Report by Tessy Igata

In September 2000, following a decade of major United Nations conferences and summits, world leaders came together at the United Nations Headquarters in New York to adopt the United Nations Millennium Declaration; committing their nations to a new global partnership to reduce extreme poverty through self- sufficiency in food production, thereby setting out a series of time bound targets with a deadline of 2015, known as the Millennium Development Goals.

Since independence Nigeria’s economy has been dependent on oil, but can Nigeria survive beyond oil?  When the oil wells get dry, will Nigeria not go broke? Beyond this, critics have often pondered at the reality of a food-sufficient Nigeria  by 2015 and beyond since attaining food security is a complex task which requires requisite enabling environment and policies.

The country has begun to prove its critics wrong as a revolution in food sufficiency following President Goodluck Jonathan’s launch of the Agricultural Transformation Agenda in 2011 has begun. The goal is to have an additional 20 million Metric Tonnes of food to the domestic food supply by 2015 as part of its MDGs agenda and Nigeria’s Vision 20:2020 thereby stimulating the creation of 3.5 million jobs along the agricultural value chains.

At the recent conference of the Nigerian Guild of Editors with the theme: ‘Nigeria Beyond Oil: Role of the Editor’, the Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina,  put forth his submissions on Nigeria’s agriculture realities in a paper titled: The Value Chain Road Map of Agriculture and Rural Development. Nigeria is now thinking beyond oil, considering the various agricultural reforms and policies by the incumbent administration.

Where we were?

According to the minister, “a peep into the past, our backyard, since independence will help us understand and position where we are coming from, the rationale for our agricultural transformation agenda, and progress that has been recorded.  Nigeria was food self-sufficient in the 1960s and was well known for its global position in major agricultural commodities. We accounted for over 40 per cent of the global supply of shelled groundnuts. As the largest supplier of palm oil in the world, we accounted for 28 per cent of the global supply. As the second largest global producer of cocoa, we accounted for 18 per cent of the global supply. But these were the good old days”.

What changed things

As Nigeria became an oil-rich economy its dependence on oil as a source of revenue became overwhelming. The people forgot the era when agriculture was the mainstay of the Nigerian economy.

“The discovery of oil led to decades of neglect of the agricultural sector. What followed is what I call prodigal economics, where earnings from oil were frittered away, as the economy became heavily dependent on imports. We assumed that oil, like diamonds, would last forever. Nigeria abandoned agriculture and became a net food-importing nation. A nation that does not feed itself is a threat to its own existence.   The writings are on the wall. We must free ourselves from dependency on crude oil for over 97 per cent of our foreign exchange. Agriculture is the sector where we have the greatest potential to do this. Now we have returned to it as a top priority for the country, to produce what we eat, reduce our food imports, save foreign exchange and create jobs, especially for millions of our youth.

“Nigeria is an agricultural powerhouse with immense potential, possessing over 84 million hectares of arable land, of which no more than 40 per cent is cultivated, over 263 billion cubic meters of water with two of the largest rivers in Africa and a cheap labour force to support agricultural intensification. While potential is important, no doubt, no one eats potential”, he said.

The journey so far

The country’s agricultural sector has evolved overtime with various  achievements. The minster who further gave an insight said “to unlock the potential of agriculture to once again drive the economy, we embarked on a major transformation of the agricultural sector under President Goodluck  Jonathan. We are determined to unlock the potential of Nigeria’s agriculture and to move the country from its ignoble status as one of the largest food importers in the world, to a food self-sufficient country, with expanded exports. We are doing this through the rapid transformation of agricultural value chains. We are treating agriculture as a money-making business and not a charitable development project”.

Building strong policies for agriculture

Having an institution with strong policies is key to economic development. With the bureaucratic bottlenecks in Nigeria can there be strong policies to further drive the reforms currently being put forth by the minister? He made this clear by saying, “Let me be clear: this is not a populist approach or one that distributes the largesse of government for cheap political gains. Our focus is fixing structural issues that have hampered the performance of the agricultural sector. Just like building a house, the foundation must be solid. We are building strong policy, institutional, investment and infrastructure foundations for the transformation of the agricultural sector. Gains will not come easy, but as we do the right things, we will succeed in unleashing the power of agriculture to feed our nation and turn Nigeria into a leading exporter of food.

Today, I will like to focus on some of the key achievements of the agricultural transformation agenda, as we pursue the objective of diversifying Nigeria away from dependence on oil.

Let us start from our policy reforms. The backbone of any agricultural revolution is access of farmers to modern agricultural inputs, especially fertilizers and seeds. For decades, successive governments in Nigeria procured and distributed fertilizers. The government system was corrupt and undermined the private sector. It did not deliver fertilizers to genuine farmers. Instead, rich and powerful political farmers hijacked the subsidized fertilizers. As a result, no more than 11 per cent of all the farmers in the country got the fertilizers distributed by the government”.

Corruption as a barrier         

Corruption in Nigeria is like a time bomb waiting to explode at every given opportunity but a deterrent factor to the growth and development of any sector of the economy. The minister who pinpointed corruption as a problem said “Corruption was incipient, as sand was mixed with fertilizers and sold to government, payments were made for fertilizer not supplied, and subsidized fertilizers were resold back to government, with a lot more sold off to the neighbouring countries.

To put it bluntly; government was not subsidizing farmers; instead it was subsidizing corruption. Farmers’ powerlessness worsened as high quality seeds and fertilizers they need to raise their farm productivity were taken over by the elite, the rich and politically powerful.  For the few fortunate farmers that got fertilizers, they often got them in bowls, like beggars. Farmers lost their dignity.

But we have changed all that. Within the first 90 days of this administration, we ended the forty year-old fertilizer sector racket and corruption. The old system of government buying and selling fertilizers was scrapped, and all fertilizer companies were required to sell directly to farmers, not to government warehouses.  We embarked on the Growth Enhancement Scheme (GES), which provides subsidized farm inputs directly to farmers. To reach farmers directly with seeds and fertilizers, we developed the Electronic Wallet System, which allows farmers to receive subsidized electronic vouchers for their seeds and fertilizers on their mobile phones. The system bypasses middlemen and reaches farmers directly, with no government distribution. Nigeria is the first country in Africa possibly in the world to develop the electronic wallet system for targeting farmers with subsidized farm inputs.   The system worked successfully”.

Beneficiaries of Fertilizer subsidy

To show the minister’s determination even in the face of graft within the sector he reiterated that “in 2012 1.5 million small holder farmers got their subsidized seeds and fertilizers using their mobile phones. This impacted on 7.5 million persons. To expand and reach even more farmers, we embarked on the nation’s first ever registration of farmers. This year, we registered 10 million farmers. Farmers now have identity cards that allow us to use their biometric information to target them more effectively. So far in 2013 over 3.4 million farmers have so far received their subsidized inputs via the GES program and Electronic Wallet Scheme. We expect to reach close to 5 million farmers by the end of the dry season.     The reforms in the seed and fertilizer sectors have attracted the private sector. The number of local seed companies grew from eleven in 2011 to 70 by the end of 2012. Syngenta, the world’s leading seed company, has now established in Nigeria, to develop and commercialize high yielding seeds for farmers. The fertilizer sector is seeing major changes, as our policy effects deepen. Dangote has committed 3.5 billion dollars to set up Africa’s largest fertilizer plant, Indorama will invest 1.3 billion dollars in a fertilizer plant and Notore Company is expanding its current plant with an additional 1.3 billion dollars from the Mitsubishi Corporation.

Today, fertilizer companies are rapidly setting up their supply chain to reach farmers directly. In 2012, they sold 15 billion Naira of fertilizer directly to farmers. Seed companies sold N 1.5 billion of seeds, directly to farmers. The GES saved the Federal Government N 25 billion in 2012 alone. The GES system has brought dignity back to Nigerian farmers. Farmers, regardless of their political affiliation cannot be discriminated against or excluded from accessing fertilizers and seeds. The democracy of the stomach is the right of every Nigerian. We have brought transparency and accountability into the use of public funds.

For the first time ever, as a Minister of Agriculture, I can tell the nation who got subsidized fertilizers, where they got it, how much they paid, how much the government paid and the impact on food production. So revolutionary is the electronic wallet system that several African countries, as well as Brazil, India and China, have expressed interest in adopting the system for reaching their own farmers with subsidized farm inputs. Nigeria, which used to be known for the worst level of fertilizer corruption, is today exporting transparency. Indeed, this is a new dawn. Our agriculture has moved into the 21st century”.

Changing our mind set

The minister has indeed proved critics wrong as Nigeria may soon join in the league of importers of rice. This he believes is a certainty that can and must be achieved.

“We embarked on a major effort to extricate Nigeria from its decades of dependency on rice imports. The importation of rice has become a national embarrassment and we have become the world’s largest importer of rice. That is a wrong gold medal.  We should be self-sufficient in rice production, and become a net exporter of rice to our neighbouring countries. After all, West Africa is the region with the fastest growing consumption of rice. With our proximity, Nigeria can produce and compete in rice better than Thailand, Vietnam and India. To achieve this, we set for ourselves the target of becoming self-sufficient in rice by 2015. This is not a mirage; we are well on our way to achieving this goal.

The first hurdle to cross is to accelerate the production of local paddy rice. In November 2012, President Jonathan supported the first ever policy for dry season rice production. We focused on ten states of northern Nigeria, Kebbi, Kogi, Niger, Zamfara, Sokoto, Kano, Jigawa, Bauchi, Kastina and Gombe. Over 267,000 farmers were reached via the Electronic Wallet and received high yielding varieties of rice and three bags of fertilizers subsidized by the Federal Government. Instead of relying on massive irrigation, farmers were provided with pumps, wash bores and tube wells. The result was dramatic. Farmers produced 1.1 million tons of rice paddy; unleashing a rice revolution”.

Breaking the jinx

Just as Jesus’ coming debunked the saying, “can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Nigeria can become rice-sufficient come 2015as part of the MDGs target and NV 20:2020. The minster in his assertion said “Nigeria has proved the sceptics wrong. To become self-sufficient in rice, all that is needed is an additional annual production of 3.2 million MT of paddy rice. In one dry season, Nigeria produced one third of all the additional rice needed to become self-sufficient in rice. Farmers had never witnessed such massive rice production. Over 467,000 jobs were created, as youths flooded the rice plains, involved in planting, weeding, harvesting and threshing of rice paddy. The villages boomed with economic activity, in the midst of the dry season when the youth would normally fold hands with not much to do. As trailers could not make their ways into the rice farms, villagers devised new means of transport, using camels to haul rice paddy to the markets. The jinx had been broken; our farmers, if well supported, can make Nigeria self-sufficient in rice production.   As we travelled across these rice-producing states, with some of the newspaper editors in the country, I could not but be impressed by the hard work of our farmers. Disabled persons in the plains of Kogi state rushed into dry season rice production, defying all the odds”.

Rice sufficiency

Hajiya Ladi Maladi, a woman rice farmer who cultivated one hectare of rice, takes care of 23 orphans. From the harvest of her rice farm, she was able to build herself a house, which she is so proud of.  Large-scale commercial rice producers are also expanding the production of rice locally. Dominion Farms, a foreign investor, has invested $40 million in a commercial rice farm in Taraba State and its rice will hit the market in 2014. Dominion Farms, a 30,000 ha field, including community out-grower farms, will become the largest rice farm in Africa. Olam has expanded its rice cultivation by 10,000 ha, in response to the policy incentives by the government.

Yet, as our farmers rejoiced, the rice importers launched a massive offensive, to reject their achievements, ignore the reality of massive local rice production, while clamouring to be given waivers – yet again – to bring in 15-year old rice from India and Thailand. I read a newspaper article by the Guardian, that they could not find local rice in Lagos. I was not surprised.

Refining  local rice

Contrary to the belief by most Nigerians that every rice seen in the Nigeria market is imported the minister makes it clear that “the local mind set is that what is ‘local rice’ is ‘inferior’ rice with stones and unsavoury odour. We have moved beyond this within the last two years. In response to government policy and incentives for rice, 14 large-scale integrated rice mills were established by the private sector in two years, producing international quality long-grained parboiled rice. Well-packaged, long grained parboiled local rice, from Kano (Umza rice), Ebonyi (Ebony rice), and Benue State (Mikap rice) are on the market; and they are tastier and healthier than imported rice which are often 15 years old rice dumped on the Nigerian market.

What the writer in Guardian did not realize was that there was local rice in Lagos! It was just different from what he was expecting to be local. The true story the journalist missed was that the Lagos State Government bought seventeen trailer loads of paddy rice from Kebbi state, moved them down to Lagos to mill in the rice mill set up by the Lagos state government. Just imagine: two states of Nigeria trading in rice paddy, produced locally, and milling the rice, instead of importing brown rice from Thailand and India. As the paddy rice moved from the lush paddy fields in Kebbi to Lagos, several more jobs were created – stimulating local economy and getting our youth off the endangered list of the unemployed. Lagos state sells the milled rice as ‘Eko rice’.  The local rice was there and the efforts of our farmers were evident, but the journalist missed the real story. The real story is that the production of paddy rice created 467,000 jobs and added N 37 billion of incomes to farmers in Nigeria”.

Other laudable projects

The minister is not in any way daunted by the scale of the task ahead of him putting forth his optimism. “We continue to make significant progress on the cassava value chain. Nigeria is the largest producer of cassava in the world, yet it contributes close to zero per cent of global trade in cassava-based products. While Thailand accounts for only 10 per cent of global production of cassava, it has captured 80 per cent of the global value added. We are now turning cassava – hitherto known only for making garri, into a money- spinner for Nigeria. In 2012, over 24 million stem cuttings of cassava were distributed to farmers, free of charge. To create more profitable markets for farmers, we developed a cassava industrialization policy, to turn Nigeria into the largest processor of cassava in the world.   To reduce the 635 Billion Naira import bill on wheat annually, we embarked on the cassava flour substitution policy to replace some of the wheat flour used in bread and confectionaries. Despite the scepticisms and some derision on the policy in the media, we are succeeding. Never before had cassava bread been commercialised beyond demonstrations by research institutes, today, several of the major corporate bakers have shifted to the incorporation of 20 per cent high quality cassava flour into production of composite flour with wheat to produce bread. Cassava bread has hit the supermarkets of Shop Rite and Spar Park N Shop across the country. UTC and Butterfield continue to make strides in commercialization of cassava bread. The penetration of cassava bread is expanding as master bakers get trained. Over 350 master bakers have been trained, with many in FCT, Ekiti, Edo, Ilorin and Enugu producing and selling tasty cassava bread.

The commercialization of cassava bread is not political. It is economical. Cassava wheat flour composite bread is cheaper than wheat flour bread with an 800g loaf costing 200 Naira compared to 270 Naira for its equivalent wheat flour bread. Cassava bread is also healthier, with a lower glycemic index than wheat flour bread, making it better for people allergic to gluten in wheat.

It is also better than wheat flour bread for those disposed to diabetes. As the commercialization of cassava bread reaches its peak, it will reduce our wheat import bill by at least 127 Billion Naira and put this back in the pockets of Nigerian farmers, processors and bakers. We will create jobs at home, instead of exporting jobs.

To accelerate the production of high quality cassava flour, government is supporting the private sector to access cheap financing to import and establish 18 large-scale cassava-processing plants. One of these plants, with a total capacity of 72,000 MT per annum, will be located in Abraka, right here in Delta State. I was pleasantly delighted when I arrived yesterday to receive news that the Governor of Delta State has already allocated 25 ha of land for the establishment of the plant and an additional 6,000 ha for the development of commercial cassava farms to supply the plant. I have the Certificates of Occupancy for these with me right here! Thank you, Your Excellency, for showing patriotism and supporting your cassava farmers.

To complete the value chain for the production of cassava bread, the President established the cassava bread fund. The 10 Billion Naira fund will support nation-wide training of 5,000 master bakers, expand the production of cassava, support cassava flour processors to produce more cassava flour at lower cost, and corporate bakers to expand, as well as intensify social marketing of cassava bread.

We have expanded rapidly the cassava value chain, with focus on cassava chips for exports, production of cassava grits for livestock industry, starch, sweeteners and ethanol.

A revolution is on its way in Agbadu in Kogi state, where Cargill, the world’s leading food manufacturer is working with my Ministry and the Kogi State government to set up a 75,000 MT cassava starch-to- sweetener plant, which will reduce the dependency on sugar imports. Over 15,000 ha of land has been secured and is being cleared for farmers to produce cassava for the plant. Crest Agro Products and Flour Mills of Nigeria are also investing in the same zone to establish starch plants. Sunbird Energy Corporation is investing $50 million in the establishment of commercial farms for cassava and bioethanol plants in Edo, Ogun and Oyo states.   Nigeria has secured contracts to supply 3.2 million MT of cassava chips to China, and arrangements are underway for the Africa Export- Import Bank to provide a loan facility of $40 million to cassava chip exporters. Nigeria expects to earn over $800 million from meeting the supply contracts to China”.

Wheat: a silent revolution

The revolution in the production of wheat in the country is indeed a welcomed development, but what is there for Nigerians to know?  “What is unknown to many Nigerians is another silent revolution in wheat, just about to be unleashed. Nigeria has the potential to produce wheat across ten states in the north, with potential of close to 600,000 ha of land for wheat. Dry land wheat can also be grown in the high lands of Plateau, Mambilla in Taraba State and Obudu in Cross River state. During the 1980s Nigeria tried to produce wheat but the effort was not successful due to very poor yields (averaging 1 ton per ha), lack of adaptability of the imported temperate wheat varieties and non- development of a wheat value chain, from the farm to the milling segments.   A new dawn has arrived. Through investments in research and development over the past two years, we have now introduced and tested well-adapted tropical wheat varieties into Nigeria. The varieties are heat tolerant and give yields of 5-6 tons per ha, which is 500-600 per cent of the yields obtained previously. Work is underway to rapidly multiply these wheat varieties at the Lake Chad Research Institute, Maiduguri. My ministry has embarked on the development of a wheat value chain, to take advantage of the new varieties. Over the next two years, over 450,000 ha will be planted in the new wheat varieties across the wheat growing belt of northern Nigeria. We expect to produce at least 2.5 million MT of wheat, which will reduce wheat imports by 50 per cent by 2015.

Our efforts have been recognized internationally. In June 2013, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) gave an award to Nigeria, to commend its achievement of the Millennium Development Goal on reducing by 50 per cent the number of malnourished people who suffer from hunger, two years ahead of the 2015 target set by the United Nations. This was because the percentage of people that are malnourished declined from 19.3 per cent in 1992 to 8.5 per cent in 2012, a major accomplishment.

We are clearly feeding Nigerians and the agriculture sector has undergone major reforms and transformation in the past two years. The journey to make Nigeria an agriculturally industrialized economy is still long, but the results we have achieved in two years  together with all states of the Federation, of whom I am very proud – make me excited and confident that we will get there. For agriculture was Nigeria’s past and in agriculture as a business lies Nigeria’s greater future.

Our achievement is strong and Nigeria’s agriculture renaissance story is very compelling. We have revived hope for millions of our people, especially in the rural areas”.