From Wilson Okereke, Afikpo
With all the excitement which the 2023 general election is stirring up across the country, it appears that irregularities, rigging and vote buying expected to accompany the pill will pale in significance if food scarcity hits the nation next year.
Director General of Ebonyi State Fertilizer and Chemical Company Limited, Professor Ogbonnaya Chukwu, who spoke with Sunday Sun recently, said the ongoing war in Ukraine, launched against the country by the Russian Federation and its leader, President Vladimir Putin, in the avowed quest to recreate the old Soviet Union or a semblance of it, has caused further global disruptions to agriculture and associated activities first initiated by the COVID-19 pandemic. One clear impact of this is the sudden jump in the price of fertilisers. Please read on…
Considering all the indices that relate to farming in Nigeria, especially against the backdrop of insecurity in farming communities across the country, what thoughts come to you?
There will be hunger that the farmers may not have enough to eat let alone having excess produce for sale by next year because of the high cost of fertilizer and other factors.
For instance, Russia-Ukraine war is one of the issues. One may begin to wonder how did Nigeria become affected by the problem involving two European countries. The fact is that the MOP chemical used for the production of NPK fertilizer comes from Russia and DAP comes from Morocco. It is only urea and limestone that can be gotten in Nigeria. Even the urea is not 100 per cent found in Nigeria because only three plants are licensed today to produce urea and the companies are Indorama, Notore and Dangote.
Thus, this is the issue about the raw materials because before Russia woke up and invaded Ukraine, the Nigerian government had ordered for four vessels of MOP from Russia. As we are speaking now, not even a bag of the product has arrived and what is happening in Nigeria in the area of fertilizer business is found in other parts of the world including USA but what worsened the case of Nigeria is the exchange rate of the dollar.
This is what compounded the case of Nigeria. Now we sell NPK 20:10:10 at the rate of N20,000 to the agro dealers, against N8,500 of last year, we sell directly to farmers at the rate of N21,000 instead of N10,000 or N9,000 of last year. This is why everyone is crying and because of the high cost of fertilizer, this is what gave birth to fertilizer adulteration in the market. The bad products have become the order of the day as many people had begun to fake our products using hand stitching machines.
They equally fake the bags, Indorama products and other brands. In our attempt to curb the excesses of the unscrupulous elements who are selling fertilizers in Ebonyi State, the state government had directed that all the fertilizer dealers must stay together in one market at the Fertilizer Market behind the fertilizer company. That was what led to the announcements indicating that nobody is allowed to be selling fertilizer at Hosanna Street, International Market or other areas within the town.
Why were the dealers not provided with a space at the International Market to bring their products closer to the farmers?
In the case of the International Market, fertilizer is not meant to be exposed to humans and food stuff because it is a chemical. It is on this note that everyone was directed to relocate to the Fertilizer Market given to them but surprisingly the recalcitrant ones refused to comply and that was what led to the enforcement action after eight months of negotiating with the sellers and in the process, we discovered a lot of adulterated fertilizers with some of the people.
By the time we are done with the enforcement, we will gather all the fake fertilizers and burn them before the public with the press covering it. I am urging the farmers to come to the company and buy or equally patronize the registered agro-dealers in the fertilizer market. So, the essence of bringing the dealers together is to curtail the circulation of the fake products.
Does the state’s fertilizer company have the capacity to provide farmers with adequate quantity of fertilizers in this cultivation period?
Concerning its availability, we have enough that can serve both South East and South South geopolitical zones since we are the only fertilizer plant in these two areas.
Additionally, the Federal Government is making a concerted effort to make fertilizer available to the farmers in the country but its affordability depends on one’s pocket because what is not affordable to one can be affordable to another. Having said that, I want to us to recall that Ebonyi State Fertilizer and Chemical Company Limites is one of the blending plants participating in the Presidential Fertilizer Initiative (PFI) of the federal government. The programme was initiated and introduced by President Muhammadu Buhari in 2016, when he came into power. A bag of NPK fertilizer was sold between N11,000 and N13,000, thus, the president felt that the farmers could not easily afford the product at such amount, so he introduced PFI.
How can the peasant farmers have access to the fertilizers too?
In Ebonyi State, agro-dealers have shops in the hinterlands where other petty farmers can easily buy. Besides, there are still other retailers whom after buying from the dealers will begin to measure with cups and buckets. So, the needs of the farmers are catered for through this process.
Is it true that there are herbicides which can equally serve as fertilizers to the crops after application?
I have not come across such but if one asks me about the liquid fertilizer, I can affirmatively answer yes because it is what some farmers are using in Taraba State. Some companies are now using GAS (Granium Ammonium Sulphate) to blend, though we don’t use it here.
I still reiterate that there will be hunger by next year because of the high cost of fertilizer and as a result whoever that produces crops at the end of the season will likely sell at an exorbitant amount in order to recoup his money.
The farmers would want to recoup their money and it will be worse after some persons may have bought fake fertilizers out of ignorance and encounter loss at the end of the harvest period.
What are other reasons for the introduction of the Presidential Fertilizer Initiative?
Before then, it was only six plants that were viable in the country to produce NPK fertilizer. This particular company was moribund by that time. The federal government was providing all the four raw materials needed for the production of NPK. The items would be brought down to the participating plants, we would blend for them and sell for them based on their authorization and put the money realised into the collection account. In 2017, when we joined PFI fully, together with 2018 and 2019, they were paying us N620 per bag on every finished product and that is our reward. The N620 was not our profit because out of the money, we would produce bags and pay for labour. We did buy diesel, thread for stitching and also maintain the equipment of the company. That was the model that we operated from 2017-2019 but in 2020, the blending plants in the country complained and drew the attention of the federal government to the fact that the money was not enough to meet the essential needs of each company. Based on that, it was increased to N750 per bag in the same year and that was what we were doing until 2021, when the programme changed to the restructured PFI which requires that the Federal Government will provide the raw materials either at Port Harcourt or Lagos as the case may be; we will go there, pay for the materials either in cash or through bank guarantee, pay for the transportation and bring the raw materials and then produce.
It is through this development that the government partially lost control of the prices of the products. I can remember that in 2017, after we had produced fertilizers for the government, the price was usually written on the bag as N5,500, the N500 would be the Federal Government’s profit per bag and that was 2017, 2018 and 2019 model. In 2020, the model changed a little as the government further reduced the price to N5,000, then agro-dealers would pay N4,500. In 2021, it was not business as usual because we did buy the raw materials, made all the necessary expenses involving all the logistics and in order to reverse the situation, we decided to sit down with the government and carried out appropriate pricing and it was approved by the government that the fertilizer should be sold at N8,600 per bag and that is what brought about the widening gap, but we later cut the price to N8,500. Agro-dealers were supposed to sell at the rate of N9,500 to the farmers but some sold at the rate of N10,000, some N11,000 and that was the beginning of the crisis in the fertilizer market.
In 2022, the restructured programme continued but what caused the high cost of fertilizer was the invasion of Ukraine by Russia which has lingered till now.