| I was born a cowboy
ByWALE ALABI
Thursday, May 11, 2006
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Admiral
Nyako, president, Nigeria Farmers Council
Photo: Sun News Publishing |
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After his retirement from the Navy, where he attained the
enviable rank of Vice Admiral, Murtala Nyako went back to
his first love: farming. His farm, situated in Adamawa State,
is reputed to be one of the biggest cattle ranches in the
country.
His mango plantation produces high quality and nutritious
fruits that are already earning foreign exchange for the country
through export to neighbouring African countries and Europe.
In spite of these giant strides, however, the naval chief
is still furious at the appalling state of agriculture in
the country.
As the president of Nigeria Farmers Council and honorary member
of the World Council of Farmers, Admiral Nyako knows the way
forward. In this interesting encounter with Daily Sun at the
maiden edition of the Kano State Economic Summit, Nyako proffers
the way forward. He also speaks on his experience in farming
and the politics of agricultural development in the country.
Excerpts:
Little beginning
We should not look down on small business. Most of the products
like shoes from Italy and carpet from Iran are made by small
firms or enterprises. To develop in Nigeria, we should emulate
these examples. Small is beautiful. Let’s start gradually
before going grandiose. If we do the small things excellently,
we’ll grow big.
Growing up and now
I’m not a politician. I’m not into politics. Agriculture
was where I was born and it’s only in agriculture that
I feel I can make money. Before I joined the Navy, I was a
cow man. I was actually born a cowboy. And after retirement,
I returned to live as a cowman.
On how to improve yeild in agriculture
High yeild is an extremely important factor. Agriculture is
studied as a Science not Art. No magic or incantation can
improve farm yeild. To improve yeild, we have to study it.
Learning continues everyday. We have to continue the search
for this information. They’re purely technical information.
We need to embark on intensive research on how to improve
yeild on our farms. Besides, we have to stop all the old bad
practices, impeding high yeilds on our farms.
Quality of farm products
The quality of our farm products is important. Currently,
in Nigeria, we dwell on cattle skin, when other parts of the
world have since moved up to ostrich skin. Even now, crocodile
skin is gradually taken over from ostrich. Most of the leather
products in vogue now are made from ostrich skin.And this
is as a result of high quality of ostrich. Ostrich is of high
quality. It last longer, so if we want good quality leather
skin, we must embrace ostrich and crocodile farming.
Preservation
Preservation of farm products, especially crops starts from
seedling. Recently, we got a simple techniques whereby we
can preserve tomato and onions for the next 11 months and
it would not go bad. And you can sell them when you’re
ready. Imagine we got this simple technique from Ukraine.
Mechanise farming
Mechanisation is good, but it should not take over or take
precedence from simple knowledge of farming.You have to first
know how to manage your small farm, otherwise if you go the
whole hog into mechanise farming without adequate knowledge
or know-how,the banks will just take-over your house for collateral.
Because you need bank support to finance mechanise farming.
Importance of food in national development
Food is valuable in the lives of citizens. To grow and develop
the nation, the citizens must first of all be well fed. Yes,
ICT or technological know-how is good for the development
of the nation, but let’s take the case of Malaysia.
Recently, Malaysia, in spite of its ICT knowledge and capability,
had economic hiccup, but it was agriculture that bailed her
out of the problem. And this was because Malaysia was able
to feed its citizens.Otherwise, if you are unable to feed
your citizens, interest in ICT would just disappear in the
midst of hunger.Indeed a nation that is unable to feed its
citizens is doomed.
Sufficiency in food technology
To achieve ssuffiency in food technology as a nation,we must
start earnestly to teach people the latest developments in
agric productivity, agric marketing, distribution and agric
technology. It’s extremely important for us to do this
because presently the yields of various gric units we have
in the country are not sufficient to feed the population.
The quality of products too is very poor and no amount of
re-engineering can develop agriculture without first and foremost
improving our yields. And that is why we need to get more
education and provide the right inputs into agriculture.
Influx of foreign farmers
The foreign farmers? I don’t think there’s an
influx of foreign farmers. Nigeria has a land mass of 930,000
square kilometre. This is quite a huge land. There’s
no way those foreign farmers can take even up to 30,000 kilometres
or even one per cent of this land mass. What I’m hoping
they’ll do is that new investors, whether they are foreigners
or Nigerians would make investments on feeds, seedlings and
stocks. We need new animals to be produced in Nigeria. We
want new plants like cocoa, mango etc. We want new seedlings
of tomato. Normally what we import is small but now with new
investors coming in, you increase import of these new seedlings
and stocks. These would then give us commercial stocks.
We’re hoping that with the arrival of the foreign farmers
with their higher knowledge, high quality in seeds and seeding
production, we hope for the rest of the country because Nigeria
has about 150 million people and about 50 foreign farmers
cannot just drive us out of this country or hijack our land.
If we must grow and develop, we must encourage foreign investors.
The investment should not just be in cash or funds alone but
also in knowledge and technical know-how.Even developed countries
like America and Britain do this.
Organising Nigerian farmers
We’ve spent our personal funds to organise farmers across
the land from farmers association to commodities associations.
I get maximum co-operation from southern farmers on this matter
in the northern states, we have more farmers that are less
cooperative. The northern states governments have been non-challant
about this. I know that as an honorary member of the World
Farmers Council, the German government gives us grant, the
European Union gives us grant, these grants are given because
we’ve organised ourselves into association. So organising
farmers into association is in the best interst of the states
and the country. Our policy makers should understand that
organising farmers into association is a pre-requisite for
developing farming and agriculture in the country.
Nigerians farmers and bird flu
As far as we’re concerned, the issue of bird flu in
Nigeria has been overblown. We’re told by scientific
fact that bird flu we’re talking about cannot exist
south of the sahara,where Nigeria is located.That the climatic
conditions here are not conducive to the existence of bird
flu.Even in France you can see what the president did, he
came out to campaign that the bird flu issue was being overblown.
So, let us not handle this bird flu matter with emotion that
would make us kill all our birds because when these birds
are killed we’ll need barren stock from abroad as replacement
and to restart our farms.
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