Alhaji Salman Abdullahi, is the managing director of Seed Cotton Company, Kaduna.

WT: What would you say are the factors that militate against or the problems faced by cotton farmers or the production of cotton in Nigeria?

Abdullahi: Well, I will say the production of cotton in Nigeria is a little bit problematic in the sense that the farmer is not getting the assistance that he is supposed to get.

However, Nigerian cotton farmers definitely are facing a little bit of marketing problems. But it has been fair since the dissolution of the marketing boards. And that is why from 1986 to date, there has been some progressive increase in cotton production.

The little problem that is being faced now is as a result of this WTO which has put our textile industry into a serious problem. You observe there are a lot of closures of the textiles. So this is as a result of the competition the textile industry is facing because of the imported fabrics that are being dumped in our markets. Cotton farmers have a lot of potentials in this country. Because the land is available for the farmer to grow.

The assistance which the farmer actually requires is in fertilizer and a little subsidy in some inputs such as spray chemicals and other inputs.

WT: In what ways have the Seed Cotton Company impacted on the improvement of cotton production in the nation?

Abdullahi: As a marketing company, we make sure that all what the farmer produces is taken over. That is, bought from him. That in itself actually assists production of any commodity not only cotton.

From the beginning of the season, for example, we get involved in assisting the farmers both in cash and in kind by providing them with some soft loans to continue to produce especially in the area of weeding and also the spray chemicals. We import the chemicals and sell to them at almost a loss.

So we believe this is a function which is supposed to be performed by government. But the organized cotton marketing companies having realized the difficulties, the problems faced by farmers, decided to get involved and in most cases we hardly recover what we have given out as loan.

But the whole idea is to improve or encourage production. And I think so far so good.

WT: The Northern part of Nigeria is said to have witnessed late rains this season. How do you think this could affect agricultural production particularly cotton?

Abdullahi: This is a phenomenon that is natural. At times you get late rainfall. So we just pray that the rainy season will be prolonged otherwise farmers are in a very serious situation. Because time is going and there is low rain in some other parts, like the North-East. But we pray it will not be as disastrous as people are envisaging.

And everybody is now managing the little rainfall and has started planting. So we'll watch upto the end of this month to see how the rainfall pattern would be.

WT: Statistics showed that about 80 per cent of Nigerian population engage in farming yet they are not able to produce enough to feed the nation while for instance the United States with only 20 per cent farmers is able to produce enough food for its people and for export. What do you think are the causes of these seeming non-performance of the agricultural sector in Nigeria and how could this situation be improved?

Abdullahi: Well we are just talking about agriculture in this country by mouth. We are not serious. Definitely the emergence of oil completely dominated or has made the Nigerian government to neglect agriculture.

You can just imagine in this year's budget, agriculture was only accorded about N3.5 billion when national identity card project is allocated N10 billion. You can imagine. That shows how unserious they are in developing our agriculture.

We have neglected agriculture definitely and the farmer has not been getting the fruit of his labour because the cost of producing a bag of maize is in the region of a minimum of N2000. And at times at the beginning of the season the farmer sells this maize at a ridiculous price of even below N1000 or so.

So farmers in Nigeria have been operating at a loss, very serious loss. So that is why there is serious decline in production generally. And a country that is not able to feed itself agriculturally must face economic decline.

Because economically we should aim at feeding ourselves. But the farmer in Nigeria is not being encouraged at all. Essential service work has failed.

Look at the cost of fertilizer, which is above the cost of production. So really we have neglected agriculture and the reason is because of oil.

99 per cent of the revenue incomes are from oil. So you can see the disparity. We hope one day the situation will be revised. And it has to be revised.

WT: What do you think are the possible solutions to that?

Abdullahi: The solution is to first do as other countries are doing , that is provide enough fertilizers at affordable prices and other inputs to the farmers, and the farmers will produce. Because we have the land and the teeming population are all farmers as you rightly said at the beginning of this discussion. So it is that encouragement that the farmer requires and if the government is serious it can do so.

For instance during Shagari/Buhari regimes even Obasanjo's regime when he was a military head of state, there was a lot of encouragement for agriculture. A lot of resources were being put into agriculture, and Nigeria was producing. At least we were able to produce to feed ourselves.

Look at the Hadeja/Jama'are River Basin we started producing wheat, we started producing rice. If that encouragement had continued, definitely we won't need to import rice here. We have the capacity to produce enough food to even export to our neighbouring countries.

WT: Most agricultural methods in the world have gone mechanized but Nigeria still seems to be operating the old method. How do you think that affects the quality and quantity of cotton production in the nation?

Abdullahi: It is still the same problem of the negative approach to agriculture by our government.

There is no small or large-scale farmer that can go mechanized today because the resources are not there. At the same time even if he is able to produce, at the end of the day, he will be selling at a loss.