One of the key mantras of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration is: “We will grow what we eat and eat what we grow.” The aim is self-sufficiency in food production. But the Buhari administration has utterly failed to operationalise that mantra and achieve the goal of food security. Food shortages and food inflation abound in Nigeria. Indeed, in 2020, the United Nations listed Nigeria among the six countries in the world where hunger is most rife. Yet, Buhari continues to engage in gimmickry and empty rhetoric about agriculture.
Recently, on January 18, President Buhari unveiled what was dubbed “the world’s largest rice pyramids.” The “pyramids” were organised by the Rice Farmers Association of Nigeria (RIFAN) and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), which has, since 2016, poured billions of naira into rice production through the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme (ABP). There were, reportedly, 15 pyramids, each purportedly containing 1 million bags of paddy rice.
But if the government expected Nigerians to be appreciative of the gesture, it was mistaken. Instead, the whole exercise was dogged by widespread cynicism. Nigerians questioned the veracity of the government’s claims: Were there 15 pyramids? Did each contain 1 million bags? And where, by the way, did the rice come from? But beyond the doubts about provenance and facts, there are deeper concerns about motives and appropriateness.
Where is the wisdom in talking of “the world’s largest rice pyramids” when Nigeria is nowhere near China, India, Indonesia and many other countries in rice production?
Truth is, the unveiling of the rice pyramids smacked of a political gimmick. Where is the wisdom in talking of “the world’s largest rice pyramids” when Nigeria is nowhere near China, India, Indonesia, and many other countries in rice production? For instance, in 2019, China produced 148.49 million metric tons (mmt) of rice, followed by India, which produced 116.42mmt. What about Nigeria? Well, it produced 4.79mmt of rice, for a population of about 206 million people. So, what’s the talk of “the world’s largest rice pyramids” about?
One must also question the rationale for the chest-beating when rice consumption outstrips production, thus challenging the notion of food security. In 2019, rice consumption in Nigeria was 7.0mmt as against the production of 4.79mmt. Every year, since the inception of the Buhari administration, rice consumption has always outstripped production. With Nigeria’s population exploding, how can rice production ever match consumption?
Then, there is the question of why, if Nigeria has “the world’s largest rice pyramids”, the price of rice has not crashed. Surely, large-scale production of rice should reflect in market prices. Yet, a 50 kg bag of rice still costs between 24,000 and 30,000 naira! It is utterly insensitive and out of touch with the reality of ordinary life in Nigeria for the government to talk of unveiling “the world’s largest rice pyramids.” Here’s a country that has, since 2018, been classified as “the poverty capital of the world” and that, according to the UN, is one of the world’s hunger-stricken countries.
Of course, at the heart of the problem is the Buhari government’s treatment of agriculture as a political project rather than an economic one. For President Buhari, agriculture is a matter of dogma. His ideological soulmate is Godwin Emefiele, governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, who has, more or less, turned the CBN’s focus away from its core mandate of price stability to agricultural financing. Truth is, the CBN under Emefiele behaves like a bank of agriculture with Emefiele as its CEO.
Last week, Emefiele said that the CBN, through the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme, has disbursed nearly 1 trillion naira to over 4.5 million smallholder farmers. Of course, it’s not surprising that both Buhari and Emefiele want to show Nigerians that this massive spending has yielded valuable and significant results. But the truth is, it has not! The government’s investment in agriculture has not represented value for money in terms of the outcomes.
Recently, BusinessDay published a front-page story titled: “Agric growth under Buhari weakest since 1999 despite investment.” The newspaper’s investigation showed that, with an average of 10.48% between 2016 and 2020, growth in the agricultural sector was the weakest since 1999, despite the several billions of naira that the Buhari government poured into the sector. The finding is a serious indictment, betraying evidence of policy failure, for a president who described the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme as “the reference point in the administration’s agricultural revolution effort.”
Truth be told, if the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme were ever probed, there would be plenty of evidence of mismanagement and misappropriation! Indeed, evidence already shows that the programme is dogged by several malpractices.
For instance, one international report says of the ABP: “In the rice sector, government incentives have benefitted ‘political farmers’ who use a political connection to access loans and vouchers and distribute these onward for profits.” The House of Representatives is also reportedly investigating how billions of naira of ABP loans were disbursed and why several farmers who received the loans have defaulted. What’s more, according to a BusinessDay study entitled ‘Nigeria Rice Industry Report’ (2020), “many rural/small-holder farmers and cottage agri-businesses criticised the programme as they were unable to benefit from it.” So, the ABP is not working; it’s based on dogma, not sound policy.
But we must return to the root cause of the problem: President Buhari’s ideological fixation with agriculture. In his speech at the unveiling of the rice pyramids, Buhari said: “The significance of today’s occasion can be better understood by looking at the various economic strides that the administration has achieved through agriculture.” In other words, his administration’s entire economic philosophy is anchored on agriculture.
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The same government that’s pouring billions into agriculture and shielding the sector from the competition through import bans and prohibitive tariffs is stifling the manufacturing sector by denying it access to foreign exchange to import critical intermediate goods and is making the business environment unattractive to the private sector and foreign investors.
But Buhari’s ideological fixation with agriculture is misguided and has utterly failed to produce tangible results. Any sensible agricultural policy must lead to 1) agricultural and economic growth, 2) job creation and poverty reduction, 3) availability and affordability of food items and 4) agricultural exports. None of these happen in Nigeria. With over 80 percent of farmers being smallholders, agriculture in Nigeria is too subsistence-based to yield sophisticated outcomes. Yet, Buhari’s fetishisation of subsistence agriculture continues.
In his recent Channels TV interview, President Buhari kept saying that “only 2.5 percent of Nigerian arable land is being used” and that “we have to go back to the land.” But has agriculture reduced poverty in Nigeria? Even Buhari himself admitted that his plan to lift 100m Nigerians out of poverty through agriculture had suffered a setback. What setback? Well, he said “resource shortage.” He listed activities like “clearing the land, dividing the land, giving seeds and fertilisers,” and then said: “all these cost money.”
So, if, in Buhari’s own words, his government’s much-trumpeted plan to lift 100m Nigerians out of poverty through agriculture has hit the buffers because of rudimentary agricultural problems, why then is he saying that Nigerians must go back to the land? Well, the type of agriculture he has in mind is peasant agriculture, characterised by labour-intensive manual farming.
But peasant farming won’t feed Nigeria’s burgeoning population, won’t grow the economy, and won’t generate export earnings. Only mechanised and commercial farming can achieve those outcomes. Nigeria can’t be a serious agrarian economy through peasantry; it must transition from smallholder farming to large-scale commercial agriculture.
Even so, agriculture is not enough. Adam Smith says in ‘The Wealth of Nations’: “No nation is ever rich by the exploitation of the crude produce of the soil but the exportation of manufactures and services.” So, Nigeria needs robust manufacturing and services sectors and a healthy inflow of foreign direct investment. Sadly, those are not Buhari’s priorities. He’s fixated on peasantry!
