“Why we need revolution in agric sector now”

Aliyu Ibrahim is the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Salad Greenhouse Nigeria, a firm in the business of promoting agricultural and technological advancement in Nigeria. In this interview with Deputy Editor, Stanley Ihedigbo, stressed the urgent need for government to overhaul the entire agric value chain to achieve sufficient and sustainable food production through irrigation system, modern technologies, and mechanism system among others. He also advised the state governments to give the councils the autonomy to focus on farmers in the rural areas. Excerpts:

What is your assessment of the agriculture sector in the past five years?

Actually, with the recent closure of the Nigerian borders, it is encouraging and commendable because, we are going to increase our farm produces and in the nearest future, it will help us to achieve food security in the country as well as sustainability in the agriculture production.

Nigerian security men, enforcing border closure

We will venture and invest fully in farming, knowing fully well that the produces will be sold in the country, compared to what was happening before now.  Farmers produce and no market for them, resulting to dependence on imported agriculture produces. And it’s better for Nigerians buying the local farmers’ produces than buying imported ones because we do not know how long they had been stored.

How they cultivated it and the chemical used in the prevention of the produces before importing them into our country for consumption. Some of these imported foods are causing cancer and other serious illnesses to the people.

But, some Nigerians are saying that we are not self-sufficient in food production and still need imported products to support, meaning that it is not right time to ban imported foods, what’s your take on this?

Menance of post harvest losses

We are not a food sufficient nation because we lack facilities like storage for prevention of our produces and modern technology, no enough mechanism agriculture farming.  Our farmers are in one season farming system which is the rainy season, but we are supposed to run two to three farming systems in a year. We have a long way to go and we are calling on our government to support irrigation system, modern technologies, mechanism system, these will help us to have sufficient and sustainable food production.

The issue of accessing finance has been a big challenge to Nigerian farmers, then one begins to ask of all the financial supports, government and financial institutions are announcing every day in our various media, how real are they?

Yes, finance is part of challenge facing us farmers in Nigeria. The politicians have hijacked the system, so the farmers can’t access fund through the single digit in the banks. The commercial banks are not helping matters and the Bank of Agriculture (BoA) has liquidated, no support from the government.

1. And if the government will go back to its drawing board and fund the Bank of Agriculture as well as reestablish agriculture microfinance bank across the 774 local governments of the federation, I think, it will go a long way to tackling the issue of finance to agriculture, especially the small scale farmers in the country.

You mentioned the area of storage and wastage of farm produces in the country as a big challenge, which way forward now, as the storage facilities are not available?

The way forward is for government to create the enabling environment for private sectors to come on board. Provide storage facilities in every local government of States of federation, so that the small scale farmers will have access to.  With that, the issue of post-harvest will be tackled.

What about the off-taker scheme initiated by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) with some private sectors in the country. Has the scheme achieved a significant impact in mobbing the small scale farmers’ produces?

I don’t think, we have strong and reliable off-taker in the country. Our challenge is that there are no processing plants, so you have off-takers when there are enough processing and manufacturing companies. The only place, there are off-takers are in the area of raw materials and those things happened in cities like Lagos, Port Harcourt, and Kano.

You can’t be farming in the north, transporting the produces to the south. The movement of the agriculture produces has recorded a lot of wastages and we can’t continue this way, we expect to make progress.

How can Nigerian youths be encouraged to go into farming looking at the much opportunities abound in it?

Agric Minister, Mohammad Nanono

Our youths are lazy, according to Mr. President. They are interested in works that give them quick money. However, our system has taught us to be lazy. The education system is not helping matters in the country as well, our lecturers are not productive, and they only focus on copy and paste.

You can imagine someone lecturing since 1980 still using the same syllables. Again, there is no agriculture studies in our universities or do they go on research. Also our parents are not helping matters as they encourage their children to go for studies that will give them job. We have millions of youths out of school and they don’t want to go to farm. What government needs in this area is sensitization and orientation as well as creating the enabling environment.

In the area of research, every year, huge funds are budgeted for the agriculture institutions, what is the outcome and how has it impacted on Agricultural development?

All those budgeted funds are wasted because our research institutions are not functioning. There is nothing happing in the agriculture research institutions in the country. You can visit the places and see for yourself. Tell me, any of the Centre that has come up with any inventions, innovations, and solutions of recent.

If these institutions are working, Nigeria has no business importing paste control from China or India.  Even some of the government agencies don’t have standard laboratories to test our agriculture produces, and to test the imported food into the country, if it is fit for consumption or not. I hope you are aware that we can’t export our own farm produces, even to the next neighbouring counties. Before now, our yam are tested in Ghana, before been shipped to Europe. Also, even in Nigeria, we hardly patronize our farmers’ produces.

There is plan to recapitalize the Bank of Agriculture and what are your expectations?

Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) work closely with Bank of Industry (BoI) than Bank of Agriculture because, the bank is a political institution where politicians use to oil their political machineries. If government is serious on funding the Bank of Agriculture, it should be privatized.

It seems all eyes are on the federal government, what then are the roles of the State governments in supporting the farmers?

It is not only the federal government that supports the farmers, but state governments, even local governments are there. It is very important for the local government council to assume the responsibility of supporting the farmers. They are the closer government to the rural farmers, not the state governors that make themselves available only during the election campaigns.

The council should create those infrastructure, including construction of roads to farms. Before now, there is a system where the state government brings what we called counterpart fund, as well as local government. But, there’s nothing like that now, except the state government supporting farmers close to their elections. They will focus on things that are not really important to lift the people from poverty. It’s now, the responsibility of we the farmers to look for a way, the state and local governments will support us.

I will advise the state government to give the council the autonomy, to focus on farmers in the rural area.  They should bring the farm input, whatever the farmers need should be made available to the local government so that the small scale farmers will access it easily. The local government council should focus on agriculture.

We need agriculture overhaul, the same as China, India, Thailand, if government is serious in diversifying the economy into agriculture. Only agriculture can contribute about 80 percent of our gross domestic product (GDP). CBN are supporting the farmers, but it should not be a political thing but allow the farmers to choose what they want.

If I’m the CBN governor, I will give each state a target, they should have one thing to produce. We have 36 states, making 36 corps. If it’s Lagos, if they want to focus on fish farming, they should focus on it and do it very well.  Let the world know that Lagos state produces fish.