NIGERIA’S FOOD SECURITY CHALLENGE UNDER DEMOCRACY

BY
AHAZIAH ABUBAKAR SULEIMAN

 

The three basic necessities of life are food, clothing and shelter. Of the three, food is the most fundamental. It is as a result of this that governments all over the world formulate and implement aggressive agricultural policies that will ensure that their nations do not fail in feeding the citizenry.

In Nigeria for instance, before and after independence, agricultural production remained the mainstay of the economy. It performed creditably well such that it became the main foreign exchange earner as well as being the biggest employer of labour with over seventy percent of the population engaged in one form of agriculture or the other.

Successive governments came up with different agricultural programmes, aimed at meeting the food and industrial needs of the nation. Programmes such as “Green Revolution, “Operation Feed the Nation” and “Back to Farm” were introduced in some states of the federation.

With assistance from the African Development Bank and the World Bank, the Nigerian government at different times came up with agricultural development projects such as the River Basin Development Authorities and similar projects in different parts of the country. These projects increased productivity with high yield recorded annually. Those were the days when cocoa, cotton, rubber palm produce and groundnut were the major foreign exchange earners for Nigeria.

As successful as these projects were, the advent of oil as a foreign exchange earner made the authorities neglect the implementation of its various agricultural programmes. This led to a drop in Nigeria’s per capita income and the gross domestic product.

The lack of continuity in the agricultural policies and over- dependence on oil revenues, led to a total collapse of the agricultural sector. Nigeria that used to pride itself as one of the largest exporters of cocoa and cotton is today a shadow of what it was at independence. The groundnut pyramids in Kano have disappeared; the palm and cocoa plantations in the South East and South West have all remained desolate, while agriculture is no longer attractive to the youth.

However, the return of the country to democratic rule in 1999 seems to have changed all these. The first civilian administration after sixteen years of military dictatorship brought agriculture to the front burner.

The government, under President Olusegun Obasanjo, came up with various programmes and policies that made agriculture attractive once again. Some of these policies included interest free facilities from designated banks, schemes such as Poverty Alleviation Programme, and the Youth Empowerment Scheme, all with a view to improving food production.

When the Yar’Adua administration came on board in 2007, it mapped out strategies to meet the food security challenge of the country under the seven point agenda. The strategies were aimed at stopping wastage and focusing on wealth generation through the promotion of large scale commercial agriculture.

The invitation of Zimbabwean farmers to invest in farming in the North-Central state of Kwara is a case in point. Such open policies are helping to ginger agricultural revolution once again. The government has also set up a special intervention fund with a take-off grant of more than two hundred billion naira over a period of four years to boost agricultural production and put Nigeria on the right track to export agricultural products. Similarly, the government injected billions of naira into the textile industry which by extension has helped in encouraging cotton farming.

Twelve years on, since the return of Nigeria to democratic rule in 1999, there has been an increase in the establishment of fertilizer blending companies to meet the needs of farmers while the importation of the product is being highly subsidized to make it easily available to farmers.

Despite all these laudable programmes and policies in place, some of the major challenges impeding Nigeria’s attainment of full food security include lack of infrastructure such as feeder roads, storage facilities, manpower and skill development and lack of delivery services from extension workers. In some parts of the country, land tenure system is also affecting agricultural activities.

Similarly, prices of inputs such as seedlings, pesticides and fertilizer are increasing in such a way that the local farmer is finding it extremely difficult to obtain them. Natural disasters such as drought, pests, erosion, flooding, desert encroachment, and man-made industrial pollution are all compounding the problems of attaining full food security.

This is where the country needs assistance from experts, multi lateral and bilateral bodies as well as investors from all parts of the world.

As Nigeria, with over 150 million people, marks twelve years of uninterrupted democratic rule, there should be consistency in agricultural policies to help in increasing food production with the attendant fall in prices and job creation for its teeming youth.

 

 

Broadcast on Thursday, 26 May 2011