FG seeks N30bn loan to buy grains to avoid famine

Nigeria is now sourcing a loan of about N30billion from the Central Bank and some commercial lenders in order to stock up grains and avert a looming food crisis.

Nigeria’s Minister of Agricultural resources, Audu Ogbeh, who confirmed the loan said it would be used to procure and store at least 25,000 to 30,000 tons of grains in silos across the country as the nation’s green reserves will dry up by January, with nothing left to feed the people.

“I am rushing back now (from Marrakech) we have to look for money to begin buying also and storing in our green reserves because by January they will have dried up and if they do, then we go hungry and then people get angry,” Ogbeh told BusinessDay in an exclusive interview on the sidelines of the ongoing conference on climate change, COP22, in Marrakech, Morocco.

“ I am already talking to banks and so on, to find money for us, about N30 billion to store at least 25,000 to 30,000 tons of grains in our silos. We have 33 silos and most of them have the capacity of a 100,000 tons each and we have to fill them up quickly” the minister disclosed.

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, with well over 180 million population is dealing with excessive pressure on its grain supplies mostly due to exports.

Climate change has also affected yields in some of the countries where the grains are exported to, causing them to rely mostly on Nigeria, which seems helpless halting trade, particularity with its sisters in the ECOWAS region.

Nigeria also has had to battle tracking the trade in grains, as these trades are not well documented since they are mostly informal, according to Ogbe.

The Presidency recently warned that Nigeria, currently Africa’s largest producer of cereals and grains risks famine from early next year, following a huge demand in the global market that is targeting the country’s surplus production. Following this discovery, President Muhammadu  Buhari asked the Ministry of Agriculture to present a quick plan for the purchase of surplus grains to be stored in warehouses across the country to save for the rainy day .

“We are dealing with excessive pressure on our grain supplies. We have had a bumper harvest this year ,especially of millet and very soon of soghurm. In sorghum production, we are number two in the world now and in millet we are almost number one and then we find ourselves feeding over seven or eight other countries North, West, and to the Central part of Africa,” the minister stressed.

Just in August, Ogbe also alerted of a looming drastic shortfall in food supply following destruction of farms and crops by locusts and quelea birds in the North.

Ogbe had consequently held an emergency meeting with agriculture commissioners from the affected states, including  Kebbi, Zamfara, Sokoto, Jigawa, Abia, Kano, Borno, Yobe, Benue, Gombe, Adamawa and Katsina states.

The minister told BuisnessDay that the food shortage is compounded by the fact that Nigeria’s grains are exported to as far as Southern Libya, Sudan, Chad, Mauritania, Senegal, Mali and they come in trucks from about five markets in West Africa to Nigeria, 500 trucks leave Nigeria daily. “From the Dawanu market in Kano, Maigatari in Jigawa, Ilela in Sokoto and before Boko Haram, from Bama market. They just keep loading.

“The climate change has created a problem in these areas. There is very little rain and therefore the soil is parched and it has become impossible for them to grow food and produce their own grains so they depend entirely on Nigeria.

“Now we have a situation where you cannot stop them because they are part of ECOWAS and since you can not stop them, they come in and buy. Number two; it is an unrecorded trade because it is informal. They come, they change their cephas in the market and then they load. Number three, our currency is so weak now that shopping in Nigeria is the finest thing in the world to do.”

“It means in one way we have a market for our produce, but the other point is that we have to feed ourselves first before we think of selling. How to strike a balance between the two is our dilemma” he said.

Elizabeth Archibong