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By Omoniyi Salaudeen
Dr Yunusa Halidu is the National Secretary of the All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN). In this interview, he dismissed the six-month waiver the Federal Government gave for rice importation as an effort in futility.
The six-mouth duty waiver the Federal Government gave for rice importation has expired. Would you say that Nigeria now can produce enough to feed the nation without importing?
The government and the importers are in a better position to answer the question because I said it earlier that the waiver was not going to yield any good result for Nigerian farmers. All we need to guarantee food self-sufficiency is to enhance production. The federal, state, and local governments should rather collaborate to enhance production. But instead, they said they wanted food importation. Between March 2024 when they opened the borders for rice importation and now, has the price gone down? No, the price has continued to skyrocket. That means the opening of the borders was not in our favour. So, the government should ask what has been the benefit of opening the borders? It has no benefit. Somebody went to the President and told him that the exchange rate of the dollar to the naira was the reason people were taking food across the border. It’s a lie. We are not even producing enough for our local consumption not to talk of exporting. Most of us did economics when we were in school. If there is sufficient production of food, the price will automatically come down. Why food prices are expensive in this country is because there is no sufficient production. The cost of producing food is too high. And demand for food is higher than what we produce because everybody needs food. The government must enhance food production if we want to achieve self-sufficiency. The price of one tractor is about N60 million compared to N10 million in 2020. How many people can afford it? Our land is there, but we need equipment to make these lands viable. If we can produce 1000 metric tons of rice the price will go down.
When the government declared a state of emergency on food security, we told them to collaborate with critical stakeholders to enhance productive capacity, but no one listened. So, it didn’t work.
We are here, we can tell them what to do. They should create dams in rural areas where people can do farming. They didn’t. Instead, they are there fighting for politics.
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How would you assess the present security situation in the country vis-à-vis the creation of a safe environment for farming?
It has improved in certain areas, but we still have kidnapping and banditry in some parts of the North. Apart from the North, no part of the country does not have the challenge of insecurity. To me, the insecurity challenge is not even a problem. Within our household, we can do farming. There will be a time when even one million naira will not buy a bag of rice.
What specific things do you want the government to do for you as farmers to enhance production?
We have said it several times; the government must collaborate with critical stakeholders to enhance food production. If you go to the rural areas, the government knows their problems. But they don’t involve the rural people in the decision-making process. Instead, they allow politicians to run agric programmes. They all fail because they don’t engage the rural people. We need technology, we need inputs, we need security. They can collaborate with local vigilantes for security. The government must be up and doing in ensuring security.
What should the government do to reduce the cost of production?
Each local government must have at least 10 tractors to drive production. They should create dams for people to farm all the year round. They should encourage backyard farming to boost food production. Everybody is talking about subsidy. We don’t need subsidy in agriculture, we need technology. Let tractors be available to farmers to end the high cost of importation. They should also remove the high-duty collection on food produced within. There is fire on the mountain. All hands must be on deck to tackle food insecurity. We should keep politics aside.
