By Louis Ibah and Steve Agbota
As the Federal Government continues to take steps towards rebooting the economy, the World Bank has warned of an impending famine if concrete steps are not taken to boost food production and sufficiency in the country.
The World Bank President, Mr. Jim Yong Kim, while declaring open the last IMF/World Bank Group Spring meetings in Washington, USA, had raised concerns that the aftermath of conflicts and climate shocks could lead to the worst refugee crisis since World War II. Kim also predicted that famine in Nigeria and other parts of Africa, might soon assume a global emergency.
Although the Federal Government had once denied being affected by famine, the World Bank chief said the priority was to work with partners to make sure that families have access to food and water, as millions of lives are at risk and will die if nothing is done quickly to put the refugee crisis under control.
Already, in the last one year, following the onset of the recession, most Nigerians impacted by the recession have attributed it to an inflation fueled by an astronomical rise in the cost of basic food stuff like rice, beans, garri, tomatoes, millet, pepper, onions, plantain, bananas, wheat, among others. Indeed, there is no denying the fact that majority of Nigerians are suffering from hunger due to acute shortage of food.
Most experts who spoke to Daily Sun have therefore recommended that greater efforts be made to unlock the full potential of the country’s agricultural and food manufacturing industry to assist in the recovery process. The experts have also noted that with dwindling incomes from the oil and gas sector, agriculture remains the next most viable sector whose potential could be harnessed in the short to medium terms to boost revenue earnings, generate more jobs for citizens and above all, ensure food sufficiency for Nigeria’s teeming population.
Experts’ views
“Agriculture appears to be the one industry that, if we invest and do the right thing, thereafter we can get something out of it very fast in the short to medium term,” said Abel Ezomo, a farmer who also runs a local travel and tour agency. “I am an investor in the agriculture sector. We should not take the warning by the World Bank lightly. We have to start taking actions to boost our food production and storage capabilities to mitigate any anticipated famine in the future,” Ezomo added.
Chairman, All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), Lagos chapter, Mr. Femi Oni, described the warning by the World Bank as a timely signal for Nigeria to come up with the right policies that would stimulate investments in the agricultural sector.
“More Nigerians should be encouraged to go into farming and the right atmosphere should also be created by the government for investors to thrive in the agriculture sector,” said Oni.
On his part, the Chairman of AgroPlus Greenland Farm, Mr. Abdul Hammed, said Nigerians should be grateful to the World Bank for raising the alarm over an impending famine and unemployment in Nigeria.
“The prediction is accurate and it comes at the right time and we should be prepared,” said Hammed.
“Our government has not been sincere with what they are doing in the area of food security in this country. They must stop playing politics with agriculture. They must help farmers by providing all the inputs needed for them to thrive. Agriculture sector needs more budgetary allocation. The current budget for agriculture can’t solve the problems,” he added.
According to Hammed, for Nigeria not to experience the predicted famine, there is need to increase production across board.
He added that, “for Nigeria to be self-sufficient in food production, farmers need to be exposed to modern agronomy procedure in food production through capacity building. We need to build more silos close the major farm producing states across the country like Benue, Kano, Jigawa, Niger and others to reduce losses. A visit to some of these states will reveal lots of foods worth millions of naira wasting away. Government must do something about this if we are to avoid famine.”
Dumping, forex and glut
Some indigenous farmers and other investors in agro-allied processing businesses who spoke to Daily Sun, however, said they were experiencing a glut that is threatening the profitability of their businesses.
The investors attributed the glut to the flooding of the Nigerian market with fake and cheap substandard imported foods, noting that this trend has marred their efforts to sell locally processed ones to consumers in the country. And no investor wants to put his money into a business that he won’t be able to recoup his investments. That’s the horrible experience of local farmers in Nigeria and it could hurt whatever plans are on ground to mitigate the occurrence of famine in the future.
President/CEO of Erisco Foods Limited, Chief Eric Umeofia, in an interview granted Daily Sun, alleged that the growth of the local tomato paste industry, for instance, had been severely hampered by the fact that a lot of fake/substandard tomato paste products are being imported and dumped in Nigeria through the activities of some foreigners and their Nigerian collaborators in some of the regulatory agencies.
Umeofia said the tomato industry could have lost about N3 billion to N4 billion to a glut (of unsold goods) due to a high influx of foreign substandard tomato paste.
“I am of the view that there is a foreign mafia working in collaboration with officials in our regulatory agencies to import and flood the Nigerian market with fake and substandard foods like tomato paste,” said Umeofia.
“I cannot speak for others, but in our own company, dumping of fake and substandard tomato paste, which is sold very cheap in the market, has forced us to stock our high quality tomato paste and we are losing goods worth over N2 billion to this negative trend because we cannot find the market to sell them. Dumping is a major challenge to the growth of the local food industry in Nigeria,” lamented Umeofia.
Daily Sun learnt that despite a ban on the import of some foods into the country, some of the affected local manufactures have been at loggerheads with such agencies like the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON), National Food Drugs Administration And Control (NAFDAC), Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Immigration, and the Consumer Protection Council (CPC) with various letters of dissent and other forms of complaints made to the Ministers of Trade and Investments, Health, and Agriculture over what most of the manufacturers consider as weak monitoring mechanism by these regulatory agencies to check the influx of substandard and relatively cheaper imported foods into the country.
Umeofia also said Nigerians must change their attitudes and start consuming Nigerian foods. He said patronage of locally processed or manufactured foods remain one sure way of encouraging the survival of existing local manufacturers and also encouraging new entrants. He also said access to foreign exchange (forex) to import raw materials and machines has remained a great source of concern to local investors in the agriculture industry and urged the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to pay particular attention to the happenings in the industry and allocate more forex to investors in agriculture.
According to Alhaji Albasu, a top official with the Association of Agricultural Products and Equipment Manufacturers in Nigeria, local investors are fully abreast of the numerous inherent advantages of the Nigerian agro and food industry and the turnover and profits it could yield to investors if the government sets the right conditions.
He said some of those urging government not to ban importation of certain foods the country has a comparative advantage are those that have been in the import and marketing business for more than 20 years and who also have failed to yield to calls by the government to invest in backward integration projects until indigenous investors started doing so.
“Importation from foreign countries cannot solve the food problems of Nigeria; foreigners don’t even believe in Nigeria. Today, 70 per cent of factories in Kano have shut down because of foreign imports,” said Alhaji Albasu.
“The idea is to stop creating jobs in foreign countries through import of foreign goods. We have to look inwards and make the investments that can give us the food sufficiency we need and also create jobs for Nigerians,” he added.
Most analysts are of the view that the task of achieving food sufficieny in Nigeria is one that should be pursued jointly by the government and the public sector.