2017: Agriculture in Nigeria, a new agenda

Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh, has reiterated the ability and commitment of the Ministry to put good food on the table of Nigerians and her neighboring states through farming.

One of the country’s major export crops, Cocoa and Groundnut are today eased out for lack of more concern for Agriculture and focus on Oil and Gas.

The Minister has described this development as embarrassing and unfortunate the downgrade of Nigeria in the global cocoa business. To revive the industry, however, he  disclosed that a re-launch will be done early this year as part of activities to bring cocoa back to public consciousness, moreover that millions of cocoa trees will have to be planted  this year.

This year’s activity, Chief Ogbeh said will start with the re- launch of cocoa, “It is an embarrassment that Nigeria fell to the seventh place. We are re-launching cocoa. We are targeting 15 to 20 million trees a year and we are rehabilitating the existing ones and improving upon agronomic practices and processing all the value chains that need to take us to number one.”

Despite all hurdles, agriculture fared well in 2016, kept faith on rice and to continue in this fate, the Banks must be ready and willing to grant farmers loans to enable them perform effectively. The Agricultural Banks come to mind.

The Minister has however inaugurated a committee to restructure the Bank of Agriculture although against diverse obstacles in 2016, the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development have expressed determination to ride out the storm in 2017 by embarking on many ambitious projects.

Recently at the inauguration of the national council on privatization steering committee on the restructuring and re-capitalization of the Bank of Agriculture and the Project Delivery Team whose aim is to make sure that “We embark on these major projects So that agriculture will continue to be an all-year-round activity that we too can continue to provide fresh food to our people.

“In the interim, our biggest achievement last year has been that we were able to put the Nigerian rice on dining tables for Christmas and Nigerians are now discovering that their own rice is actually better than what they have been eating from outside. We believe that by the end of this year, it should no longer be necessary for us to ban rice importation but would be an automatic selection by Nigerians”.

Commending the Central Bank Governor Godwin Emiefele for his timely intervention in the anchor borrowers’ scheme, the Minister said, “Without that program, I am not sure we would have had much to boast about in agriculture, especially in the production of grains, in which sector, I think, we can beat our chest and say we have good omen in stock; good and superior rice, compared to some of the stuff coming from outside the country”.

Ogbe who canvasses support of the CBN to farmers said told the Bank governor to continue to do so until the Bank of Agriculture (BoA) is strong enough to take on the responsibility at affordable interest rates, and meeting its banking obligations”.

He said the restricting of BoA’s restructuring, reduction of interest rates, lending at single digits and building an agriculture bank that would automatically double, not only as an agriculture bank, but also as some kind of community bank, found in all villages and farming communities.

On availability of fertilizer, the Minister opined that efforts are on the way towards fertilizer production and supply, bringing in the youth and mechanization, more tractors, harvesters, to ease the burden on agriculture and make it more interesting so it can become a hobby for many instead of the drudgery.

He called on the public to note the essence of the Federal Government’s decision to embark on this strategic step in the BoA revamp process as the vice president and chairman of National council on Privatization (NCP) recently approved the proposed restructuring and recapitalisation strategy to revitalize the operations of BoA.

“This approach is aimed at revitalizing the operations of the Bank of Agriculture to make it more responsive to its mandate of serving as a veritable platform for providing loans to MSMEs, rural farmers and cooperatives, agro-allied industries among others. This will enable them to meet the huge demand for agricultural produce for local consumption and exports.”

“It is expected to integrate into the evolving commodity exchange program that is currently undergoing a revamp process. This approach was preferred by the FG as a pre-privatization strategy to pave way for injection of financial and other requisite resources into the bank, also to future privatization as approved in 2013 by the National Council on Privatization (NCP).”

The Bank of Agriculture for over twenty years of its existence has faced a myriad of challenges which include poor funding, poor stakeholder buy-in, particularly by the Federal Government agencies including erosion stakeholder funds. Money had been borrowed without re-payment thereby creating bad debts.

“We do appreciate the difficulties farmers have faced in the past, some of which we have taken steps at the level of the ministry and the Central Bank to correct. Among these are low yields on farms and very poor knowledge of agriculture the way it should be practiced today. We are proud to announce that since we introduced a new fertilizer formula instead of the flat NPK 15-15-15, which people thought was a magic formula for growth in agriculture, our new soil map and crop-specific fertilizers have resulted in yields which have amazed even the farmers themselves up in some areas, from two tons per hectare, to five, seven and a half. And in one state, farmers recorded ten tons of rice per hectare.

“With such yields, and the favorable prices we are getting now, no farmer has any excuse not to pay back his or her loan. And no bank has any excuse not to loan money to farmers. We appreciate banks’ reluctance on the basis that farmers do not pay because farmers themselves don’t yield much. But we shall add more to these. New arrangements are being made for fertilizer, with further improvement and lower prices, and more machinery being procured to help farmers improve their operations, especially the younger ones coming in. It is therefore inspiring to note that the FG has charged the steering committee under the vice president’s chairmanship with the mandate to midwife the laudable initiative to be implemented within a record time. It is noteworthy that the body will be technically supported by the Project Delivery Team, which is also made up of experienced personnel, drafted from key stakeholder agencies of government”.

The Minister assured members of the steering committee and the Project Delivery Team (PDT) that the secretariat has concluded arrangements to avail members all necessary working documents. Members of the committee include Ministers of Agriculture, Finance, Industry Trade and Investment, National Planning and the Central Bank governor. Others are Permanent Secretary of the Ministry, DG PPE, Chief Economic Adviser to the President and the Senior Assistant on Economic matter to the Vice President.