• Says “if we cannot produce what we’ll eat, let us die”
By Omoniyi Salaudeen
Dr Yunusa Halidu Yabwa is the national secretary of the All Farmers Association of Nigeria.
In this interview, he expressed strong opposition to food importation, warning President Bola Ahmed Tinubu not to succumb to the pressure to open the borders.
The global food crisis is here in Nigeria. How did the country get to where it is today?
We are where we are because of poor governance.
What do you mean?
I mean the failure of successive governments, including the present administration. Food production in every part of the world is encouraged by the government. The government creates an enabling environment for investors to operate. When this government came in, a lot of investors ran out of the country because of the high cost of production of food insecurity. Food security is the duty of everybody. If we want to fight hunger, the government must look into this crisis in a very dynamic way especially the high cost of production. When I say government, I do not mean only the Federal Government. The states and local governments up to the ward level must also get involved in food production. Community leaders are the closest to the people, but they are there living with criminals and bandits. Every community in this country knows where these criminals are hiding, but community leaders can’t talk because they are scared for their lives. The country is just simply in trouble.
The protest against the high prices of food started in Niger State which is regarded as one of the food baskets of the nation. What does this suggest to you?
As a farmer in Nigeria, I am looking at it in a very dynamic way. I don’t want to blame anybody for the insecurity problem, but I blame the Federal Government. A lot of money is being spent on security. Even international organizations are funding insecurity in Nigeria, but there is still the problem of insurgency. I want to believe that international organizations are conniving with insurgents so that they can benefit from the importation of food and other goods and services. When these organisations see that people have started going into agriculture, they feel that there is a need to fund insurgency so that we will not succeed in our effort to produce food for ourselves. These are countries that are benefiting from our importation and are ready to go the extra mile to fight us so that we will not produce for ourselves. But the government is supposed to fight back. As this happens now, the government is already thinking of opening the borders, which is what they want to achieve. If I were the government, I would keep the borders closed. If we cannot produce what we eat, let us die. This kind of situation can only be handled with an iron hand.
If the government decides to open the borders today, the food they will be bringing in is the food we produce in Nigeria. Sometimes in 2020 and 2021, I was given a mandate to do an investigation into the cause of food scarcity. In my investigation, I discovered that during harvest season, people will buy food in several trailers and take it outside Nigeria for warehousing in neighbouring countries. Around March or April, they will connive with the government officials and other associations that are into processing and packaging to mount pressure on the government to open borders. When the government opens borders, they will bring back into the country the same grains they bought from Nigeria. It is a bureaucratic system that has been on for so long and people are still benefiting from it. President Tinubu should close borders completely. Nigeria is a big country. Anything we cannot produce here we don’t need it. We must encourage industrialization; we must encourage our local industries. We are crying that the exchange rate of the naira to the dollar is high because we are unproductive. The government has to close the borders without looking at the international organizations. We don’t need any support from any country. We have everything we need.
Do you think the government can handle the hunger that will arise if they decide to follow your advice?
Of course, yes. We can import other services, we can import machinery, and even encourage tractor assembly units. We can also allow them to bring in tools, but we should not allow food importation. These are the only things that can encourage productivity. We are crying about the high cost of food because of the high cost of production. In Nigeria today, a tractor goes for between N35 to N40 million, whereas about five years back, with N9 million you can buy a tractor. Local fertilizer is above N30,000 now. The government must start addressing the issue from this dimension. They are saying they want to crash the price of food. How do you want to crash the price of food you do not produce? Where is the farm where they will produce food that will crash the prices?
With your submissions, are you suggesting that the government should subsidise agricultural produce or what is the way forward?
If the government wants to subsidise food production, we don’t want them to subsidise inputs. Instead, they should subsidize prices so that the subsidy can only go directly to the producers. There is corruption in subsiding inputs because some people are benefitting from it without producing anything. If there is a price subsidy and you are not producing, you cannot benefit from it. That is what is applicable all over the world. If they do that, everybody will go into farming because they will want to benefit from subsidies. But if they are subsiding inputs, anybody can go and purchase input and sell the same to the farmers at exorbitant prices. We have said it several times, bring us to the table, let us sit down and map out the strategy to produce. We will tell them how to do it the way it is done in other parts of the world.
What the country is experiencing right now is a collective tragedy. What should the government and individuals be doing now to get the nation out of the present quagmire?
It is a collective tragedy that requires a collective action involving everybody. We must be sincere and self-disciplined.