… Political farmers hijack agric funds
Stories by Steve Agbota [email protected] 08033302331
With less than 3 per cent instead of the 10 per cent of annual budget prescribed by the Maputo Declaration of 2003, devoted to the sector. Several stakeholders have accused the Mohammadu Buhari administration of paying lip service to development of the agriculture. They argued that rather than build on the strong foundation laid by his predecessor to jumpstart a national agricultural revolution, the government of the day is now breeding political farmers interested only in grabbing the lion share of the various government agriculture intervention funds, leaving geninue peasant farners at the mercy of commercial banks.
This development, they argued has further stagnated agriculture, thereby making the process of its diversification a day dream.
At independence in 1960, agriculture was the mainstay of Nigeria’s economy, as it contributed the largest portion of foreign exchange inflow into the country It accounted for about 63 per cent of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), typical of developing agrarian nations.
Incomes then were derived from the export of major cash crops like rubber, cocoa, palm oil, cashew nuts, groundnut and cotton, cassava, among others, and provided more than 70 per cent of active labour for Nigerian citizens.
However, with the 2013 rebased figures, the agricultural sector contributed 21.97 per cent or N17.625 trillion ($112.26 billion) of the total N80.22 trillion ($510 billion).
Following the inauguration of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration on May 29, 2015, farmers were hopeful that the agricultural sector would experience the much needed change, expected to transform the economy but that has yet to happen.
At the National Economic Council (NEC) retreat in March 2016, Buhari assured the nation that developing the sector and ensuring food security remained a priority to his administration. But two years under the President’s watch, agriculture has not experienced that transformation as it has continued to encounter tremendous setbacks with as the prices of farm produce gradually going out of reach of consumers of fresh tomato, rice, garri, maize and corn, among others.
Many have attributed the rise in food prices to the lack of visible impact of government presence on agriculture, lack of agricultural inputs at affordable prices, cost of fertilisers, pesticides, labour and extension services are virtually absent in several states, which have compounded the problems of farmers.
However, stakeholders who spoke to Daily Sun on Buhari’s two years administration in agriculture sector, said today in Nigeria, both peasant and mechanised farmers will agree with the general public that food production and self-sufficiency require urgent government action, which they said Buhari himself mentioned in his address at the NEC retreat last year.
They said the current administration promised last year that it would use the 2017 budget to fund agriculture but lamented that the 1.2 per cent allocated to the agricultural sector in 2017 budget, which amounts to about N96 billion, is nothing to write home about.
Speaking with Daily Sun, the Managing Director of Highhill Agribusiness Development Centre, Adeniyi Sola, said government has not really tried in keeping up the momentum, which the former government put in place, saying if they don’t promote agriculture, Nigeria would be in dilemma because the former government put a lot of things in place to promote and support it.
He stated: “We have continuous promotion but the major challenge we still have is the fact that we have not really had enough funds budgeted for the sector. If we are saying this is the sector we want to take us out of dependence on oil and we are not releasing enough funds to fund the sector, we are going nowhere.
“For example, the Maputo Agreement stated that 10 per cent annual budget should go to agriculture and I can tell you today, in Nigeria, we have less than 3 per cent going to agriculture and we are saying agriculture is one of those sectors we are looking forward to diversify our economy off oil shows we are not ready as a country yet. We should concentrate more on capacity building because most people don’t even know what agriculture is all about and they go into it and the more they go into it, the more they jump out.”
The Deputy Managing Director of Peniel Gerard International Limited, Ojiefoh Enahoro Martins, said the Buhari administration has recorded 5 per cent success so far in agriculture sector for creating awareness only, saying that agriculture is now in the hands of politicians not the real farmers.
He added: “We now have paper farmers and political farmers who only acquire big lands, place signposts and collect the loan from CBN but when it comes to real farmers, they are asking for collateral; youths are stranded. If government announces to farmers: ‘we are going to supply you seedlings, get tractors from your local governments, get your free herbicides, get your free fertiliser,’ no politician will go into farming but because money is involved, politicians are rushing to collect the money and saying now, ‘we are going into commercial farming of cashew’ while real farmers get nothing.”
He said there is need for rural agricultural development programme, low cost programme for agricultural machineries, extension agencies, identification and follow-up programme, training and re-training of farmers, crop and animal improvement and distributions.
Meanwhile, Managing Director of Universal Quest Limited/National Publicity Secretary, National Cashew Association of Nigeria (NCAN), Sotonye Anga, said the Ministry of Agriculture has done well but that there is still a lot more to be done. He said unfortunately, up to this moment Nigeria has not attained the level of Maputo Declaration of 2003 where African countries agreed to devote 10 per cent of annual budget to agriculture.
He said, “budget allocation is still ridiculously low and under Buhari’s administration it has remained ridiculously low. Nigeria has not met the demands of Maputo Declaration. Up to this moment, Nigeria has not hit 5 per cent of total annual budget devoted for agriculture. We have not achieved 5 per cent out of 10 per cent. More money needs to be devoted to agriculture by building infrastructure, developing research institutes, among others. All of these things cost money. So to support agricultural growth, more funding should be devoted to the sector because feeding 170 million people or more is not a joke. We have not met the Maputo Declaration. Maybe in the 2018 budget, we may see improvement but the need to improve budgetary allocation is a very crucial thing right now.”
Going forward for this administration, he said some kind of specialised support needs to be given to farmers with regard to pest and disease control because one will be shocked with the amount of loss going to Nigerian farmers as a result of pest and other disease manifestations in their crops and animals.