The wisdom of the Yoruba elders dictates that bi ebi tan ninu ise, ise buse which literally means when hunger is defeated, poverty is alleviated. Ability to access good food whenever necessary is a core ingredient of poverty alleviation which substantiates the wisdom contained in that Yoruba aphorism. A man whose hunger is determined by want is at the peak of poverty. This is one reason why I chose to lecture land law in the University of Lagos and considering the importance of land to farming and other necessities, I chose to write my doctoral thesis on land management in Nigeria.
That was way back in 2005 in the University of Lagos and having then practised land law for more than three decades. Land, according to basic Economics we learnt in the secondary school, is a major factor of production and it is certain that notwithstanding the evolution in agriculture by which planting can be done mid-air, it is still certain that land is central to agricultural production if man is going to attain food security. Nigeria has been at a crossroads for many decades with respect to the problem of hunger and want among the lower classes of its society. This is not peculiar to Nigeria but it is something that pertains to many countries of the third world where it has been impracticable to attain food sufficiency despite the abundance of nature around them.
However, I am particularly concerned about Nigeria due to the magnitude of its abundance in landed territory and its fertility. It is a country where you need not have any effort of deliberate planting as mere spilling of water used to wash pepper may give you a garden flourishing with pepper. A careless drop of vegetable stalk may turn a plot of land into a vegetable garden within a short time and one then wonders what is the problem with us as a people. Notwithstanding this generous gift of nature, we still suffer insufficiency and scarcity of food to the extent that the first measure of inflation in the country is carried out on the prices of food items.
This is the closest to the masses who bear the direct impact and must definitely groan under the heavyweight of deprivation of food due to skyrocketing prices. The margin of absorption of this class of people is very slender and hence the cries of ebi n pa wa o! (we are hungry) in different parts of the country. The cries must have deafened the ears of Mr. President as he is the target of this huge lamentation and groaning.
I know that the man has deliberately taken agricultural policies of government seriously by declaring state of emergency on agriculture but I wonder whether all the money voted into agriculture can achieve food sufficiency and security without adequate knowledge of land management and deliberate overhauling of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture on one hand, and a policy channeled towards ensuring that those in whom land is vested are actually up to the task of effectively managing land for it to produce its maximum yield. First, we need to understand that the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, as it is presently composed, is a killer of any agricultural development.
Ever since the new regime came on board, it had started a programme of tractorisation by which the federal government projects to import hundreds of thousands of tractors and their spare parts into the country. In order to effectively manage this, it is designed to involve private investors who are to import the tractors in batches with payment of 40% of the contract sum after delivery of the first batch. What officials of the Ministry have been engaging in is a very opaque process by which the programme, after two years, is yet to take off.
Many private investors who have expressed the desire to participate in the programme have been fleeced with many of them having to pay 20 million Naira for letters of award that will never be issued. The terms of the programme are still nebulous and unclear to the extent that the first set of investors who volunteered to participate in the process have become completely disillusioned and are only counting their losses. No letters of award are issued to them and those who were given letters of award are still groaning under the crushing loss of time and resources they have been subjected to. Let me confess as a farmer that one of the daunting challenges we face as farmers is acess to tractors.
It seems all now is motion without movement as the distance between the Ministry of Agric and the Bank of Agriculture which is supposed to midwife the process has become longer than heaven to earth. This programme has been killed with the government officials involved only extorting the investors. The Minister is there sitting like a Grand Wizard without any concrete attainment on the program.
There is no way we will not be hungry as a nation when those who are supposed to be in charge of food production are the ones frustrating its farmers. Mr. President needs to look into this Ministry with critical appraisal and not just listen to the Songs of Praise they are singing to him in this tabernacle of infamy and iniquity. By now, with the amount that has gone into agriculture in Nigeria, this nation ought to be suffused with abundance of food so that the common man with little income shall be able to purchase more than enough to eat.
The purchasing capacity of a common man when it comes to food items can only be determined not only by the amount he earns but the prices of food commodity in the market. Where there is abundant supply of food items to the market, the prices definitely must fall for the common man to be able to feed sufficiently. This is basic knowledge of Economics that an SS1 student would understand. With this kind of Ministry of Agriculture, land is already under mismanagement and under-use as farmers that are willing to farm will have no access to mechanized farming which alone can guarantee adequate supply of food to the market.
On the other hand, are the agriculturally-delinquent Governors in the States in whom Section 1 of the Land Use Act has vested land in the States to be held in trust for the people. The ambition behind the Land Use Act is to make land available from those who have it but do not need or know how best to use it, to those who need and know how best to use it but do not have access to land.
Thus, land could be made available by the intervention of the Governors to an average investor who does not own the land as land currently is held regrettably by many families who do not have the capacity to cultivate the land. The Governors have not been making tangible efforts about this and neither have they really been committed to the idea behind state farms which dominated the economy of the First Republic under Chief Obafemi Awolowo in the West, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe in the East and Sir Ahmadu Bello in the North.
Today, our Governors do not understand what is meant by land management and land under them has not really been treated as an asset but rather as a liability. What you then find is a situation where an average investor has to commit a huge amount of money to the purchase of land from the omo oniles who also collect the money and wastefully dispense same without any form of investment. In many cases, many fertile farm lands have been broken into plots and built upon.
There is no clear demarcation of areas that are to be retained as farm lands that ought not to be built. We also have a situation where lands in the States exist in hectares without any tangible use but covered by thick forests. When you travel from Lagos to Ibadan, Ibadan to Ikire; Gbongan to Ile-Ife; Owena to Ondo etc., you discover lands that would have been useful to produce food already turned into worship centers where hungry people go to beg and pray to God for food while trampling on the same land that God had given them for producing food. With this delinquent approach to land management, there is no amount of money allocated to the States that will be productive. Since President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s government came in, a paradox has afflicted the Nigerian economy. What is this paradox?
It is one of unprecedented income being generated into the Federation Account to be shared by the three tiers of government. Thus, while there have been heavy rains of money on the States, there has been little to show for it in terms of agricultural investment. Part of the paradox is that people at the lowest rungs of the society have had to bear bigger brunt of the economic policy as their margin of absorption of the effects is quite slim. They are the ones whose income cannot purchase those items they used to access before.
On the other hand, is the expectation that moneys coming into the coffers of the State Governments and Local Governments would be used to alleviate the poverty of the people by sensible and tangible investments in basic necessaries like food items together with food processing. This has not been the case but the affluence of the States is glaring as no State suffers from inability to pay salaries or pensions anymore and many of them are now able to engage in infrastructural developments although the quality may be in doubt and the tendency to be using the projects to pilfer money may not be in doubt. One still expects that these Governors ought to have a design by which necessary investments in agriculture would lead to food sufficiency and security to the extent that whatever amount a civil servant earns, he will be able to still feed his himself and his family.
Thus, it is important that the Governors, the honest and serious ones among them, that are able to identify their failure in this regard, should consult experts in this area and stop wasting money recklessly on projects they themselves know are while elephant. While it is important to develop infrastructures to support an economy, they must realise that roads constructed to the farms without adequate cultivation of the farm lands will only get eroded over time without food still coming from the farms. As they are constructing roads to the farms, they must prioritize agriculture in all its value chains, from planting to harvesting to processing and storage. They must create opportunities for food to be produced in large quantities and ensure there is access for the food to get to the market.
They must create and identify both local and foreign markets from where we can generate needed funds into our economy. I will end with a Yoruba proverb that says Ile n jo’na, asiwere n la oju agbara, o ni ibi oro n bo wa kangun si niyen. This means while the house is on fire, the mad man is busy constructing the drainage, he says this is where the whole thing will end. While the Governors seem to be building roads with the allocations given to them, they must remember to build the farms as that is where the whole thing will end; that is the junction of hunger.