Does anyone still remember the propaganda around rice pyramids promoted by President Muhammadu Buhari’s government in January 2022 when he expressed confidence that prices of foodstuff, particularly the market price of rice, would fall so the product could become accessible to ordinary citizens?
Unfortunately, the rice pyramids scheme turned out to be a failure, because the prices of basic food items have continued to skyrocket beyond the reach of ordinary households. How we deceive ourselves.
Ever since its inauguration in 2015, the Buhari government has been shopping for projects to support its election campaign promises of accelerated food production, reduction in poverty and empowerment of farmers, low-income earners and impoverished citizens. Like a magical conception, the rice pyramids scheme seemed a believable and worthy idea to be used to enhance and burnish the fast-fading image of a government that was losing public goodwill and support.
The rice pyramids plan was destined to fail because it was constructed on a patchy, soggy, flat and weak foundation. Nine months into that project, nothing has changed. Poverty is widespread across the country. People go to the market with polythene bags stuffed with money but they return home with little foodstuff. This is a practical measure of the health of a country’s economy. When large quantities of currency can buy only a handful of food items, there must be something palpably wrong, unhealthy, unfeasible, unimpressive and unconstructive about an economic project that failed to improve the socioeconomic conditions of citizens.
Amid food shortages caused by poor agricultural production and diminishing interest in farming by youth, it is mischievous to promote rice pyramids that contain little or no rice as the solution to food insufficiency and food insecurity. The rice pyramids are an embarrassment to the government because the so-called food storage towers represented a government’s insensitivity to, and deception of, its own people.
Essentially, the rice silos that were publicised existed only on government’s scrappy paper. On ground, there was no genuine stock of foodstuff held in those imaginary rice pyramids. The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) party supporters were deluded to believe that the government had achieved its food production targets through rapid establishment of rice pyramids. However, on a practical plane, ordinary people who grapple with economic hardships every day could not find sufficient foodstuff in marketplaces and the prices of available food items were far from reachable.
Across the country, the more people looked to find food to consume, the less food they found to buy. The government had sold to the nation something that resembled a dud cheque. The rice pyramids were widely advertised on mainstream and online media, including social media such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and Instagram, as evidence that the government had kept to its promise to turn the nation around in terms of enhancement of local food production.
Sadly, as time passed, it became obvious the rice silos held no rice or other food items. They represented government property that held no value to the government and the citizens. The rice pyramids were carefully constructed propaganda deliberately designed to impress and at the same time mislead people into believing the government had achieved something of a marvel in agricultural production.
Within a short time, everyone understood the rice pyramids were a sham, sheer propaganda and indeed white elephants that never existed. They were presented as food storage facilities but the reality that people faced was that there was no rice and no food items stocked inside those pyramids.
As The Sun pointed out in an editorial published on Tuesday, January 25, 2022, following the government’s launch of the so-called rice pyramids: “While we commend the government’s effort to increase food production, Nigerians will believe the President when the price of rice comes down to its 2015 price of N10,000 when Buhari assumed office.”
That price remains unachievable. Rather than decrease, the price of rice has continued to rise.
The Sun editorial reminded Buhari that “On assumption of office, the government promised, among others, to diversify the economy through agriculture and solid minerals. Hitherto, agriculture was the mainstay of Nigerian economy. We remember with nostalgia the groundnut pyramids in the North, cocoa plantations in the West and palm produce in the East. However, things changed dramatically with the discovery of oil and the resultant oil money, which unfortunately led to the utter neglect of agriculture…”
Specifically, in July 2019, Buhari said Nigeria had no business importing food to feed its population. He was cheered for that patriotic address. He made his comment when he met with the director-general of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), Guy Ryder.
Unfortunately, the government’s remedies prescribed for enhancement of agricultural production have remained illusory. They highlight a government’s expression of age-old national dreams that have never been realised. If Buhari believes Nigerians have the capacity to feed on locally produced food, he must tackle some basic challenges in order to change that national preference for imported food.
At various times in the country’s history, different Presidents had expressed similar plans to drastically reduce the nation’s food import bill.
On May 23, 2011, Goodluck Jonathan, the President at that time, impressed Nigerians when he talked about his government’s plans to end importation of rice, sugar and fertilisers by 2015. He said: “By the end of four years, I believe that Nigeria has no business importing rice. Nobody will come to me with a briefcase and say to me he wants to import fertiliser. We have vast land, and yet we import all these essential goods.”
Based on their government’s proposals to end food import, both Buhari’s and Jonathan’s first statements regarding plans to reduce food imports were strikingly similar.
Of course, Jonathan did not achieve his grand plan before he was sacked during the 2015 election. And Buhari is nowhere near accomplishing his own lofty plan, even though he has just five months left to serve out his second and final tenure.
Accelerated food production cannot happen in the current vacuum in which Nigeria finds itself. Expressions of a government’s desires and implementation of those wishes are clearly two different things.
Since his election, Buhari has been tested by difficulties associated with improving food production. What Buhari and Jonathan lacked in their noble arrangements to reduce food imports were clear, unambiguous and practical frameworks of how to transform their ideas from the podium of wishes into a platform of pragmatic action. That action plan would have to address the way ordinary and high-profile Nigerians regarded agriculture as an occupation.
The challenges for every government, not just Buhari’s government, include how to promote local food production, as well as how to encourage and finance agriculture as a profitable venture.
To make agriculture worthwhile, Buhari would have to be judicious in his ideas. He must reform agriculture by raising public interest in farming. Currently, many citizens look down on agriculture as something that people do when they have nothing else to occupy their time.
For many years and up till now, Nigeria has continued to serve as a ready market for widespread consumption of imported food of all kinds. A country that cannot produce its own food but relies on foodstuff produced in other countries is a food import-dependent economy.
Buhari’s government must facilitate an environment that enables people to participate in agriculture. The capacity of our population to produce food locally will be undermined if human and technological resources are not exploited or harnessed. Unfortunately, Buhari does not have any time to do anything meaningful to transform agriculture. Nearly eight years of his government have produced no significant improvements in local food production. So, so sad.