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From Uche Usim, Abuja
Emmanuel Ijewere, the president of the Nigeria Agriculture Business Group (NABG), needs to introduction in the Nigerian socio-economic space.
He remains one of Nigeria’s most eminent businessmen with indelible footprints across the banking, finance and political landscape.
Born in 1946, Ijewere’s education took him from Lagos to Ijebu Ode, Cameroon and the United Kingdom.
He started his accounting career in 1965 with Coopers & Lybrand and set up his own company as a chartered accountant in 1979.
Ijewere is a member of the National Economic Forum, the International Investment Council, Agricultural Transformation Implementation Council, and Technical Committee on the Privatisation of Federal Government Companies and Parastatals.
He is the chairman of Best Foods Group, Drum Resources Nigeria Limited, Apel Capital & Trust Limited and Countrywide Direct Mortgage Company. He was chairman of Longman’s Nigeria Plc, Petra Microfinance Bank, Salus Health Trust Management and CSN Investment Concepts Limited. His national tasks have included chairmanship of the Agriculture and Food Security Commission and the Modified Value Added Tax Committee.
In this interview, Ijewere sheds light on the trajectory the NABG will take to use agriculture as a fulcrum to attain economic prosperity for Nigeria.
The NABG
I was elected at the council as the president. It was not what I wished for but circumstances created it.
However, the NABG was conceived by the former minister of agriculture, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, to be an umbrella body for the entire agriculture sector, so that players in the sector can speak with one voice. This is because, where you have various value chain players, they are often in conflict. So, this platform was created to unify all players in the agriculture value chain. So, it is to enhance, improve and harmonise the various commodity organisations. Those who form the council are all from various agriculture sectors, including the president of All Farmers’ Association, which is also the largest workforce in Africa. I would like to thank the late Alhaji Sani Dangote who led us to this point.
Our vision
It is the same we had, the same vision we have and the vision we are carrying forward. Agriculture is not a game anymore. It is going to be Nigeria’s economic foundation, not crude oil anymore. The anomalies that exist in the agricultural sector, where people work in silos, must come to an end. No more working in silos. We have many good brains. God has blessed us with enormous assets in Nigeria but they are all scattered. These are assets we need to bring together. We have many research institutions but their research ends up in their cupboards. They don’t bring them out. We have so many big companies in Nigeria who are importing what can be produced in Nigeria.
All these assets are dots. NABG is going to create links to connect these dots together. These are human assets scattered and we need to harness them. Everybody will be talking to everybody. We will break down the walls of the silos. We recognise each player for what they can contribute to make Nigeria an economic powerhouse. Our road to becoming an economic powerhouse is not oil but agriculture. We need to make people understand that agriculture is a business. You can find it in our name.
Collaboration
In all these issues that we have, we recognise that policies are formulated by the government, while they are implemented by the private sector. There is an unsatisfactory coordination between the private and public sectors. It’s our duty and responsibility to help the government formulate policies that are best for Nigeria and to also help the private sector to participate more meaningfully for the development of Nigeria. We have all it takes, all the ingredients. We are going to adopt smart agriculture. Your assets, how do you optimally utilise them? These are the questions will shall answer. There is a need for proper coordination. Private sector is the biggest but the public sector is the most powerful. In agriculture, the public sector is coordinated but the private sector is not and that is what NABG seeks to achieve. The private sector is organised in silos. It’s time to ensure coordination with all the farmers, policymakers, research institutions, processors, insurance companies, transporters, financial institutions and so on. We need to bring all these players together to work as one for the good of our country.
NABG will not be involved in any blame game. Our mission is to develop agriculture for the good of the country
The government has called on NABG at different times for inputs. We were involved in the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA). The Ministry of Agriculture works very closely with us. When we first started, the silos were so small and scattered all over. The commodity associations are supposed to form the core of this body. This body doesn’t have that required financing. We don’t even want government funding because we understand that we in the private sector need to put our act together. We have made some strides and some organisations have to come to assist us.
Just late last year, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation recognised us and said they were going to support us to put proper structures in place to achieve these goals of breaking down silos, especially tackling poverty and making agriculture the mainstay of the Nigerian economy.
They’re also coming with improved advocacy with the government and collaboration between the private and public sectors. They’re funding that and we’re putting so much effort into that as well. They gave us a programme that will run up till 2024 and we hope we will be able to achieve all of that even before then.
How much they will give will depend on what we need. It’s not as if they throw money at us. We collaborate and discuss issues and they fund them. We are not the only country they’re helping. We have shown that we are attractive enough for them to help us. At the end of the day, it will be the common man and woman in remote villages that will be the ultimate beneficiaries and we need to show them that and they themselves will go and see for themselves. It is not a case of throwing money at us like I said earlier. They’re also looking at offering us technological support. Some other organisations are also supporting us, like giving villages solar panels for electricity. They can’t go from village to village. So, we are asking them to start with villages that have optimum sunlight.
Working with the commodity exchange
We are already doing that. You must have a structure that fits into an exchange. The blood of the exchange is the commodities or produce. They are done in very small groups in villages. Even to connect and collect them together is a big challenge. The next step now is working with government at various levels and all the exchanges. One of the things they will do is that they will have to provide warehouses; you’d have to grade before you get to the exchanges. If Nigeria had developed the way it should have, like we had in the agriculture sector in the 1950s and 1960s, by now it would be full private sector activity. Government is just intervening like the CBN does. Eventually, it would be a private sector business. The Nigeria Stock Exchange is not run by the government but the government was involved in setting it up, to put the rules in place. Commodity exchanges are making good progress.
Given the shot in the arm we got from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, 2022 will be a year of difference and will dictate to us how our forward movement will be. Thank God that 2019-2021 showed Nigerians that our future does not lie in oil and gas but in agriculture, in terms of export earnings and feeding ourselves. So, 2022 will make a difference and that is why we’re swinging into action.
Capacity-building for farmers
Today, we know that our farmers are too economically weak to fund us, but if we make them economically strong, they can fund the future NABG. So, we will not be relying on them now; in fact, they will be relying on us to help them in many areas. For instance, we have discovered from research institutions that Nigerian farmers’ yield can double in one year if they can get improved seedlings alone, aside from better agricultural practices. If this can be made available, even if it’s a loan, it will help. One thing we are also trying to avoid is putting cash on the table for anybody. We would rather give you things that will make you grow, not the money that you have a choice to use. We are also working with various organisations to see how we can further train these people. Smart agriculture is the way to go. We expose them to ICT and other innovations. You no longer need to be an expert in English for you to be a good farmer, transporter, processor and what have you. That is our philosophy and that is the smart agriculture/agribusinesses we’re talking about.
Multiple taxation
I think the law is clear. Tax is always based on income, either the value added tax (VAT) or the employment or business tax, they’re all based on income. Even your business tax, unless you earn some income, you don’t pay any tax. But we do know on the sidelines that some illegal taxes exist. Those are the ones we worry more about, not the conventional tax. The law is clear on that. But those other ones, we now have to work with the local and state governments to achieve that. It’s a problem but not really our major problem.
Offtakers and storage
We know some crops have seasons, but does your stomach have seasons? No! So, that is where our smart agriculture comes to play. We will utilise nature and technology to plant hitherto seasonal crops like tomatoes all the year round. It happens in the developed world. We will give each region the type of seedlings that can be grown all the year round so that the price of that commodity will not be oscillatory.
Again, we are going to make offtakers available to the farmers. They’re very important in the value chain. However, unlike the agriculture of the past that was supply-based, the new agriculture is demand-based. It’s the person that wants to buy from you that will tell you what he wants, the quantity and how he wants it supplied. So, before any farmer starts growing his crops, we will create a platform where he knows who is taking what he grows. This is what we want to do and it’s not as difficult as people may think, it’s just the will to do it.
The world has changed with the advancement of technology, and agriculture in Nigeria has to take advantage of that also. You can pick up your phone and call to know what you want and how and where to get it. No more secrecy. This wasn’t happening 20, 30 years ago.
Farmers-herders’ clashes
First of all, we don’t believe in NABG that herders want to kill farmers or that farmers want to kill herders. It is an economic problem. The farmer wants to produce his food and the herder wants to feed his own cattle. So, we believe in dialogue, working together to achieve these goals we set.
We believe that everyone should have a space and that’s why we must bring the government in. If you’re talking about insecurity, how about the Boko Haram situation? Who are these people in Boko Haram? If these people have a source of livelihood, they may likely not go into those crimes. We need not look at our specific situation; we need to look at it globally and identify the root cause of our problem. The root cause is our economic direction in the past that was lopsided, and that must change. We are finding a permanent solution to this challenge. Let’s also shun rumours and put the right story out there. No one wants to kill the other but it’s a question of survival and fear of the other.
CBN’s ABP
The Anchor Borrower’s Programme (ABP) is a good initiative of the CBN but it’s not expected to be a permanent solution because CBN is not Ministry of Agriculture. It’s a temporary thing and we salute their courage. It has created solutions and led to reduction in the challenges we had.
However, our concern is that the input of the private sector in the entire concept is very little because these are the implementors. How many actual farmers, trader associations, etcetera, were consulted and brought in? We know the CBN meant well but now we need to further engage them. We need to rejig the ABP for optimal use.
