Activities & Events

DECLARATION OF A STATE OF EMERGENCY ON FOOD SECURITY & “COMMODIFICATION OF THE NAIRA USING CASSAVA”:

WHAT CAN I DO FOR MY COUNTRY?
“I want to obtain a promise that we are going to work as a team, we are going to work for Nigerians. If you agree, stand up and say, I am a Nigerian.” - President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, 3rd November, 2023
“If we have problems, let’s talk to one another, let’s have conversations, gentle conversations about our country.”- President Bola Ahmed Tinubu

Many congratulations, Mr President, for your ascent to the presidency and for consolidating your status as the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of our republic. In your opening address to the 2023 CABINET RETREAT, you deplored “selfishness” and “theoreticians.” You boldly declared: “The buck stops here.” By publicly disavowing theoreticians, you led Nigerians to draw the conclusion that you are a practical man of action. By publicly eschewing selfishness, you telegraphed a quality that fair-minded Nigerians have associated with you for decades – quality of egalitarianism, fairness, justice and equity. By your declaration that the buck stops at your desk, you gave Nigerians confidence that you will take responsibility for the enormous task ahead of you, thus, inviting their solidarity and goodwill. You did not end there, Mr President. You went ahead to deliver the coup de grâce: “We must take 50 million Nigerians out of poverty,” you insisted. And “let your achievements be home-grown…” you enjoined your subordinates. These are not the only remarkable things about your speech. But they are windows into your thought process as an administrator. Through these windows, we, citizens, can peep into your essential disposition towards your duty as a leader of an immensely important but gravely challenged nation. Following your declaration of emergency on food security, your then Special Adviser on Special Duties, Communications and Strategy, Mr Dele Alake, conducted an excellent national press briefing on the 13th of July, 2023. In the second paragraph of the speech, Mr Alake declared: “As a hands-on-leader who follows developments across the country every day, Mr President is not unmindful of the rising cost of food and how it affects the citizens. While availability is not a problem, affordability has been a major issue to many Nigerians in all parts of the country.”

OPEN LETTER TO MR PRESIDENT - PART I

It is always reassuring to have a leader who is positively hands-on to solve problems, and in no sector is this presence of mind needed most in Nigeria today than in the area of food security and food sovereignty.

Mr President, if a fraction of one percent (0.01%) of the energy my fellow compatriots devote to analysing politics is devoted to producing food in our country, huge advances would already have been made. Tragically, what is important to the elites and elite-adjacency and what is important to the general working class and rural citizens in this country are galaxies apart – and it has ever been thus.

It is true that terrorism and banditry have played a consequential role in the particular fate of famers in some regions and the general outcome for food availability in this country. However, that impediment can easily be overcome through radical measures in terms of opening up alternative areas for production of the most essential agricultural produce that would result in immediate alleviation of not just the potential but immediate threat of starvation among our citizens. The Government of Nigeria cannot be defeated by a marauding band of criminals threatening some of our farmlands. Yes, some farmlands, not all farmlands, are threatened by these criminals. Nigeria has more than 70 million hectares of arable land out of which less than 20% is under cultivation of any sort.

Further, Mr President, you ordered that agricultural essentials such as fertilizers and other inputs be released to farmers. Well, the farming season is virtually upon us. The first rains have come. The pertinent question now is: who is distributing the farm inputs, where, and who are the recipients?Any measure of intervention that does not bring representative farmers together - not politicized organisations populated by political farmers that cannot boast of a hectare of farm – is bound to fail. To this end, I strongly urge you, Mr President, to include genuine and experienced farmers in your National Economic Council.

From 2015 to 2023, some shadow mafia organisations, in association with politicians, mopped up the inputs meant for farmers and enriched themselves at the expense of those in desperate need. Today, for example, some politicians are still sitting on hundreds of tractors meant to go to farmers across the country. The average farmer cannot afford to pay the going rate of N200,000 to rent a tractor, N50,000 for the operator and N1,700 per liter of diesel to buy the 40-50 liters it would take for a tractor to operate on a daily basis. There are super stars in farming in Nigeria and in whose heads and minds exist groundbreaking initiatives on how this nation can make N2 trillion annually on cassava production, processing and export. The road to commodification of the naira based on cassava is quite simple but not easy to travel. And precisely because it is not going to be an easy route to travel, you must embark on it because the reward will be more than worth it.

But these Nigerian super stars in farming must be encouraged, motivated, embraced by the government of Nigeria with sincerity and honesty of purpose. The tendency to hijack agricultural initiatives by politicians and cavemen has been strangulating previous effort by previous governments. And the citizens of this nation are paying a terrible price for it.

Nigeria’s myriad challenges appear incredibly daunting. The sheer magnitude of suffering in the rural communities is so staggering it beggars belief. But it is precisely because of the enormity of these challenges, Mr President, that citizens such as myself have opted to devote energy, time and resources to helping this country out of this dangerous quagmire. But wolves are constantly prowling and they are dangerously experienced hunters.

The procurement and installation of 6 durable, easy-maintenance and adequate capacity garri processing factories in the 6 geopolitical zones, and 6 rice processing machines, preferably from Buhler, has become imperative. There are excellent examples of such machineries in China, India, Germany and other places, and will cost the Government of Nigeria a tiny fraction of the Abacha loot remitted to the treasury by the Government of France recently. This would be a supremely fitting legacy investment of part of those funds because the theft of such humungous funds and the culture of theft it engendered led ultimately to the miserable circumstances in which hapless Nigerians found themselves today.

Nigeria’s coastline from Lagos to Cross River is 850km. A few months ago, Nigerian women, fed up with the tightening supply and escalating costs of fish, staged a peaceful protest in Sagamu. These law-abiding women simply wanted to draw attention not just to the adverse market forces trending against their economic interests but the wider irrationality of a country so blessed but yet so lacking in this agricultural produce.

With 850km of coastline, Nigeria is fish poor. Nigeria has 33 Strategic Food Reserve Silos across the country but has just about sixty six thousand metric tons of grains in reserve. The average per reserve site is just two thousand tons. As an individual farmer, from 2015 to 2023, I had 2,500 tons of rice in each of those years in warehouses. Nigeria has amazing bodies of freshwater but extremely poor in infrastructure for irrigation. Nigeria has more than 70million hectares of arable land but Nigeria is food crop poor, cash crop poor, vegetable poor. We have all these blessings and gifts from God Almighty without dodging earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, monsoons or any major natural disaster. The only disasters present in the life of Nigerians are all man-made – by Nigerian men and women.

I have heard about the federal government putting 500,00 hectares of land under some form of crop cultivation. Nigerians need full explanation about this endeavour and who are responsible for its execution. Transparency is key to winning this existential struggle. Nigeria’s strategic food crops – rice, yam, millet, sorghum, cassava, maize, potatoes, (fruits & vegetables such as tomatoes, onions, carrots, etc.) require way more than 500,000 hectares to make short-term to medium-term advancement from where we are, Mr President. Nigeria should be bold, ambitious and risk-amenable.

Bureaucracy has historically been a formidable obstacle to any transformation or the translation of policy objectives into radical action. The very suggestion that 500,000 hectares of land are being put into the cultivation of various crops – whether in the dry or wet season – in a country where over 60 million hectares of arable land are lying fallow is woefully inadequate to meet the state of emergency in food security. It quite frankly betrays the Renewed Hope Agenda.

Indeed, Mr President’s Renewed Hope Agenda policy document states at page 26: “… only 35% of arable land in Nigeria is currently cultivated. Our target shall be to increase this number to 65% in 4 years.” Mr President, the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) estimates agricultural land area in Nigeria at a conservative 70.8 million hectares and the World Bank estimates it at 75 million hectares. For present purposes, we are going to use the FAO figures: 34 million hectares of arable land are uncultivated and only 6.5 million hectares are under cultivation and 30.3 million hectares are meadows and pastures. 65% of 34 million hectares presents us with a 22.1 million hectares challenge.

These figures are only for the sake of clarity. It would be both a display of shallow-mindedness and woeful lack of understanding of practical farming for anyone to expect Mr President to put 22.1 million hectares (or even half of that figure) under cultivation of any sort within 4 years. However, a realistic effort must be made to galvanise rural communities in Nigeria to put a total of 1 million hectares under cultivation in each farming season, bolstered by irrigation, from 2024 to 2031. That will add 8 million hectares to the quantum of hectarages currently being cultivated. We have a realistic formula to mobilise our rural communities to achieve this target.

I have read PwC’s most recent study in connection with the enormous potentialities of the agricultural sector in which it found that Nigeria has the potential to earn $427 million from the domestic market, $2.98 billion in exports and unlock about $16m in taxes. In the area of cassava farming alone, 38 products were identified as well as the hectarage it would take to produce the quantum of cassava necessary to meet the set target. It is a tragic shame that this study, a peerless roadmap to a truly worthy destination, has been ignored.

The sacrifices we must make now: land preparation on industrial scale, single-minded investment on infrastructure for irrigation, laser-focus on agricultural research and development so that improved seeds & breeds will be in abundance and accessible to farmers at any point of demand, off-taking of excess produce to ensure that all the 33 strategic grain reserves in this country are optimally utilised, uncompromising supervision of all food processing factories that benefit from central government loans or grants to ensure optimum result and security of public investment. This is where the role of the proposed Food Intelligence Agency (FIA) rises to the top.

A Food Intelligence Agency (FIA) - the strike squad of food security and food sovereignty - would have played a significant and defining role in investigating, assessing and recording the state of food production, consumption and preservation across Nigeria. Such a body would have the capacity to provide actionable intelligence on the threats and prospects of food production so that these recurring and embarrassing emergencies in food availability could be proactively averted. The intermittent emergency reaction to food shortages in this country is absolutely embarrassing not just at national but international level.

As a result of gubernatorial elections in just 3 states (Bayelsa, Imo and Kogi) of the federation recently, we saw the National Security Adviser, the Chief of Army Staff, the Inspector-General of Police and many other security agencies engage in massive national security personnel mobilisation and readiness to maintain law and order before, during and after the elections. This is precisely the sort of response one would expect in a state of emergency, yet no emergency was actually declared. Nigeria is now steeped in a culture where politics and politicking sucks in every ounce of the national energy. Politics grabs the nation by the jugular and freezes the very lifeblood cursing through the national veins.

Before the fourth industrial revolution (internet/digital - circa 2000), there was the third industrial revolution (electronics/nuclear – circa 1969); before the third industrial revolution, there was the second industrial revolution (electricity/mass production – circa 1870); before the second industrial revolution, there was the first industrial revolution (steam engine – circa 1765). Before these great transformations in the living experience of humanity, there was the English agricultural revolution (circa 1700) – which saw, for the first time in human history, agricultural output outpace population growth. This endured for an unprecedented 100 years. This is a history with which we not only need to be familiar but have a systematic policy of adoption, application and refinement or adaptation. Those who did it before us (more than 300 years ago), are not gifted by God with 4 eyes or 2 heads.

We neglect our interior spaces but that’s where the wealth of this nation lies. So, we patriotic and brave Nigerians are springing forth to the call from the North, South, East and West and we are toiling away in the bushes for the survival of a broken nation. Your toil is our toil, Mr President. What can I do for my country?

Your loyal & faithful citizen

The Common Farmer

(0708 146 5512; 0813 005 4421)