Of Hunger and FG’s Failed Agricultural Policies

The World Bank has projected that the number of poor people in Nigeria would reach 95 million this year. Gilbert Ekugbe writes on the urgent need for economic managers to reverse this trend to the barest minimum.

Over the years, successive administrations in Nigeria have rolled out brilliant agricultural blueprints on how the nation would achieve food security. However, these blueprints only ended up on the shelves and lacked effective implementation that would bring them to fruition. 

The corollary of this trend is that Nigeria is ranked 103 out of 116 countries in 2021. According to the Global Hunger Index (GHI) said that with a score of 28.3, Nigeria’s hunger crisis has reached a worrisome point, and like a ticking time bomb could explode at any moment. 

Ordinarily, Nigeria has the capacity to be among the food basket of Africa and even the world at large with its vast arable lands of 34 million hectares: 6.5 million hectares for permanent crops and 28.6 million hectares on meadows and pastures. Moreover, agriculture accounts for about 24 per cent of Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). These facts made it clear that the prevailing hunger situation in Nigeria could be perceived as a self-inflicted wound. 

Failed Agro policies

Between the periods of 1972 and 1985, the federal government made five agricultural policies. These included National Accelerated Food Production Programme (NAFPP) 1972-1973; Operation Feed the Nation (OFN) 1976-1980; Green Revolution Programme (GRP) 1981-1983; Go Back to Land Programme 1983-1985 and the restoration of the elements of NAFPP after the military coup in 1985. 

The aim of NAFPP was to make Nigeria self-sufficient in food production, but sadly, the country is still largely dependent on food importation to meet its food needs. According to reports, over $5.4 billion was spent in 2021 to import food into the country. Clearly, this policy has failed to see the light of day as many Nigerians have been pushed into the hunger net with the prices of food surging each passing day amid the low purchasing power of consumers.

Also in 2008, the National Food Reserve Agency (NFRA) was created as parastatal of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) with the mandate to drive the national food security programme in the country upon the recommendation of Commercial Agricultural Development Project-New Partnership for Africa’s Development (CADP_NEPAD). 

The vision of NFRA was to ensure sustainable access, availability and affordability of quality food to all Nigerians and for Nigeria to become a significant net provider of food to the global community. In the short term, the mission of NFRA was to significantly improve Nigeria’s agricultural productivity, while in the long term the NFRA aims to achieve national food sufficiency and drive over 50 per cent of the nation’s foreign exchange through agricultural exports. 

Meanwhile, the All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN) had called for the resuscitation of NFRA, which it described as the elixir for Nigeria’s food system. According to AFAN, resuscitating the NFRA would surely reinvigorate the food system and accelerate the attainment of food security in Nigeria. It added that the obvious deliverables in the resuscitation of NFRA will also revive the Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP), which would enhance agribusiness especially against the backdrop of AfCFTA.

According to agricultural stakeholders, these policies had the nation’s interest but were poorly implemented by past and present administrations.

Reason for failure 

These policies most of the time lacked the input of agricultural stakeholders. Agro policies without stakeholders input are dead on arrival. But these stakeholders are often neglected when agro policies are being formulated. 

In a chat with THISDAY, the National President of AFAN, Mr. Kabir Ibrahim, attributed the failed agro policies to poor implementation and lack of transparency on the part of those charged with their implementation. 

He said that corruption is also a serious cankerworm that Nigeria must tackle headlong to achieve any form of agricultural sector development.

An Agripreneur, who was also part of the Total Top 15 finalists of the just concluded TotalEnergies Startupper challenge, Mr. Ibm Bangis, said the policies did not see the light of day because it did not carry farmers at the grass root along. 

Bangis pointed out that these farmers play vital roles in the nation’s agricultural value chain, but are often not prioritised when these policies are being formulated, stating that agricultural policies should be specific and spelt out for the masses. 

Rising food prices 

Food prices continue to skyrocket owing to COVID-19, climate change and insecurity in the northern region. With the ongoing Russian-Ukraine crisis, global wheat price has increased astronomically as the price of bread and other confectioneries are expected to go even higher in the midst of the harsh operating environment for businesses in the country. 

The price of rice, flour, beans and other staple crops are on the increase as more Nigerians continue to lavish in hunger. Many households across the country cannot keep up with the pace of skyrocketing prices making many Nigerians unable to afford three square meals on a daily basis. 

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in its October 2021 food security and nutrition analysis – known as the Cadre Harmonise conducted in 20 states, and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), revealed that approximately12.1 million people are expected to be in food insecurity crisis or worse through December 2021. The analysis involved 154 008 198 people, out of whom 12 135 318 in the participating 20 states plus the FCT are currently experiencing crisis and emergency phases of food insecurity.

The report’s provisional results were released in Abuja on November 5 and revealed that the number of people in critical or worse phases of food insecurity may increase to about 16.9 million unless efforts are made to scale up and sustain humanitarian support and other government interventions for livelihood recovery and resilience. 

Stakeholders’ recommendation

Lending his voice on how to reverse the hunger threat, the AFAN boss said Nigeria is not immune to global food insecurity. He stressed that Nigeria needed a real appraisal of the food system to ensure optimal productivity by using the Brazilian $1.1 billion loan in kind to deploy tractors and other farm implements to boost farmers’ productivity.

He pointed out the need to ensure improved security to enable the farmers access their farms more readily and the institutionalization of the CBN Anchor Borrower Programme (ABP) so that it would be more sustainable as well as reach the real farmers, create the right kind of synergy among all stakeholders in the agriculture space, improve access to credit generally and shore up the purchasing power of the Naira. 

In addition, there is need to improve power supply and the overall energy sector by making all fuels readily available and more affordable, ensure more transparency and sustainability in policy implementation. He suggested addressing food security from the perspective of improving the optimum production and processing of the various staples in the different regions of the country and make the food reserve agency robust while also making the National Food Reserve Agency functional.