ENGR. SHEDRACK MADLION- ROOTING FOR FOOD ABUNDANCE

As millions of Nigeria still go hungry despite the perfect weather and climatic conditions necessary for food production, Spotlight International sought out a man who is not just passionate about agriculture but championing a course that, with some recognition and support from relevant government agencies, will revolutionarise food production, processing and prices in Nigeria.
Engr. Shedrack Madlion is the Executive Director of Admiral Agricultural and Environmental Care, the first of its kind in Nigeria and the West African sub-region. The organization which has its head office in Kaduna is set to utilize their skill on innovative process development for the reduction of poverty, stimulation of commerce by establishing relationship with private entrepreneurs, developmental organizations and agencies in the fields of agriculture, horticulture, livestock as well as eco-tourism.

This in-depth interview with our staff writer, James Bello, is in our opinion, good enough to be a blueprint for overcoming the problem of food shortage in Nigeria. Excerpts:
Sir, we will be speaking with you on a wide range of issues in the agricultural sector as well as the environment and its impact on the good people of this country. But firstly, could you please tell us briefly about yourself?
My name is Shedrack Madlion, I am the Executive Director of Admiral Environmental Care, a one stop shop of agricultural and environmental centre here in Kaduna. The organization is built out of the necessity and the massive gap between the agric operators, environmental operators and the government. This is the first initiative by a private sector to come into the business that is naturally seen as government activity. We are here to provide simple solution to farmers at no cost to them. We run toll free lines here, we provide artificial insemination to change the genetic looks of our cows, genetic looks of our rams and provide grafted citrus, mangoes and other plants, to fight desertification and take care of our gully erosions. Above all, we are also looking at the proper commodity packaging for our rural farmers. Basically, this is what we are looking at and then Admiral Environmental Care is also taking advantage of various vegetational differences in the country to see how we could use them to move the country’s food security to a new level.

What could have informed your involvement with agriculture?
I have navigated more than 35 different countries across Africa and I realized that Africa is underfed. The agricultural potentials in Africa, the Sunlight, the water, the land are not being used at all. Our African leaders do not emphasize the usage of our God given vegetational differences for maximum benefit to our people. They have only paid lip services to agriculture. Out of the 16 countries that make up West Africa, about 8 got their independence in the 60s. But clearly, there is nothing to show for several years of independence in terms of agricultural development and self sufficiency. It is said that a nation that cannot feed itself loses her sovereignty. This is one of the reasons that informed my involvement with agriculture. I came into it in order to contribute my quota to its development in Nigeria.
Former president of Zambia, Sir Kenneth Kaunda, once said that the challenge of his generation was to “wrestle colonialism and lead Africa into self rule”. He then said that the challenge of our generation is to “fight poverty and lead Africa into prosperity”. What do you say to this?

Yes, President Kaunda’s statement is complete and wholesome. Indeed their generation fought for liberation, my generation has to fight to feed itself. Africans are so good in talking about global changes, global dynamism and so on, but our initiatives have nothing to do with globalization. There are 54 countries that make up Africa, 76.3% of African rural dwellers are under fed, they go to bed without food. Now a child that loses adequate food from age of 1– 6 looses 26% of his IQ potentiality. This is not peculiar to Nigeria but from Algeria to South Africa, from Mauritania to Gabon, the story is the same. Agriculture is perceived as an occupation for those who have failed in urban pursuit to retire home and do it without any passion or love for it.
We cannot discuss food security without looking at the legacies of people like Sir Ahmadu Bello, Sardauna of Sokoto who deemed it fit to ask other nations to give us a formidable template that this country needed to take us to a new level. More than 47 dams were built by him, the Ahmadu Bello University was established by him out of which NAPRI was borne. He was not from Kaduna, he was from Sokoto. He was not sighting the agricultural infrastructures for political reasons. He looked at where they need to be, it is because of these infrastructures that we have dams today in Yauri where Onions is largely cultivated, the Audu Bako Dam in Kura called the rice city in Kano, the Jama’are, the Gerei in Adamawa. Today, these are still the legacies we are riding on. The crop of leaders that came after Sir Ahmadu Bello built dams without recourse to their suitability to certain areas, they were built mostly for political reasons. So as I speak with you, Nigeria is underfed, we don’t have adequate food for ourselves, we have not in anyway taken any drastic steps to support extension services, one stop shop agricultural centre, or bring in new improved seeds. The last time new cotton seeds were brought into Nigeria was in Samaru 76 and Samaru 77. Since then, no new cotton seeds have come in and we are talking about reviving our textile industries. There are a lot of these issues today that clearly show that it is not yet uhuru in Nigeria. As a matter of fact we are at the verge of breaking and losing our sovereignty as far as food security is concerned, this is my personal opinion.
Is there anything the government can do to improve the capacity of Nigerians to achieve development?
I want to totally differ; when a son has a father who is nonchalant to his up-bringing, he doesn’t rely on his father anymore for his survival. He begins to look outside the box. It is time that the private sector and Nigerians begin to look at the natural given opportunities that we have rather than look at the government. The government for 12 years has failed the population of this Country, 140 million people. Government has not been able to do Feeder roads, to encourage our rural farmers to produce more and find a way to take out their crops. 336,000 metric tons of oranges are wasted in Benue State every year, 556,000 metric tons of tomatoes do not find their way to the market because there are no value chain, 27% of our Ginger Farmers in Kaduna do not reap the efforts they put into ginger cultivation, 29% of the maize eaten in this Country today are cultivated by farmers who do not have access to fertilizers and Knapsacks at the time they need them. I am talking about Saminaka, Lere, Pambegwa, Kubau, Yar Kasuwa, Jingre and Many other places like that and you still want us to discuss government?
As a matter of fact, I recall that in 2001, President Olusegun Obasanjo announced the establishment of a commodity exchange market to promote commodities according to international standards…..(Interrupted)
When it comes to adapting or bringing in right policies but without proper implementation the centre is Nigeria. What works in other countries doesn’t work here, we would always put round pegs in square holes and you don’t expect to have a very good result from such circumstances.
We had a lot of expectation from Obasanjo who retired and went into farming. We all felt that having stayed outside the rulership and even had a stint in prison that agriculture will experience a rebirth in Nigeria in his time, but that was not the case. He did not understand the importance of putting square pegs in square holes and he lost a golden opportunity to turn things around in the agric sector. Commodity exchange in Kenya is working, commodity exchange in Ethiopia is working, they are among the few African Countries to trade coffee in the New York stock Exchange, where are we today? 14% of the ginger consumed in South East Asia comes from Kaduna. You cannot talk about commodity market or commodity board or commodity exchange without the promotion of one community, one product.
Talking about commodity boards, I remember a farmer friend lamenting the incalculable loss they incur in processing ginger for export, apparently they have not been able to get the international standard required for such exercise.
The role of Nigerian Export promotion agency is to facilitate certification and guidelines for local producers to meet up to the standard, rather than we loosing when commodities has gone down to Rotterdam. For instance extension officers should be at Jere, the gateway of some of these crops, to receive, test and guide our farmers, in order to meet the standard requirement of the man in India, or the man in Hong Kong who wants his ginger packaged in a particular way. That way you have standardization, but what do we get, we have agencies that sit down and only attend conferences, they are very quick in signing MOUs but never good in implementing it to the letter.
Nigeria seems to have a youthful population that is not interested in farming. This probably explains the daily rural- urban migration of our youths from the drudgery of farming to the easy life of Okada riding and many other sundry jobs in the urban areas.
An average rice farmer in Nigeria that is 19 or 25 years old, by the time he farms rice for two seasons, his looks and his body texture will look like a 50year old man. Do you think a young man who is already used to making calls on mobile phones, wears cheap Chinese Jeans, watches cables and aligns himself to some European clubs, will give up on all these for a farm, whose product is determined by the prevailing market forces? It is not attractive at all. The reason some of us are in it, is because it is the only job that gives you the opportunity to be your own boss in spite of the risk involved. It’s the government that can make agriculture attractive - they are the ones that can create enabling environment for its practice.
What can government do?
Government should be able to set up a one-stop-shop agricultural centres in the 109 senatorial districts in Nigeria, where information can be dispersed, you can walk into the place and get information just as I am doing here. Secondly, if you are privileged to go to a federal university of agriculture, you should come in and practice what you read. You cannot read agric science or agric mechanics and end up in the bank counting money in a teller office. Thirdly, we must standardize the practice of agriculture by registering professional farmers in the country, recognize them, just as we have recognized NBA, COREN, geologists and all that, making them a professional body. Fourth, we must begin to put certain standards in food packaging in the country. Above all, we should create what you call Agric Police. Agric police is able to police farmers in adhering to the rules set up by the government. You cannot put a basket of tomatoes on top of another because it will turn to baje (rotten tomatoes) as it is sold in Lagos! Our cattle cannot leave live from the north to Lagos, it should leave slaughtered. It is only the agric police officer that can enforce this as it is done in other countries. If you are moving crayfish from Oron to sell in the north, what form of jute bag should you carry? If you are moving onions from Lagos to Trans-Amadi in Port-Harcourt before it gets to its destination it is already cooked. This is the right bag to convey onions …… (displaying a bag with tiny holes). Yet nobody in this country has deemed it fit to let people know that with this bag, onions could stay for 30 days without going bad. These are the things that need to be done. By the time we stop sending our animals live to Lagos, our tanneries will pick up, because the northern man here does not have the culture of eating “pomo” (cow hide) which should be used in making sandals for our children, the horns could be used in making glue to bind our papers, the bone marrow could be extracted to be used in improving the nutritional value of our malnourished children in hospitals. The value chain in an average cow is more than 127 of what you can do with it.

Sir, it is alleged that only 10-20% of subsidized fertilizer inputs get to the actual farmers, that the rest is diverted to black markets. Can you comment on this?
Yes, one of the biggest disasters that happened to the agric sector in 2010, was the approval of 29 billion Naira for fertilizer acquisition after farming season was over by the present government. Even when the fertilizer came in, it was given to party chairmen for political reasons. Government has no business in buying input, government should use that same money in buying input to mop up what farmers have produced and give us what is called guaranteed minimum price. Sardauna introduced what is called “Buhu guarantee” so that if I am producing 1 bag of maize, government has pegged it that in 2011 a bag of maize should be bought from farmers for N10,300. There is a certainty that government will buy your product. It is government that will buy and send what it wants to sell to the market. Farmers should have no business going to the market to sell their commodity themselves. This is how other countries have used agriculture to thrive. We are still in the woods as far as agriculture is concerned in Nigeria.

Can you describe government involvement in agriculture comparatively from 1999-2007 and from 2007 to date?
The crop of governors that emerged shortly after 2007 jostled among themselves to please Obasanjo because of his passion for agriculture. That is why people like Fayose tried to do poultry, the former Nasarawa state governor, Abdullahi Adamu did some programmes too. He was the first person that felt there was need to create a special fund on agriculture and set up a committee for the N50b that never came. He initiated a lot of presidential initiatives on cassava, presidential initiatives on rice and so on and so forth, but none of these initiatives ever saw the day light. We were deceived and farmers were asked to go and farm cassava, that they would be exported to china without adequate infrastructure, the farmers all lost money, some of them today are indebted to banks in this regard.
The present governors we have today apart from Governor Murtala Nyako have all failed in emphasizing agriculture, this is Shedrack’s own opinion.
Are you not soft on Admiral Murtala Nyako because he is a stake holder in Admiral farms?
No, Murtala Nyako resigned a longtime ago as the chairman of this organization, but he has kept the one community, one product initiative he is looking at what various local governments can do and also creating markets. He is a visionary leader and I hope his people will be able to run along with his vision. Going by what he has already achieved, if we have the likes of him in about 6 or 4 states, they will turn this nation around.
Dr. Bukola Saraki of Kwara state invited some white Zimbabwean farmers…….. (interrupts)
If the same resources that was given to Zimbabwean farmers who came to Kwara were given to Nigerians, they will do triple what the white people did. You cannot use global solution to solve a national problem. If you are not from Kwoi, you cannot come in and tell me the landmarks in Kwoi, if you are not from Talata Mafara, you can’t come in and begin to tell me where my grandfather was buried in Talata Mafara. The white people came in and were given express loans, given all the necessary government support, as against the local farmers who had never been given such opportunities . So what yardsticks do you want to create? And then, did you hear that there was any export of food from Kwara state to the United states, to Ethiopia or to Somalia or Burkina Faso? 400,000 metric tons of beans come into this country to cushion our inadequacy in beans production from Potiskum, Dambam and Alkaleri where beans usually come from. There are over 28 million people that practically live on beans. They wake up in the morning eating beans and sleep eating beans. The primary source of protein in Nigeria is beans. The same amount of money you gave to the Zimbabwean farmers in Nasarawa or Kwara, if you give it to our beans farmers in Potiskum or in Borno, they will produce enough beans that could be exported to South Africa who would buy it especially our brown beans.
Don’t you think that inviting the Zimbabwean farmers is actually an indictment on our farmers who don’t seem to get their acts right in spite of the huge investment made on them?
If I woke up in the morning and you give me tapioca to eat, I come back from school, you asked me to soak garri and at night before bedtime, I managed an impoverished soup with cassava (fufu) you don’t expect me to have the same assimilation system as a child that was given good balanced diet. So I beg to disagree with you that Nigerian farmers were not able to get their acts right. The crop of leaders we have in Nigeria today got their school fees from the soil and not from oil. You can count from the late Sir Ahmadu Bello to our generals who retired at the age of 35 or 40 years, they were sent to school with proceeds from cotton, groundnut, cocoa, fish etc.

Source:http://spotlightmagazineuk.com/t