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Nigeria: Before the Presidential Rice Arrives

Tunji Bello

6 May 2008

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Lagos — The recent order placed for the importation of 500,000 tonnes of rice from Thailand in response to current worldwide food crisis by the Federal Government sounds comforting but it is not assuring. As an emergency response, it is like a depressant; it does not cure but if care is not taken, the patient may become too dependent and eventually confuse it with a cure.

The Federal Government has no concrete solution yet. And contrary to the claim of the Agriculture Minister, Dr. Abba Sayyhadi Ruma, that the food crisis did not come to the government as a surprise as the authority had put in place a long term plan for food security in the country just as the 2008 budget is a food emergency budget, there is no evidence to show that the government fully understood what it meant by food security under its seven-point agenda. Except if it will be published tomorrow, there is no known food programme or agricultural plan in the public domain to be scrutinised or worked upon. And if the minister has one, let him release it now so that it can be debated because the nation is seriously endangered, food security wise, because once people don't have food to eat, it becomes a national security issue.

There are two critical issues we need to take up with the federal government on this matter. The first is that the issue of 500,000 MT of rice from Thailand is unrealistic and looks more of a public relations stunt. Thailand, currently the world's largest producer of world rice, produces about 30 million tonnes yearly. It has recently joined China, Vietnam, India, Egypt and Malaysia other big producers in placing embargo on exports. In fact, they are already thinking of forming a rice cartel in view of the current global food crisis in the same way the oil producing countries formed a cartel called OPEC following the 1973 world energy crisis.

So how can Thailand now export about 17 per cent of its annual production to Nigeria alone? Certainly something is seriously missing in the so-called food emergency plan. We must concede that the government really means well on its emergency response, but we need to remind the minister that we have passed through that road before when what was meant to be a temporary solution turned out to be a permanent thing.

Fuel importation was meant to be a temporary solution to a self-inflicted crisis. Over ten years after, the nation is still importing fuel with new petro-billionaires emerging on a yearly basis. Already fuel importation contract has been awarded till the end of the year, while we daily engage in talk-shop on how to fix our refineries.

In the same vein, importation of fertilizers to support our farmers was meant to be a temporary measure in the eighties. Almost 30 years after, we are still importing fertilizers; while the plants set up to produce fertilizers are almost moribund. Just like fuel importation, the fertilizers scam has continued to produce its own set of billionaires. At present, the ministry of Agriculture is already enmeshed in controversy over N63 billion fertilizers contract awarded to three companies believed to lack capacity to deliver.

Now with emergency rice from Thailand, will soon come emergency rice importation billionaires together with their own scams and scandals. The big beneficiaries of the latest emergency will be bag manufacturers and importers; middlemen who sell locally produced rice and the government food storage officials.

Because there is no way by which any of the world's major rice producers will meet Nigeria's demand, and our officials know this, the logical thing is to begin to re-bag few imported rice and re-sell as complete bags. Some middlemen will also begin to buy up locally produced rice, bag and label them as imported ones, while the government's storage officials who have been asked to release grains in their stock will divert them to bag them somewhere as imported. All of them will now sell their "re-bagged rice" to the government appointed "importers" in order to meet up their allocations.

At the end of the day, the importation subsidy will not work, not only because of scarcity, but also because of several handling and hoarding that will occur. Price will continue to soar and millions of Nigerians will go hungry. Then one day, some panels would be set up both by the presidency and the National Assembly to probe why the government-subsidised imported rice has not made any impact in terms of price or in reaching the consumers. Again, since we always adjust to our problems by making them permanent, the rice importation will soon become permanent like fuel and fertilisers importations.

The second and final issue relates to our perception of the food crisis itself and the long-term solution the minister says the government has already planned.

From the way the minister spoke at the weekend, you would think that the solution to Nigeria's attainment of food sufficiency is internal and as such can be solved within the Ministry of Agriculture alone when in actual fact, the major part of the problem is external.

For instance, the best way to fully understand this point is to look at the causes of the global food crisis itself. These causes are mostly external to agriculture. These include astronomical rise in international price of oil which has increased the cost of production worldwide; the re-emergence of China and other Asian countries as economic powers which has transformed consumption pattern of their teeming population with extra internal demand for food commodities and energy which in itself has constrained export of cheaper food commodities, then the conversion of arable lands in western Europe and United States into production of bio-fuels in response to high cost of energy; and last but not the least, the dramatic change in the world climate flowing from global warming which has wreaked havoc in terms of yearly flooding, monsoon and acid rain in Asia, Europe, United States and droughts in places like Australia and Africa, have over the years taken their toll on global food production.

The tragedy of our own situation is that we have been hit on two fronts. In the first place we lack a coherent and organised food policy and plan. Secondly, the problem is now compounded by the global food crisis. In Europe, America and Asia's case, their problem is less. What has happened is a global disruption of their well-organized food plans; hence they can begin to adjust. In Nigeria's case, there is nothing to adjust. We have largely depended for decades since the advent of cheap oil money, on unorganised subsistent farming and importations. Thus the problem is not lack of arable farmland or the will of the populace, but is due to poor vision and lack of political will.

This is compounded by ad-hoc approach to policy making. If we are really serious in this country, a combination of Benue, Kwara, Kogi, Plateau and Kaduna States alone can feed the whole of Nigeria. But we are unable, because we isolate other factors outside agriculture, which are very critical to the attainment of food sufficiency.

For instance we need to constantly remind ourselves as to why our British colonial masters designed a railway directly from Kano to Apapa port in Lagos. It was not for the benefit of indigenous population but to transport agricultural produce and cash crops for exports in order to feed their home industries.

Since they left, no government in Nigeria has identified railway as being critical to successful agricultural policy. It is the same with good road network, efficient supply of electricity, highly organised and trained manpower, good extension services, well designed price subsidy (not fertilizers subsidy, please) as has happened for decades in Europe and United States. Today the European Union pays subsidy totaling 42 billion Euros to its farmer annually.

All these factors are external to Nigerian domestic agriculture but no agricultural policy can succeed without addressing them adequately. Therefore, this matter is really beyond the minister and his ministry. It has more to do with our national plans and goals which the present government is yet to clearly articulate.

Perhaps, we should end this piece by taking a word of wisdom from Chief Audu Ogbe, himself a former chairman of the ruling party and a farmer. In an interview in a newspaper last weekend, he warned: "It should now be clear to us that self-sufficiency in food production does not just happen, it is designed and constructed. It costs money and requires serious attention by all. We may survive shortages, election malpractices and so on, we cannot survive hunger. The time has come to realize that depending on shiploads from other countries will no longer solve our problems. We must produce or perish". This is a serious warning to a nation that has established several universities of agriculture but cannot fashion out a good policy on how to feed itself.

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