By Jeremiah Emmanuel, Abuja
The agricultural sector in Nigeria has been enmeshed with crisis that has climaxed. Successive governments in Nigeria have over the years initiated different agricultural programmes to promote food security using local production, but most of these programmes failed.
The failure of these programmes were not because the ideas were ill-conceived, nor because the government didn’t translated the ideas into action; but they failed largely because the public failed to maximised the opportunities it presented them positively.
Majority of Nigerians in agricultural sector, allow greed, selfishness and insatiable desire for quick-wealth-acquisition syndrome takes the best of their reasoning, making them thwart every opportunities these laudable programmes have in store.
Despite efforts by successive governments to ensure that the programmes were sustained, and to promote patronage of local agricultural produce to reduce our overdependence on importation, and to increase our GDP; but greed from our farmers or should we say the middle men and other major actors in the sector, who created artificial scarcity dint hoarding of the products that exposes Nigerians to untold hardship were responsible for the failures.
Following the surge in cost of food in the country, since the All Progressive Congress (APC) took over government at the centre in Nigeria in 2015; Nigerians have been groaning.
Earlier this year, there were reports of concerted efforts by the government to see that the absurdity in the sector, which has caused the surge in food prices were corrected, but it met stiff resistance from some private business owners; who challenged the government right to determine prices of these goods when the government didn’t acquire them.
The reports further revealed that to avoid chaos as a result of the action, the government appealed to warehouse owners where those food items were kept to open them to allow for availability of food in the market, but this appears like the plea fell on deaf ears.
This was said to have forced the government to opt for opening the warehouses without the consent of the owners; but to the amazement of Nigerians, the warehouses owners kicked against it, saying that the government didn’t give them the money to acquire those food items, as such cannot dictate to them on the prices to sell. The government had to back off.
It would be irresponsible on a government to fold its arms and watch its citizens arm-twisted by few unscrupulous individuals trying to exposed the citizens to untold hardship.
Therefore it was a welcome development when the government opted for food importation, which left the warehouse owners hoarding the food items with no option than to crash the prices. Although, this development has left some farmers grumbling over low profits they make now compared to when the prices were higher. But all the same, the responsiveness of the government in tackling the menace has yielded results that should be applauded.
Meanwhile, there are concerns raised by the farmers that government will also need to pay attention, such as the high cost of items used during farming – like fertiliser, herbicides, insecticide, cost of fuel and transportation; our exchange rates and other factors.
There were instances in the past, where Nigerians blamed past government on failure of previous agricultural policies, citing poor planning and implementation as the reason; but with these recent happenings, it’s evident that the failure were largely not to be blamed on the government lack of proper planning but greed and selfishness of the private actors.
Corruption, greed and insatiable desire to amass unnecessary wealth at the expense of the public is also the bane of the failure.
For Nigeria to succeed in all of its programmes, the citizens must first be willing to show high level of patriotism, and eschew any form of greed and selfishness.
Also, if we can change our mind set of make-rich-quick syndrome; and embrace procedure, then, the government programmes may be successful.
Jeremiah Emmanuel is a social analyst and writes for Republican Interest in Abuja.
