Nigeria’s natural resource curse – from crude oil to agriculture

A recent tweet by the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria has been met with several back lashes as Nigerians continue to ponder what the rationale behind the post on availability of maize has to do with them while the country is faced with a removal of fuel subsidy which has led to a free rise in the price of petrol which ideally should be one of the cheapest commodities, in a country where this is in abundance, but till date has not liberated the Nigerian economy from its state of economic crunch. Would it then be out of place to say that the Nigerian economy is suffering from what is referred to as the natural resource curse? A state where countries with an abundance of natural resources, have failed to gain liberation in democracy and socioeconomic development when compared to countries with fewer natural resources?

Case in point was the letter from the CBN which placed a ban on the importation of maize into the country which according to the United States Department of Agriculture imported 400,000 metric tonnes of maize in 2019. Note that a research done by the International institute for Tropical Agriculture identified Nigeria as the largest producer of maize in Africa followed by Tanzania. Once again, a resource which comes effortlessly to a country which once lived off its revenue before the discovery of oil.

The ban in the importation of Maize has been a welcome idea for some maize farmers who say that Nigeria is blessed with an abundance of land and has the currently under harnessed potential of bridging the maize deficit experienced in the country, which has a production capacity of 10.5 metric tonnes of maize but needs about 15 metric tonnes for its population. Since the ban of maize and the restriction in movement as a result of the pandemic, as well as the lack of rainfall to reach the expected production capacity of farmers, there has been a shortfall in its supply to poultry farmers and a spike in the price of the scarce commodity.

The President’s tweet in quote reads thus “To ease the current high cost of poultry production, I have approved the release of 30,000 tons of maize from the natural reserves, to animal feed producers. We are mindful of the challenge of food prices, at a time when the economy is already in a slowdown caused by the global coronavirus situation, and are doing everything in our power to bring down the prices of food items across the country”

This comes after the outcry by poultry farmers who have lamented about the death of their poultry fostered by the lack of availability of feed. I spoke with maize farmers and poultry farmers who said that for the maize value chain, they have seen a drop in yield as a result of the scarcity of labour, fertilizers, lack of access to farm equipment’s caused by restriction in movement, request for bribe by the police before road movement access can be granted as well as lack of availability of seedlings. As expected, these challenges impacted on the other value chains and projected forecasts which increased the price of bags of maize for poultry owners who say about 50 chickens consume between 20 to 30 bags of maize feed in a month.

While this has not been a great experience for farmers, they claim that the country has enough farmland to plant and cultivate maize enough for her population, albeit, the lack of adequate funding has hindered their expansion as well as the lack of technologically innovative farming processes to cut down on the time for planting, harvesting, cultivation and drying. Asking some farmers across Nigeria if they were aware of the recent proclamation by the president to provide 30,000 tonnes from the nations reserve as seen on twitter, the farmers who barely have accounts on the social media platform said they were not aware of the information which raised the concern of effective communication and the need to boost digital literacy of farmers in very remote areas who may otherwise not be privy to such important information, hence aiding the democratisation of such opportunities.

It is not abstract knowledge that the expansion of the agricultural sector and empowerment of farmers who I had discovers were beginning to venture into other occupations like taxi driving as a result of the challenges faced by them, the use of technologically advanced methodologies of farming, educative programs for the youth in the sector and incentives would certainly increase production in the sector, create more jobs for the budding population, revamp the entrepreneurial potential of the youth and significantly lift the country from its current economic strain.