when they display such crass irresponsibility and insensitivity as in the report that the federal lawmakers bought for each of them, an SUV worth N160 million. Similar things happen across the country, federal and states, executive and the legislature. This is unacceptable to Nigerians at a time like this.
May God continue to protect us and guide us aright.
God Bless Nigeria.
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October 21, 2023.