Former Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh, has given reasons Nigerians are currently suffering of hunger and starvation in the country.

Ogbeh, in this exclusive interview with Sunday Sun in Abuja, said that institutional policies such as interest rates to farmers, the absence of subsidy for some agricultural products or commodities like what obtains in other climes, coupled with other limitations associated with small-scale farming system in the country like non-availability of mechanised implements and fertilizers.

He also blamed It on lack of attention to agriculture both at the state and local government levels, saying that all of them added up are responsible for the hunger in the country.

Ogbeh, an agric expert who has had the privilege of occupying sensitive positions in government and at party level, particularly as Minister of Communications during the Shehu Shagari administration, National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) during the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo and recently, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development in the Muhammadu Buhari administration, concluded that the agric sector is in serious danger.

Among other issues, Ogbeh took a look at the 25 years of unbroken democracy in the country, assessing the various administrations within the period and averred that political party administration in Nigeria is a complete disaster.

Sir, you are a farmer and today, most Nigerians are hungry, including farmers. Why can’t our farmers feed the nation again? What is going on?

First of all, there are many issues. I mean, the farmers in Nigeria are 90 per cent small scale, very few of them can manage one hectare of land. A hectare is a football field. They cannot. They can’t afford to rent a tractor. If they do, the cost is too high, so it has to be the hoe and cutlass. And with the hoe and cutlass, there is just so much you can do. They can’t cope with weeds; a bag of fertilizer today has gone way beyond their capacity. They have very little access to improve seeds and in those days when we grew up, we followed our fathers to the farms and we supported them in some little ways. They showed you how to weed. Now, most of the young boys are mainly in school and can only be available during the holidays. So, you find the man alone or he and his wife. Their output can only be so much. Today, even though Nigeria has well over 970,000 hectares of land, it is just about a million hectares. Less than four per cent is under cultivation. People don’t know this. When you travel, look left and right on either side of the road or when you are flying and you are about to land, look down. It is nothing but wilderness. So, we are really not planting enough, with all the other issues I have raised – soil – even soil management, I have a little kit here. If you are going to plant anything anywhere, do a soil test. If you are growing seeds, if you are growing…, apart from the fact that the farmers are few and ageing, and that their capacity to cultivate is reducing, there are other issues like I raised – fertilizer, chemicals and so on, soil type. You don’t just plant anything anywhere. If you are going to grow anything in Southern Imo and Abia, you have to do your soil test because the soil is extremely acidic. So, you have to select a particular type of fertilizer and do some liming of the soil before you apply fertilizer. Lime mops up the acid and you will get a good yield. The yields are reducing, the average age of a farmer is rising, and the support by family has totally disappeared. Like I said, those days when we were younger, we helped weed; your father showed you what to do, not now. So, production is dropping. Then, there is population growth. The figure I have now, I don’t know how accurate it is, is that 20,000 children are born daily in Nigeria now. That is 6,000,000 a month. Six million babies a month. If that figure is accurate, it is a scary one, especially in certain parts of the country where your security guard tells you he still wants to marry four wives and every month, you are helping him with school fees, and food and so on, but he says his religion says he can marry four wives. Religion didn’t say he must marry four, but he wants to marry four wives, so he produces these kids and definitely can’t look after them and leaves the burden on their mothers and their mothers, many of them, many states now, are on Tramadol under stress. So, this is it.

How do we remedy this situation?

Before we go into that, the fact is that, take the yam, for instance. I am working on my memo. In 1980, I was Deputy Speaker of the House of Assembly in Benue. I remember going to the governor one day to say to him, we are going to have problems with yams. He said, why? I said because once UPE, the Universal Primary Education, all the young kids have gone to school. The healthy young men between 14 and 18 who do the yam heaps for us in Benue, especially the Tiv people, they are great yam farmers, they are no longer there. And when they come back from primary school, they are now educated, they are not going to take the hoe and cutlass to help you. So, I told him, in another 10, 15 years, we will be in trouble. And he asked me, what do we do? I said let’s get an engineering firm that can design a plough to make the yam heap. Well, I left Benue in 1982 to Lagos as minister of communications, then there was a coup of 1983 and all that scattered. Luckily now, the National Centre for Agric Mechanization in Ilorin is producing ploughs for making yam heaps. That came into operation while I was minister of agric. But again, not many states have pitied up to hook it to the tractor and allow the farmer in one day to do 2,000 heaps with this machine. So, mechanization is not here; support for agric credit is almost zero. No bank will lend money to a farmer, small-scale farmer now. He can’t pay back.

What is the way out?

Well, somebody has to make up his mind. I asked this question in Kigali once. Former President Obasanjo was there, Kagame was there, Tony Blair, former British prime minister, was there and I was asked, on behalf of all the ministers of Africa, to do the resolution. I did it and I said all of you, stand around me and let me make it. But I asked a few questions. I said Mr Tony Blair, what is the interest rate in Britain, generally on agriculture? He said three per cent. I asked the Ghanaians, they said 18 per cent. This also affects economic growth generally. We slam 30 per cent on borrowing rate. CBN (Central Bank of Nigeria) has raised interest rate, there is no priority. In the 60s, 70s when I was in the university, agric loans were two per cent, three per cent. Every country does that. You go to the U.S., ask them how much they lend money to farmers? Go to Europe, alright, every cow on a ranch in Europe gets a subsidy of about six euros a day to keep them there, well fed, producing milk. So, they don’t export, they don’t import milk. Holland, a country of 17 million people, is a size of Benue State. Holland earns 100 billion euros per annum from agricultural export – flours, milk, meat and so on. In all these countries, they don’t throw these things to the wools in the banks and say oh, bank rates have gone. There are discriminatory rates. So, what they tell us here about subsidies to be removed entirely from everything is falsehood. When I asked my colleagues there, you are doing 18 per cent, you are doing 16, you are doing this thing there, and we do nine. And my Ghanaian colleagues said eh, but nine, who is sponsoring it? I said the CBN has to sponsor the difference, otherwise, we can’t feed. So, these are fundamental issues that affect agric and nobody talks about them anymore. Finally, that poor farmer who does the yams, beans, maize, cassava and so on and so forth, can never enter a bank building and ask for money. The Bank of Agriculture in Nigeria is not doing well. When I was minister, I sent a team from the Bank of Agric to China to copy the model in China. And in China, the Bank of Agric is owned 99 per cent by farmers. Every farmer is a shareholder. So, they lend to themselves at below five per cent. China feeds 1.2 billion people. Here, it is interest rates, be deregulated, banks have done this, they have raised interest rates to curb inflation. They curb inflation, but they don’t increase food production. So, this is the complexity.

There was a time the government declared food insecurity in the country. What and what is the government supposed to do?

First of all, when this government came, I wrote a memo and sent to them that we should revive the old DFFRI (the defunct Directorate of Food, Roads and Rural Infrastructure during the General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB) military administration) and this time, have a strong partnership between federal, state and local governments because, what is Nigeria? It is the sum total of 774 local governments. But why is governance and everything focused on the Federal Government? In many of the states, the commissioner of agric can’t even see the governor to talk to him about fertilizer, tractors, no.

Why is it so?

Oh! The governor is too busy. Very few commissioners can get up and say something about a particular issue in council. So, there is very little attention at the level of state and local governments, very little! On the other hand, in states like Kano, the old Kano before Jigawa was taken away, Audu Bako, military governor then, built 23 dams. In Oyo State, they did 22 dams. They are the two states with the largest number of dams in the country. How often have you heard of kidnapping in Kano or banditry and Jigawa? They are too busy. If you go to Kano today, there is this programme we did of big rice mill. Kano has 30 giant rice mills. If you are driving to Kano, on the left, you turn left to a town called Kura. There are over a thousand small scale rice mills, all with distoners. Almost the samething is happening in Jigawa. So, you can now see where keeping the rural people busy translate to peace and stability. This is it. Now, not enough attention is paid and in anyway, the local governments exist only in names. They do nothing. So, the agric sector is in serious danger and many of the states pay no attention whatsoever to agriculture. And as for the local governments, they don’t exist. When I was in primary school, we used to do vacation jobs on the Native Authority Farms.

From what we have seen, the rains are here and before now, farmers should be very happy. But what we are seeing now is the kind of rain that washes away the farm. How are the farmers feeling amidst several challenges confronting them?

They are all feeling very unhappy, they can’t cope, they can’t create canals of their own, and they can’t block lines and so on. And the country is far too large for the Federal Government alone to regulate. So, the issue is the state governors. How much attention can they pay to agric?

In your state, Benue, former Governor Ortom banned open grazing and the policy was highly contentious. What is the position now and how has it in anyway helped the state?

Well, it should have helped the state, at least, protect the small farmers against herders who come and eat up their crops. But I have been hearing a lot of debate on this thing. The issue I want to show you now is an agreement which Nigeria entered into with ECOWAS countries in 1998, signed by Abdulsalami (former Military Head of State, General Abdulsalami Abubakar). It permits cattle from all over West Africa to come here and graze. And in theory, cattle from Nigeria can also go there and graze, but in reality, no. One night, when I was minister here, Governor Masari (immediate past governor of Katsina State) called me at 1:00a.m. He said, Honourable minister, I have a problem. What problem? He said 3,000 cows have just arrived from Mali in one night. Yes, 3,000. I will mark the area out (referring to a document signed by former Head of State, General Abdulsalami Abubakar on October 31, 1998, during the 20st Conference of Heads of States titled ‘Decision A/DEC.5/10/98 Relating to the Regulations on Transhuman Between ECOWAS Member States) so that you will read it and see where…, and I have sent a copy to Mr President, I don’t know if he received it. This agreement has to be revoked. Let every country graze their cattle in their territory. They can buy improved rice from Europe, irrigate and grow the grass. We can do the same. The problem we face today is not from indigenous Fulanis. They never, never invaded farms. In those days, if they did, and there was a problem, they paid compensation. The chief called and they paid. These ones arriving, 3,000, 5,000 at once, have no clue where to go or not. Any farm they enter, they graze. If you talk, they shoot, if there is a woman, they rape her. This is the problem and I want you to raise this agreement with the National Assembly. Get hold of Senator Abaribe (Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe is a former Minority Leader in the Senate and senator representing Abia South). I will give you a copy to give him. Tell him to read it. This agreement has to Be revoked. ECOWAS countries must learn to develop their grazing reserve, keep their cattle within their territory because as the cows roam, they also spread two diseases – TB, Bovine TB, Tuberculosis and Anthrax. So, this agreement is the problem.

Kidnapping and banditry also happen in Benue State. What is the cause and how can they be stamped out?

It is just that bad habits spread. Young men think if they can kidnap, they will make some money and become rich and buy good cars and so on. But there are other horrible habits going on – fetishism, all sorts of voodoo priests telling them if you can rape your mother or do some rubbish, you become rich. All those are spreading all over now. It is not just here. In some states, I heard young Muslim boys will take women to the Mosque and rape them. So, we have a horrible degeneration of morality and increase in poverty, so we are losing control as a society.

Are you impressed with the government of Reverend Father Alia, one year after compared to Ortom’s regime?

He Is doing his best. I guess, at least, they said he is paying the salaries regularly and the pensions. But my concern for many states is this – a governor should not think he is very successful if he is not also promoting industrial growth. You understand? Industries have to exist. They may be agro industries, they may be in the mining sector, they may be other manufacturing and the governor has to find funds, subsidise the interest rates and train individuals. Not everybody is an industrialist. Some of the people in the North-central where I come from did training by Southerners on how to manage machinery, human beings and manage money. You understand? Yes. When you go round some states, there is not one factory working. Not one!

Politicians are beginning to prepare for elections even when the current administration has not gone far. What is your party doing because a good number of Nigerians are not happy? Don’t you think what happened to your former party, the PDP, nine years ago may repeat itself again in 2027?

The tragedy of our society today is that the only viable industry is politics. So, what do you expect them…? Everybody is expecting to hop into one office, get an official car and have some money. But that can’t sustain a nation.

But as a Nigerian, how do you feel about the Tinubu administration? Are things well with you as a person? Are you happy with the administration?

I sympathise with him. But I am also saying this, in 1982, I was minister of communications. The pressure on us then was to devalue the naira. Shagari’s two economic advisers, Prof Edozien, he is late now and Prof Odama, from Kogi, he is still alive, they warned Shagari that if he did it, they would resign and leave. Chief Awolowo warned us also that this was a trap and once we stepped into it, we will never get out. Well, the coup of 1983 came and we fell. Buhari also resisted them. Ronald Reagan sent Buhari’s classmate, one General Waters from the War College in Philadelphia. They had met, Buhari and him, to persuade Buhari to devalue the naira. Buhari refused. Somehow, they got hold of this country under the IBB regime and then, we had Chu Okongwu, Idika Kalu who were the proponents and Olu Falae (former Secretary to the Government of the Federation). They were the ones who gave the go ahead and we started devaluing the currency. And I predicted then, I was in Hong Kong when this thing started. I said one day, it will be N300 to one dollar. One of my friends said no, it is not possible; N1,600 now! Right? So, this is the problem. They push sometimes from advisers and we are not the only ones. Prof Krugman, Professor of Economics at Harvard and Nobel Prize Winner then, warned against Structural Adjustment Programme. Prof Jeffery Sachs of Colombia University, Adviser to the United Nations on Economic Matters, warned us not to touch it. We didn’t listen. Everywhere these people go pushing this theory, they have always brought disaster. It is happening in South America now. So, I have always opposed it because my question was, what was Nigeria producing that was too expensive apart from oil which was priced in dollars and the quantities were controlled worldwide? So, what was our hurry in devaluation? And the consequences are here.

Many people have criticised the removal of fuel subsidy, blaming it as the major cause of the many problems Nigerians are facing currently. How do you react to that?

I don’t think there was enough study of the impact. I don’t think there was enough study of what impact it would make. But the push had always been there, remove subsidy, remove subsidy. Remove subsidy and raise extra revenue and use the revenue to develop the country right? Okay, how much development is taking place in states and local governments? Every blame is put on the president here for everything. Who is questioning governors in their states and what some of them do or do not do with local governments’ funds? So, if the extra revenue is supposed to make life happier for us, it has not, therefore, it has been a negative policy. A good idea, but let me also add like Obasanjo said about two weeks ago, these countries that talk about removal of subsidy, they have settled certain problems – underground railways, boats, trains, buses which provide cheap transport. They never raise those prices no matter what happens. So, they can shield the common man. We have nothing of the sort here. Their food production is high and heavily subsidised by government. Here, we say no, don’t subsidise. I mean, you sit down sometimes and you hear the U.S. Government has just given 50 billion to groundnut farmers in Georgia or wheat farmers in Maine and so on. But here, they tell you don’t do this, don’t do that. The diet of don’ts is the problem. So, now, the president meant well, he listened to them; obviously they were impressed that they had taken a tough decision, but the impact is frightening. (Sunday Sun)

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