Nigeria’s hope of positioning agriculture as a means of ‘diversifying the economy’ is currently hanging by a thread, as insecurity makes it increasingly difficult for agricultural activities to thrive.
While some accounts of attacks on farmers make it to the news, most never do. Thousands of farmers have become displaced by clashes with herdsmen, banditry attacks and even the insurgency in the northeast. Farmers who should be on the farms producing crops, have become easy preys, and used for target practice at will by criminal elements, forcing some to abandon critically needed food production altogether.
Last Tuesday, four gunmen were said to have abducted Dayo Adewole, son of the immediate past minister of Health, Professor Isaac Adewole in Iroko, near Fiditi, Afijio local government of Oyo State. The minister’s son was kidnapped while he was in his farm in the midst of others.
“I have not farmed in 18 months because of this issue of insecurity,” Rotimi Williams, CEO Kereksuk Rice Farm told BDSUNDAY. He said operations on his 45,000 hectare farm in Nasarawa State have been suspended owing to recurring conflicts in the neighbouring communities. His farm it appeared, was sitting in the middle of all the conflicts, and it was a matter of time before it escalated to his expansive investment, likely to result not only in loss of financial investments, but more importantly as he said, human lives.
“When you are surrounded by conflict, people use your farm as IDP camp basically because they will come and seek refuge,” Williams said. “They know it is a matter of time before that conflict spills over.”
The insecurity in and around farming communities has been claiming not only the peasant, lowly farmers, but also the powerful in Nigerian society. This includes Alex Badeh, a four-star general in the Nigerian Airforce and until four years ago Nigeria’s Chief of Defence under the Goodluck Jonathan administration, who was murdered in December 2018, along the Abuja-Keffi Expressway on his way back from his farm.
Another prominent victim was Olu Falae, a former finance minister, and a former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, who was kidnapped by Fulani herdsmen in 2015 at his Ilado farm in Akure.
Events leading to his kidnap included several incursions into his farmland by cattle owned by Fulani herdsmen, occasionally destroying his farmland.
“This is my home where I was born. I have every right to farm here and live in peace here. So, this is totally unacceptable,” a newspaper report quoted Falae.
Farmers across the country, particularly from Benue, Zamfara, Adamawa, Taraba, Plateau, Delta, Edo Kebbi and some from south east states have continued to raise the alarm over the increasing threat to their lives and their farming activities by herdsmen, many of whom have allegedly turned into kidnappers.
As farming becomes more life threatening, so does achieving food security and agricultural prosperity in Nigeria becomes more difficult. For the second consecutive year, Nigeria again featured prominently in the 2019 Global Report on Food Crises, as the population of those unable to get food in the world remains over 100 million people. A BusinessDay report indicated while Nigeria has for years been making efforts to ramp up food production, over five million people remain in critical need of food, as insecurity limits production. It is especially worse in the Northeast where Boko Haram insurgents make it difficult for most people to venture into their farms. Consequently, nearly impossible to either produce food or even make money to buy it.
The Global Report on Food Crises identified Nigeria among eight countries with the worst food crises in 2018, which collectively accounted for two thirds of the total number of people facing acute food insecurity – amounting to nearly 72 million people. The countries in order of severity, were: Yemen, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, the Syrian Arab Republic, the Sudan, South Sudan and north Nigeria. Coordinated by the Food Security Information Network (FSIN), the report is described as a major collaborative effort between numerous agencies in the international humanitarian and development community.
“For (over) seven years there hasn’t been farming in the whole of Borno State, and we have been depending on the largesse of people like Dangote, and others, but for how long will Dangote feed Borno people with rice?” remarked Abba Gambo, a professor of Agriculture, and Borno indigene. The sentiment expressed in his comment during a meeting in Maiduguri last year, reflects the position of FSIN, that humanitarian assistance cannot solve the lingering food crisis, only security will.
When BusinessDay visited Borno and Yobe states last year, meetings with farmers and some of their leaders, showed there was a lot of fear due to insecurity, preventing them from returning to the farms to resume food production.
CALEB OJEWALE
