By Dele Sobowale
“An activist is not a man who says the river is
dirty; an activist is a man who steps forward to clean the river.” — Chief Gamaliel
Onosode.
Very few people now recall that the famed Onosode ran for the Presidency in 2007. Asked why an activist and already accomplished man like him wanted to go into the dirty waters of politics, the quote above was his reply. He did not win the election but he left food for thought or thought for food in that statement which I just re-discovered in my archive, buried since 2007.
The statement gave me an idea which had been developing in my mind for ten years which I once observed working well in India in the 1980s. When the Indian Prime Minister, Nehru, prohibited food importation, he also declared that “India should starve, if India cannot feed herself.” It was a bold measure which made India the largest producer and second largest exporter of food globally. A nation which could not feed 400 million people now takes care of the food needs of 1.4 billion and still exports to the rest of the world.
How was it done?
Before answering the question,
let me draw attention to three initiatives by the Federal and state governments
of Nigeria, which are necessary but insufficient, to create the impact we need
in order to achieve sustainable food security.
President Tinubu was in Niger State to launch a new state agricultural programme designed to promote large scale farming. Pictures of president and governor sitting on new tractors were published; the usual addresses and promises of great output were made.
Obviously, neither Tinubu nor Bago was aware that they were repeating the same
things which had been tried before with limited success. The Operation Feed the
Nation, OFN, programme of General Olusegun Obasanjo regime in the 1970s, the
Green Revolution Programme, GRP, introduced by President Shehu Shagari in the
early 1980s and the NALDA programme embarked upon by President Ibrahim
Babangida, in 1992, all started with the laudable objective of helping Nigeria
attain food security and enough to export. They were also kicked off with the
Head of State riding a tractor and a governor beaming with smiles. Till today,
food security eludes us.
Why?
“Give a man fish and he is fed
for one day; teach him how to fish, and he feeds himself all his life.” That
was the wisdom behind the transformation of India and China into agricultural
super-powers. They have overtaken the US as leading exporters of food. Here is
why.
A few days after the Minna show, Governor Zulum of
Borno State was reported in Daily Trust of March 18, 2024, to have shared food
items to 52,500 families in southern Borno and to have also distributed N100
million to youth and women farmers – each receiving N50,000 grant to cultivate
their farmlands. Given a population exceeding one million in the area, it was
not clear how the beneficiaries were selected. Irrespective of how the
beneficiaries were determined, the Governor is still pursuing the principle of
giving people food (rice and millet) that would feed them for, at best, a few
days. Then they will be back to beg for rice and millet. In reality, the half
bag of millet and rice given to them will not be eaten; more than half will be
sold to buy ingredients without which raw rice and millet are useless.
FG and another summit
“The Federal Government has
fixed a national agriculture and food security summit for November this year in
Calabar, Cross River State, according to the Minister for Agriculture and Food
Security, Abubakar Kyari. We wonder why a summit on food security has to wait
until November 2024, given the emergency situation that high food costs and
hunger have imposed on the people of this country.” – Vanguard Newspaper
Editorial, March 18, 2024.
This paper went on to point out,
quite correctly, that by November, this year’s planting season will be over.
What the editorial missed is just as important. The final communiqué and
recommendations to government of the November summit will most probably not be
ready until about March 2025; the FG will not implement the recommendations
without further study and amendments – which will take several months. By then,
the planting season for 2025 would have been over. Two whole years will be lost
on account of that approach to solving our emergency food crisis. That is not
even all.
Summits have never succeeded in
solving the problems they start out to address. In my 14 years as staff of
Vanguard Newspaper, and as the Economist-In-Residence, I attended more summits
than I can possibly count. My archives are full of all the junk collected from
those jamborees.
The most famous of them remains
the Nigerian Economic Summit Group, NESG; founded by late Chief Ernest
Shonekan; the Head of the Interim National Government, HING. Working under
President Babangida, Shonekan inaugurated the NESG in 1992. NESG started off,
as a private sector initiative, with enthusiasm to achieve the exalted aim of
making Nigeria a top 20 economy by 2020. Very quickly, it degenerated into a
worthless talk-shop with no impact on Nigerian economic policy. I attended
eight straight summits; and then stopped. Nobody can point to any significant
contribution NESG has made since its inception.
States’ economic summits were
just as unproductive. Some smart alecs in states collude with the governors to
siphon money into private pockets by organising economic summits. With nothing
more than bellyful of pounded yam to show for attendance, I stopped after about
a dozen. But, I always keep my eyes on the events to see if anything good would
come out of each summit. It never does.
It has been necessary to
go to great lengths to advise the FG about the risks being taken in arranging a
summit for November. Contrary to what government officials might think of the
summit, it is an idea which has been tried several times and ended up being a
waste of time, hope and money. They seldom work.
A modest proposal
“Ideas are capital; the rest is
money.” The Ministry of Agriculture has resorted to a conventional way of
solving what is, in effect, an unusual situation. Undoubtedly, they have lined
up professors and motivational speakers, traditional dancers etc to ensure the
participants have a nice time. The summit will cost millions of naira; but, it
might not even begin to solve the problem. It will probably end up as just
another summit whose only beneficiaries are those awarded contracts and those
certain to collect kick-backs and kick-fronts.
Archimedes, the father of
hydraulic systems, was reputed to have boasted: “Give me a lever, a pivot and a
place to stand, and I will move the world.” As in physics, so it is in economic
development. Sometimes, a brilliant and simple idea, pressed to the limit, can
transform one aspect of a society in a profound way. I found out one of the
ways by which India became a food exporter by accident. Our Head Brewer at
North Brewery Limited, Kano, was late Mr Patel, an Indian.
We became very close when Patel
learnt that I studied in America. He was determined to migrate there after
working in Nigeria. I was also curious about India. So, in 1983, I took my
annual leave and with Patel’s help, went to India to find out how the country
could feed so many people. I soon discovered how his village of 10,000 people
fed millions. Nigeria can duplicate that feat and it will cost less than
two (2) per cent the cost of the planned November Summit. Give me 100,000
people, and I will feed millions.
*Dr. Sobowale is a commentator on public issues
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