A pledge for Food Security in the Land of Promise

Umo Eno promises agriculture renaissance to make Akwa Ibom self-sufficient in food production

Bassey Nssien

Umo Eno, the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the March 11, 2023 governorship election, is campaigning on the promise of taking Akwa Ibom State from where Governor Udom Emmanuel will leave off on May 29 to a higher level in terms of development, in all its ramifications. This includes provision of infrastructure, healthcare, security, education, industrialization, employment, for the purpose of improving the quality of life of the people and making the state the ideal place to live and work.

The candidate recognizes that the state cannot be the investment and tourism destination it is being prepared for if it cannot meet the basic expectation of feeding its people. He knows that the state has the potential to produce enough food not only to feed its growing population, but also to sell to other parts of the country and outside. This has informed his decision to make agriculture a cardinal programme of his administration, should the people of the state give him their mandate. 

Agriculture forms the first leg of the A.R.I.S.E. agenda – agricultural revolution, rural development, infrastructure maintenance/advancement, security management and educational advancement – of the PDP candidate. The agenda is designed to revolutionize agriculture and raise it from the subsistence level it has been for decades, through large scale mechanized farming, at commercial level. The whole idea is to make farmers in the state to embrace agribusiness because of the critical role agriculture is expected to play in the economic development of the state.

“Farmers will be made stakeholders in the economic renaissance project,” Eno assures, in the agenda.  “It is worth emphasizing that there is a lot of money to be made in agriculture. Ours must go beyond the rudimentary stage of just making garri, starch, flour and others. Farmers need to be assisted.”

Akwa Ibom is an agrarian state where a good number of people, especially those in the rural areas, are predominantly farmers. The state has riverine communities that are engaged majorly in fishing, with a coastline that stretches 129 kilometers from Oron in the east to Ikot Abasi in the west – one of the longest in Nigeria.

Agriculture in the state is still at the subsistence level, though it is a source of income for many. This is not enough to feed the estimated population of over seven million people, the reason the state still relies on food items such as yam, potato, tomato, pepper, onion, rice, beans, etc, from other parts of the country to meet demand.

“Subsistence agriculture is no longer serving our needs; so, the mechanized farming approach will be adopted and my government will work on assisting both local and commercial farmers with farm implements, modern technology and new farm techniques,” the candidate promises. “This will be a major consideration in our proposed settlement scheme. Government will explore all available avenues to assist large-scale farmers with funds to achieve this objective and help small scale farmers with inputs and extension services.”

Eno has promised support for extensive and intensive agriculture through a boost in productivity in areas such as crop farming, fisheries and animal husbandry. This would allow for integration of an agricultural value chain that would help achieve the objective of self-sufficiency in food production in the state. He said his government would also provide off-taker incentives and facilitate access to markets for raw materials and processed food. 

There’s a plan to establish an agency for the sole purpose of managing agribusiness, to make it attractive to investors within and outside the state. That is the extent to which an Umo Eno administration would be willing to go, to turn around the agricultural sector in Akwa Ibom.

The present administration experimented with the Green House project that has proved to be a success. This project has revealed the state’s potential to grow agricultural produce that were thought could not be grown in the state – crops like tomato, carrot, cucumber, onion, etc, in commercial quantity.

Eno has signified intention to follow up on the project by establishing farm settlements where farmers would live and engage in large scale, mechanized farming, in order to be able to produce enough food to feed the state and supply to other markets. The programme would be approached from both the small holder and medium scale farming perspectives.

“The farm settlement programme will be a major project during my dispensation,” he assures. “In my agriculture renaissance programme, the starting point will be the low-hanging fruits – commercial farming, livestock production, fishing, as well as infrastructure for processing (value chain) and incentives. The implication of not being able to feed ourselves is dire; but the market potentials are also huge but unexploited. I will take full advantage of the coming fertilizer plant and grow our agricultural potentials. It will be of great relevance to our farm settlement scheme.”

Agriculture is not practised in Akwa Ibom at the same scale with what obtains in the northern part of Nigeria. But that is not to say farmers in the state are immune to the challenge of storage and preservation of farm produce that farmers in those parts regularly grapple with. Farmers in the state also face the challenge of lack of facilities for preservation of farm produce, even at the relatively small scale on which they operate. 

Eno has promised to embark on provision of storage facilities to curb waste. “We will be working on large-scale production; we will also be working on storage facilities to avoid wastage”, he said.

There has been a growing interest in agriculture in Akwa Ibom in the last decade, mostly by young people and retirees from public service, in areas such as livestock, poultry, fish and snail farming. Interest in these areas is buoyed by the availability of a ready market in the rapidly growing hospitality industry. The snag has been the inability of farmers in these areas to meet demand, because of the low scale on which they operate.

Many believe an intervention such as the PDP governorship candidate is promising would go a long way in mitigating the challenges farmers face, in terms of infrastructure, finance and incentives. The plan to establish farm settlements is going to be a novelty, and is capable of attracting more investors into the sector.

“The idea of living in a settlement with modern infrastructure such as good roads, light and water, to be able to carry out farming on a large scale looks quite attractive,” says Idongesit Ebong, a hospitality outfit owner in Uyo, the Akwa Ibom State capital. “That promise, if it becomes a reality, is certainly going to encourage more people to take up farming as a business. We are going to witness a new era in which more educated people will go into agriculture, different from the time when it was meant for uneducated people in the villages.”

His prayer is that the PDP candidate would emerge victorious in the governorship election because, in his words, “Umo Eno stands shoulder above the rest.”

.Bassey Nssien lives in Uyo