Govt should make adequate provision for agriculture – Nwizu, MD, Mic-Mat Odika Investment Coy. Ltd
By PETER ANOSIKE
Thursday, March 6, 2008

Chief Mike Azuka Nwizu is the Managing Director and Chief Executive, Mic-Mat Odika Investment Company Limited.
Though a graduate of Business Management from the then University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife. He has succeeded in turning farming which was his hobby as a youth in the 70s to a lucrative business.

His company is the sole importer of orient catfish feed, which has been acknowledged by the relevant authorities as the best in the fish feed market.
According to him, “with orient feed, fish farming in Nigeria in particular and Africa in general is now easy and more profitable.”

He said that the days were gone when fish farmers experience high mortality rates in their fingerlings as orient feed has all it takes to ensure high survival of fingerlings.
His words “One of the distinctive qualities of orient feed is that it ensures very high survival of fingerlings. For instance, if you feed 10000 fingerlings with orient feed after two weeks only about 2000 would die and 8000 would survive.

But with the other feeds currently in the market the reverse is the case. Another unique factor is that orient feed is a super floating feed. By super floating, I mean that it has the ability of staying on top of the water for over twelve hours, which makes it possible for the fish to feed on them. Also it does not produce offensive odour neither does it change the colour of the water.”
In this interview, he also spoke on what government should do to assist farmers, the inability of farmers to access government grant for agriculture and on other issues.

Excerpts
My name is Chief Mike Azuka Nwizu. I am the Managing Director and Chief Executive, Mic-Mat Odika Investment Company Limited. I am a graduate of Business Management. But right now I am into fish farming. My love for agriculture began in the 70s when I was a teacher in a secondary. Then I had a poultry farm in my in the compound.

It was then that I began to develop deep interest in agriculture. At present, I still have a poultry and a fishpond in my compound but when I discovered that there is lack of quality fish feed in the market, I decided to go into importation of feed to fill up the vaccum. You know that a lot of Nigerians like to eat catfish, which they call ‘point and kill’. This demand had driven a lot of people into fish farming but there is no quality feed to keep up the production. That is why I went to Thailand to discuss with a firm known as Thai Spring Day Company Limited. They are based in Bangkok Thailand so that I would be bringing in their orient feed into the country in order to keep the fish farming business afloat since their feed is regarded as the best in the world.

Challenges
Well, the challenges that I encountered when I went into the business were enormous. It is obvious that going into the business of importation in Nigeria requires a lot of capital, which you and I know is difficult to come by. Another challenge is that of communication. You know that Thailand is not an English speaking country. I had to hire the services of a translator who would be translating my letters to their language and theirs to English. There was also the challenge of high import duties. Before you bring down anything to Nigeria, you have to pay so many agencies, which at the end of the day reduce the profit you would have got drastically. Those were some of the challenges that I encountered when I went into the business.

Unique
Orient catfish feed is a super floating feed, which means if floats on the water for more than ten hours. It does not change the colour of the water and it does not produce offensive odour. Another unique factor is that all the fish feeds in the market are round in shape but orient is spirally shaped just like rice. It also has lot of protein re-inforcements. Again all the fish feed market contain 45 per cent protein but orient contain 50 per cent that is 45 per cent protein and five percent raw protein. The orient is also the best-feed fish in the market. NAFDAC even made that confirmation after their inspection. We have done demonstrations in PortHarcout, Onitsha, Kaduna and many other cities in the country and every where we went people testify to the high quality.

Marketing style
I am a member of the National Association of Catfish Farmers of Nigeria. So, I make use of the members of the association. I sell through the association. I also sell directly to the fish farmers. I have distributors all over the country because my purpose is to get to the grass root. Catfish farming is very lucrative but it really depends on the capital you invested into it just like every other business. But the cliché there is that the profit depends on your turnover. The more people patronize you, the more you reap the fruit of your labour.

Government attitude towards farmers
I want to say that the attitude of government towards farmers is not encouraging. We are suffering untoward neglect from government. We are hardly remembered during policy making. What we hear on the television or read on the pages of the newspapers are decisions taking on our behalf. The late M.K.O. Abiola said that you cannot shave a man’s head in his absence but government, by taking decisions on our behalf, is shaving our heads in our absence. For instance, last year, we were told that N50 billion was budgeted for agriculture but I can tell you that no farmer benefited from the grant. I went around to ask the members of our association if any of them benefited from the grant but the answer that I got was emphatic no.

To make matters worse, most of the banks were ignorant of the procedure of accessing the grant because I went to some of the banks to ask them how I would benefit from it. Another thing is that I feel that government has a very low picture of who the farmer is. Their thinking is that a farmer is that illiterate villager who engages in the cultivation of yam and cassava. They don’t know that the picture that they have of farmers in the 70s have changed. That a lot of professionals are now in the business. It is against this backdrop that they choose not to consult farmers in policy making. I want government to have a change of attitude. Food is the first need of man. Government should try to hold formers in high esteem. A nation that cannot feed itself will be in crisis because a hungry man is an angry man. They should place more emphasis on the well being of farmers. They should provide soft loans and other incentives, which will enable us to function at optimal level.

Advice to youths
The advice that I have for the youths is to embrace farming. Rather than carrying their files up and down looking for non-existent jobs, they should go into farming. Farming is not only cultivation of yams and cassava. There are so many divisions like poultry, fish farming, piggry, mushroom farms, snail farming and the rest. So, it is not all branch of farming that you carry your cutlass and hoe to the bush. Some are very corporate in nature and the capitals to go into them are not enormous. So, I am advising the youths that while they are looking for white-collar jobs, they could start something in their compound and with that begin to put their lives together before the bigger opportunities begin to come. In the same vein, I am also advising every couple to establish one type of farm or the other in their compound as a way of helping to make ends meet.

As I said earlier, as a teacher in a Secondary School in the 70s, I had a poultry, which was complementing my meager salary. With the poultry, I was saving a lot of money like the money I would have used for eggs and meat. I was also selling the eggs and the fowls and was making good money.