Engineer Shedrack Madlion is the Executive Director of Admiral Environmental Care in Kaduna. In this interview with MOSES ALAO, he speaks on the ongoing transformation efforts in the agricultural sector, phone-for-farmer scheme and how hunger looms in the country.
The President Goodluck Jonathan administration has said it would transform the agricultural sector and the Federal Ministry of Agriculture has been going about that. As an expert, what is your view on this programme?
You cannot shave anyone’s head in his absence, says an African proverb. You cannot transform what does not exist Nigeria has been practising agriculture from the woods. There is no adequate data put on the ground by stakeholders and people practising agriculture to see the sector through. Every programme being initiated under the transformation programme was with the view to lining some people’s pockets. None of these purported agricultural transformation programmes is geared towards increasing productivity; none of them is geared towards increasing the extension farming programme which is the live wire of agriculture; none of them was put in place to revive the Nigerian Agricultural Development Programmes, the old ADB; none of the people shouting about transformation in agriculture has said ‘okay, we want toincrease our value chain programmes.’ These components that I have mentioned are what countries such as China and India do so that they don’t import food to feed their people.
You cannot shave anyone’s head in his absence, says an African proverb. You cannot transform what does not exist Nigeria has been practising agriculture from the woods. There is no adequate data put on the ground by stakeholders and people practising agriculture to see the sector through. Every programme being initiated under the transformation programme was with the view to lining some people’s pockets. None of these purported agricultural transformation programmes is geared towards increasing productivity; none of them is geared towards increasing the extension farming programme which is the live wire of agriculture; none of them was put in place to revive the Nigerian Agricultural Development Programmes, the old ADB; none of the people shouting about transformation in agriculture has said ‘okay, we want toincrease our value chain programmes.’ These components that I have mentioned are what countries such as China and India do so that they don’t import food to feed their people.
How on earth would you believe that Nigeria imports over N1 billion worth of rice every single day? That is the amount of rice being consumed. How will you like to know that Nigerians are sourcing and cushioning the demands for beans by bringing in beans from Burkina Faso and Togo? Why on earth would anyone not look at the fact that we bring in N12 billion worth of sugar and tomatoes from China? The problem with us is that we celebrate little efforts. Little efforts in the sense that we have someone who came in as Agric Minister, an outspoken person and told us about transformation programmes which have never in any way transformed agriculture on the ground here. Take for instance the e-wallet policy being bandied around; it will not in any way enhance productivity. In the 2011-2012 agricultural year, productivity dropped by 47 per cent, how many people heard about that? There were lesser publicity; the main farmers were not carried along in terms of the distribution of information. Above all, you cannot sit in Abuja and make decisions for farmers living in Omore or Saminaka in Kaduna State or Ankaa in Zamfara and then say you are transforming the sector; that is why there are no results on ground. Cassava as a crop has failed in Nigeria three times but that is still what the minister of agriculture has been laying emphasis on. He is not looking at maize. As I speak with you, the poultry farmers in the country are screaming blue murder because the price of maize has never gone up this high in eight years. You know the flood crises really affected maize cultivation badly.
Are you saying that government’s promise to diversify from petroleum resources to agriculture is a lip service?
There are no adequate programmes to encourage youths to come into agriculture so that ageing farmers can be replaced with young ones and we spent over N3 billion on farmers’ census. How will farmers’ census programme enhance productivity? The live soil data that Nigeria is using today was done in 1975 and there have been many years of abuse of the soil through wrong inputs and wrong fertiliser but nobody is saying ‘okay, let us look at the compatibility of our existing soil with inputs that Nigerians are using.’ How then will you say you are transforming? Agriculture is science; no good nation plays politics with its agricultural sector. I really will tell you that we are not on the right path to transform agriculture.
You can see it. A small part of India, Punjab, has 34,000 functional tractors, but the whole of Nigeria does not have up to 30,000 functional tractors.
Are you saying that government’s promise to diversify from petroleum resources to agriculture is a lip service?
There are no adequate programmes to encourage youths to come into agriculture so that ageing farmers can be replaced with young ones and we spent over N3 billion on farmers’ census. How will farmers’ census programme enhance productivity? The live soil data that Nigeria is using today was done in 1975 and there have been many years of abuse of the soil through wrong inputs and wrong fertiliser but nobody is saying ‘okay, let us look at the compatibility of our existing soil with inputs that Nigerians are using.’ How then will you say you are transforming? Agriculture is science; no good nation plays politics with its agricultural sector. I really will tell you that we are not on the right path to transform agriculture.
You can see it. A small part of India, Punjab, has 34,000 functional tractors, but the whole of Nigeria does not have up to 30,000 functional tractors.
The silos we have in the country were built how many years ago? How is the transformation of the agric sector not lip service when neighbouring Niger, Chad and Sudan still bring cattle into Nigeria because we have the capacity to buy? And to worsen the situation, there has been no programme to make Nigerians know the value chain, we eat from the hooves to the skin of the cows, what are we transforming? In the 21st Century Nigeria, we still don’t have a programme on artificial insemination to enhance livestock productivity.
As I am speaking to you now, there are no young extension officers on the fields to guide farmers on what to do to enhance productivity, so what are we transforming? There is no competitiveness in what we produce here in terms of adding values and using them to jump-start our industries that have failed, so what are we transforming? How will you transform agriculture by buying 60,000 telephones for farmers? It shows we lack direction. Yet, the minister will take the president to other parts of the world where they lie to the international community about agricultural transformation that is not on the ground. This year, Nigerians have to begin to stock foods in their houses because we lost about 47 per cent of last year’s productivity to floods.
The areas affected by the floods were agrarian communities. Even if Nigerians suffer from collective amnesia, we have to know that even the rice that were shared to affected people were imported rice, not the ones produced in Nigeria. Did they give yam to people affected by floods? No, it was imported rice, imported tin tomatoes and so on, so who are we deceiving? What was the amount appropriated for agriculture this year? The allocation was quite poor.
So, we have a very poor leadership programme towards agriculture and no nation can hold on to its sovereignty when its citizens can no longer feed themselves.
But there have been talks about Growth Enhancement Scheme introduced by the Ministry of Agriculture, with the minister saying that about 232,000 farmers had been benefiting from the scheme. Are you one of those enjoying the scheme?
I don’t have any telephone from the government. Meanwhile, before the minister came into office, Admiral Environmental Care, my company, had been running a toll free line for farmers. We didn’t need to buy phones for farmers; we opened up a toll free line for farmers to guide them on what to do. Saying you want to transform agriculture by giving telephones to farmers is an insult to this noble profession of agriculture.
But there have been talks about Growth Enhancement Scheme introduced by the Ministry of Agriculture, with the minister saying that about 232,000 farmers had been benefiting from the scheme. Are you one of those enjoying the scheme?
I don’t have any telephone from the government. Meanwhile, before the minister came into office, Admiral Environmental Care, my company, had been running a toll free line for farmers. We didn’t need to buy phones for farmers; we opened up a toll free line for farmers to guide them on what to do. Saying you want to transform agriculture by giving telephones to farmers is an insult to this noble profession of agriculture.
Why do you have to buy me telephone? If I sell a bag of maize, I can buy myself one of the most expensive phones you can think of, which of course, I don’t even need. What we need in the country is to have a sound and stable agricultural policy that will bring in every community. During the time of the late premiers of Western, Eastern and Northern Regions, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Micheal Okpara and Alhaji Ahmadu Bello, did they need to buy phones for farmers to grow cocoa, palm trees or groundnuts which formed the mainstay of the country’s economy? How many programmes does the Ministry of Agriculture have on radio? Since radio is one of the best companions to farmers, how many educative programmes are running in the media houses to inform farmers on what to do? It is a complete shame and the disaster is imminent in the agric sector, the country itself is facing disaster. There is no growth enhancement anywhere. I will be 40 soon but I don’t see any hope, I don’t see people to go to for mentorship or direction, it is all about lies and inconsistencies in policies everywhere. My heart bleeds for this country; I wake up in the morning and see hunger written on people’s faces. How can you achieve transformation in agriculture with hoes and cutlasses? And these are the basic tools of 87 per cent of the farmers in the country.
The painful thing is that our legislative arm of government does not have enough technical knowledge to question how the government intends to achieve agricultural budget and the results.
There was a time the government talked about cassava and rice revolution. What is your take on the developments so far?
I will throw the question back to Nigerians, how many of them have been able to see cassava bread on the shelf after our president ate and said that was what he would be eating? Cassava is a domineering product and we do not have the total capacity to put the value chain required to use it. So, cassava use in Nigeria still remains at the level it was before—cassava to Garri, Fufu and Tapioka. If anyone tells you we have been exporting cassava flour out of this country, tell him it’s not true because our processing and handling have not improved and our cassava are not being accessed by those who need them.
There was a time the government talked about cassava and rice revolution. What is your take on the developments so far?
I will throw the question back to Nigerians, how many of them have been able to see cassava bread on the shelf after our president ate and said that was what he would be eating? Cassava is a domineering product and we do not have the total capacity to put the value chain required to use it. So, cassava use in Nigeria still remains at the level it was before—cassava to Garri, Fufu and Tapioka. If anyone tells you we have been exporting cassava flour out of this country, tell him it’s not true because our processing and handling have not improved and our cassava are not being accessed by those who need them.
It is all propaganda. In the case of rice, we consume N1 billion worth of rice as I said earlier, so if you want a revolution in the rice sector, you have to start from the scratch. You cannot start building a house by constructing the roof, we need adequate seeds that are compatible to the various regions of the country.
Source: http://www.tribune.com.ng
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