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Nigeria: N950 Billion Food Security
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Vanguard (Lagos)
EDITORIAL
26 March 2008
Posted to the web 26 March 2008
THE recent announcement by the National Economic Council - a body consisting of the Federal Executive branch as well as State Governors - would give the false impression that the vital issue of sustainable food security is at last being addressed. Unfortunately, this is not the case and the announcement might even have come a bit too late for those already experiencing famine in parts of the North.
According to reports, children in rural communities of Kano State, which had been internally self-sufficient since the days of Governor Audu Bako, in the 1970s, are now being driven by their parents to the cities to fend for themselves. The social maladies that will follow are too numerous to list. How and who determined the amount needed to achieve sustainable food security? Is this the final bill or only for the short term? Given the failure of several attempts to achieve food security, can we honestly claim that money is the problem?
Many Nigerians can recall the Operation Feed the Nation introduced by the military government of Obasanjo in 1976. It was terminated in 1979 without achieving its target. President Shehu Shagari's Green Revolution which lasted from 1979 to 1984 was also a disaster. IBB's programme was more ambitious and included cultivation of wheat.
It created the Department for Food, Roads and Rural Infrastructure, DFRRI, and was based on the valid assumption that increased food production and reduction of post harvest waste would result in higher productivity. But, the entire programme foundered on the more solid rock of official corruption and lack of sustainability. DFRRI were rested as soon as Babangida stepped aside in 1993.
Almost 15 years after, no serious attempt has been made to address the urgent matter of food production despite the rapid increase in population and an aging farming population. The rising price of crude oil, which was responsible for the disappearance of groundnut pyramids in Kano, induced us once again to rely on imported food, paid for with crude.
The nearest thing to a serious effort between 1999 and now was Obasanjo's cassava export programme designed to encourage Nigeria to diversify its export base by filling some of the gap in global cassava supply. After a brief flurry that again has been stalled.
We strongly believe that the failures that have been recorded repeatedly have occurred because no serious attempt has been made to answer the basic questions we should ask ourselves. What is the thrust of the food security programme that would gulp N950 billion? Unless answers are provided to this question, the N950 billion even if made available, would merely go down the drain again and we would be no closer to food sustainability than when we started.
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The frightening thing is that there is nothing to suggest that N950b, or any amount for that matter, would guarantee food security for Nigeria, especially where there are no plans to ascertain the food needs of Nigerians and why they had never been met.
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