USSIJU MEDANER
As usual, we always have one issue after another preoccupying our national space and serving as a weapon in the hands of both the pundits and critics. Currently, it is the argument for and against the proposed Tax bill before the National Assembly. It is evident that the Nigerian tax landscape is on the cusp of significant changes, as the federal government proposes a new tax bill reportedly aimed at simplifying the tax system, said to aim at reducing the burden on small businesses and enhancing revenue generation, according to the government. Fortunately or unfortunately, the proposed legislation has sparked intense debate among stakeholders, with some hailing it as a bold step towards fiscal reform. In contrast, others express concerns about its potential impact on the economy and citizens, especially its tendency to deepen regional inequality.
While this is the current national topic, I do not consider it a pertinent issue for discussion until I get much better clarity on the matter. While it is essential to run a fair and equitable tax regime that favours all federating units of the country, we cannot afford to lose focus on more tangible problems we have been struggling with over time. One of the reasons the concerns against the proposed tax bill resonate the way it does is because we are already, as a people across the country, struggling with survival at the minimum level. The scourge of food insecurity is caused primarily by low harvest as a result of multiple causes, including the untamed influences of intermediaries that arbitrarily fix prices of commodities to the detriment of the final consumers and also partly as a result of the increased cost of transportation due to the sudden and massive rise in the pump price of automobile fuel in the country since the removal of fuel subsidy.
We cannot adequately feed ourselves, and a nation that cannot feed itself would be plagued with many attendant difficulties, just as much as we are experiencing now in Nigeria. When we cannot produce enough for immediate consumption, we won’t have a surplus, including excess raw materials for cottage industries.
Consequently, we would be limited industrially as a nation. It is a fact that every developed nation today has built its development on the threshold of agricultural development. When our people struggle to eat proportionate food with standard requirements, the tendency for increased crime and criminality would be high, just as much as we have with us now.
If, as a country, we are effectively and efficiently engaged in agriculture and are producing food and agricultural raw materials at the level of our inbuilt capacity, we would have a substantial population of our people economically engaged along the entire value chains of the nation’s agricultural industry, and thereby lowering unemployment figure of the country, increasing access to essential food commodities for all citizens, rising to a reasonable level, the national GDP, and the standard of living of Nigerians.
There would have been a substantial reduction in the crimes across the country as many who are pushed to unholy acts by poverty and survival instincts wouldn’t be there. The ease with which the bandits, kidnappers, and even the insurgents recruits would have dropped as free hands would drop across the country.
So, from whatever angle we look at it, the crux of our national challenges is the failure of the Nigerian authorities at all level to prioritise agriculture as the driver of national survival. Since we abandoned the sector at the onset of crude oil discovery and the Nigerian government’s eventual commencement of crude oil business in 1965, we have continued to plunge deeper into the mess we are in today. And while we continue to recognise that we have missed the track, our responses have continued to be mere political rhetoric without substantial results or, perhaps, imputed actions that are ridiculed by the mammoth corruption in our body polity.
When we finally become serious about our problems, we will accord the sector the attention it desires, and we will do everything to see the industry working and immune from all factors that impede the functionalities of other sectors and systems in the country. That would be the time when we will realise that a nation can’t have 774 departments of agriculture across all its local government administration, 37 ministries of agriculture across the 36 states and FCT, numerous agricultural-based parastatals, agencies and institutes that are gulping billions of naira on a monthly basis and yet, cannot adequately feed our people.
We will call ourselves to order and restore effectiveness and efficiency in the sector. We are a nation blessed with more than enough arable land to feed our population and almost a quarter of our continent; in fact, only the northern region of Nigeria would feed the entire West Africa subregion of Africa. Yet, we are where we are today, groaning under the burden of food insecurity and its attendant challenges.
When we recognise that this burden is self-inflicted and our governments at all levels ramp up the needed political wills to return to the table and return the country to the basis to kickstart the strive for survival, growth and development of the country, we will also realise that our people and nation can live above the current limitations we have created and are subjected to. This is an awakening we cannot afford to overlook now because we may not survive another year under this weight of food insecurity.
At this point, we have to sincerely ask ourselves what we must do differently to solve this critical problem. Who should be responsible for the actions required to get the changes needed in the sector onboard? How and where do we start from? What time frame should we allow ourselves to turn the table around food insecurity in the country? This and many more questions must be asked and sincerely backed with realistic and implementable responses.
The only feasible first line of action would be for the country to declare a state of emergency in the national agricultural sector. Implementing this bold declaration must be followed up by setting targets and timelines bankrolled by sustainable resources and marching orders that give no room for failure.
As I have advised severally, the 774 departments of agriculture across the country must be mandated to aggressively go to farms and produce substantial food for their immediate communities. Target crops, including grains, rice, beans, cassava, pepper, tomatoes, etc, should top the list of cultivated crops. At the state level, all the 36 ministries of agriculture and the FCT department of agriculture must be robustly engaged in commercial agriculture, turning out selected produce in large commercial quantities capable of rewriting the national food situation for good. To achieve this, we would have to temporarily change the primary focus of the NYSC scheme to use the guaranteed population of Corps members as direct labour and managers of farms across the country.
The states would be responsible for making lands available; the ministries of agriculture working in alignment with the NYSC are to organise the members into farming groups and set supervisors over each group. The supervisors are suitably agricultura l extension officers from ministri,es and departments of agriculture or graduates of agricultural-based courses among the Corps members.
Each state should establish an agriculture central planning committee to plan, direct and coordinate the state-wide farming program and the actions to achieve the grand objectives. The Federal Ministry of Agriculture should equally up its central coordination system to increase agriculture practices across the country while playing clearly defined supporting roles to all units, within the system. The regional development commissions should not be excluded from the joint effort to resolve the problem. NDDC, NEDC and other established regional commissions are to invest massively in farming to contribute as much as possible to the food supply of their respective regions.
While cultivation is ongoing, we must set up both a central and individual state food and commodities market and a pricing mechanism system to manage prices for the mutual benefit of the final consumers and the farm owners and private or public ownership. This should be the direct advantage of the massive investment. Massive production should guarantee availability and access at the most affordable cost, displacing the inflation we are grappling with. We should see the possibility of a 50kg bag of rice selling for a maximum of #50,000 again at any location in the country and even less at some locations. The same approach is to be applied to every other staple in the country.
Another consideration is to revisit the availability of storage systems nationwide and establish the effectiveness of the same. If need be, we must invest to improve storage availability and proximity. An exemplary storage facility for farm produce will help the country control the market prices and continue making more investments in the sector to keep it viable while encouraging, as much as there would be, mutual agreements between and among all the parties.
These conscious and massive interventions must not be limited to crop propagation alone. The livestock system of the country is as much hit as every other sector. We must create a pathway to producing cheap and easily accessible livestock inputs, including feeds. We must find a way to circumspect the non-affordable animal feeds currently responsible for the high cost of poultry and other livestock in the country. We should devise alternatives or find a way to restore the cost of these feeds t substantiallyo what they used to be in the recent past or even better.
Penultimately, providing incentives for small cottage industries that transform excess farm produce into processed and other finished products is a policy strategy we would have to employ. Let us encourage mini industrialisation cropping up from our renewed investments in agriculture. These should include guaranteed support from the government in terms of low-interest rate loan facilities, security and any other support as may be demanded.
When would this commence? The only appropriate time is now. Dry season farming cannot escape us, or we will probably pay another high price for prolonged hunger among our population. Now is the time to wrestle control from the greedy hands of opportunistic middlemen who have hijacked the food chains and are arbitrarily fixing prices to the detriment of the people. This should be the priority of all responsible government systems and institutions in the country. Solve the national food insecurity problem and see the country rise from its current rubble.
GOD BLESS THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA!
