Last week’s report that Nigeria would lose N270 billion in three years through the importation of palm oil should jolt every Nigerian to the reality that the country is not doing nearly enough for its self-sustenance and prosperity. The figure is based on December 2019 World Bank’s price index for crude palm oil.
This is one deficit Nigerians would find too hard to reconcile with, much less accept, because Nigeria was once not only the world’s largest producer of palm oil, but also the world’s largest exporter of the product. To transit from the world’s largest exporter to a huge importer takes considerable disruption barring a natural disaster. And it is not that we cannot produce more. The statistics show we produce an average of one million metric tonnes per annum whereas we consume an average of 1.45 million metric tonnes a year. But the Malaysians who are known to have borrowed their first seedlings from Nigeria produce 43 million metric tonnes, Indonesia in the same belt produces 21 million metric tonnes, while Thailand produces three million metric tonnes; Columbia 1.680 million metric tonnes, and Nigeria slides from the first to the fifth position.
Nigerians would feel pained by this backward slide because in the palm oil belt of Nigeria – the South West, South-South, South East, and North Central states – palm trees grow naturally and bounteously with little help. Most times they grow wild and when the plants grow enough to be noticed, they are merely nursed and even so not with a great deal of effort. This generalised attitude to oil palm production has been the long tale of neglect, carefree attitude which eventually led to the current shameful situation where we have to actually import a produce we can comfortably grow.
We surmise that the same measure of neglect and inattention, plus a lack of foresight equally applies to other Nigerian agricultural products like rubber, cocoa, cotton, groundnuts (when the so-called groundnut pyramids grazed the clouds), which, before the advent of petroleum, were glibly described as Nigeria’s cash crops. It was on these feats the country was able to plan and execute its first and second development plans. These agric produce brought home millions of pounds in revenue for free education in the West and Midwest, rural development in the East and the Midwest, and the pursuit of social and economic development in all parts of Nigeria.
The question is now asked why did no one blow the whistle or raise red flags when the palm oil, groundnut, cocoa and others started diminishing year after year. The correct answer, of course, is that revenue from petroleum rendered the agricultural revenues less of an immediate necessity. But the true answer is that it marked our loss of focus and the beginning of our journey to being the country with the largest number of extremely poor people on earth. Petroleum revenue, which ought to have been an investable supplement to the agricultural revenue, with both streams leading to an accumulation of capital that would fund our industrialisation and infrastructure development, would have naturally led us to enhanced standard of living and economic development.
JB Farms, an industrial producer and refiner of palm oil to vegetable oil, admits the existence of huge gap in supply and demand. It has capacity to refine 200 tonnes of palm oil daily. Yet its major supplier, the Okomu Oil Palm Plc. was only able to supply 300 tonnes for the month of January 2020. Now some of the most informed views about how to close the deficit are that it might take up to 10 years, although the growers association thinks it could close in four years if it could receive some support in terms of Central Bank’s intervention loans. The Vice Chancellor of the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta (FUNAAB), Prof. Kolawole Salako, argues that the country needs to establish more oil plantations with good breeds and to block wastages by using modern equipment for processing and maximum extraction of oil from palm fruits. He also believes that higher yields are possible within the present acreage of palm trees by concentrated productivity.
The Executive Director of Nigerian Institute for Oil Palm Research (NIFOR), Benin City, Edo State, Dr. Celestine Ikuenobe, sees the solution through the planting of improved varieties of palm seedlings. He was less optimistic about the period it would take to close the deficit which he said would be 10 years. But the President of the Palm Growers Association of Nigeria, Igwe Anthony Uche, is urging the Central Bank to invest in Nigerian growers when it disburses its N30 billion intervention fund. With CBN’s help, Uche thinks the deficit could be closed in four years. NIFOR has promised to produce 20 million seedlings of the improved varieties in the next two years for farm rejuvenation, new plantations and for expansion of existing farms.
The growers are organising in clusters in each state, he said, and the data of farmers, their states and villages would be forwarded to the CBN. The palm oil story should be reversed because we have the manpower, the arable land, conducive atmosphere and even the economic incentives to increase production and return to the market as a net exporter. The Federal Government should make this as one of its aims in the next two years.