Forest police key to ending banditry, food insecurity – Prof Sharubutu

Professor Garba Sharubutu is the Executive Secretary of the Agricultural Research Council of Nigeria, an agency under the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security with 16 agricultural research institutes and 17 colleges of agriculture under its supervision. It has the mandate of advising the government, coordinating and designing research, as well as undertaking teaching and having extension service. In this interview on Trust TV’s Daily Politics, he speaks on government’s agenda on food security and how instituting and enhancing forest police would help to address the challenges of banditry and food security, among others.

Your council regulates the activities of the over 30 agriculture-related institutions; are you worried that most of their findings are not finding their way to farmlands because of insecurity?  

I was at the budget defence where this issue was raised and I debunked it. It is not true that our research findings are on the shelf. I will give you examples. Between 2006 and 2015 we had what we called the West African Agricultural Productivity Programme. We were the ones taking our seed from Nigeria to Mali, Ghana and Burkina Faso. The seed are products of our research.

Today, in the whole of Africa we are the second country to introduce insect-resistant cowpeas. We do the research here in Nigeria. When tomato Ebola came, we looked for a solution.

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As I am talking to you today, the National Cereals Research Institute has produced over 65 varieties of rice; quick maturing, drought, flood, varieties and disease resistance.

Last week, we were able to come up with different varieties, such as new varieties of maize that are resistant to armyworm. So where is the shelf that these researchers are on?  

It was gratifying that you debunked the claim that your findings are not finding their way to the farmlands, but the flip side is that they are only finding their way to the farmlands in neighbouring countries because of the activities of bandits in Nigeria. Can we attribute this to the food insecurity we are battling with?

We can’t say they are finding their way only to our neighbouring countries. I have given you an example of what we have been able to produce, and of course, using here.  

The problem we have is that of off-takers of our technology. By our mandate, we are supposed to research and bring in innovations and new technology. The responsibility of the rest of the populace is actually to adopt that technology.  

Where we are having problems, which I will agree with you, is our inability to take these research findings to the doorstep of farmer, as many as possible.  

And it is so because the constitution has made provision for agriculture to be on the concurrent list, so the issue of extension work is now more or less domiciled in the local and state governments.

The state government has not gotten the political will to make sure that extension workers are well educated or they are allowed to do their jobs.  

That’s the reason the ADPs are down. The FADAMA projects are down because these are programmes that were intentionally made for our research findings to reach the rural populace.  

But the few ones that have been able to reach are because each research institute has been mandated to have a department of extension, and it is from that place that we take them. And agricultural knowledge is learned from reciprocal colleagues. So, when you see me do good, another person adopts it. That is the reason it is very slow.

Jigawa is relatively safe, and Kebbi, to some extent; but what about Zamfara, Katsina, Plateau and Benue? These are states known for producing food. In Taraba, for instance, farmers have all been chased out. I know it is not your fault, but are you worried that these places are not secured?

We are worried because that is one of the critical factors we are expected to address. But if you listened to Mr President after addressing the All Progressives Congress (APC) Governors Forum or so, he came up with one solution, which is attacking the problem directly.  

He said they were going to have forest police. For the past 17 years, I have been shouting about the need for us to police our forests. Criminality is incubated in these forests, whether you call them farmlands or anything.

It is executed there because they come and steal people from the town and take them to the forests. And these forests are not known to soldiers, the police and other security agents. So what happens? It is only forest guards, if trained, that would have been able to penetrate these forests.

But we have forest guards, don’t we?

They only exist in local governments and you see them with catapults. At this age, how would you police the forest with a catapult? How can a local government police the forest?

If you look at the scheme of Service of the Federation, it made provision for forest guards. These forest guards are nowhere to be found, and this is a scheme of the Service of the Federation.

So, it is for us to be able to police our forests. When we do that, people will not hide in the forests and perpetrate all forms of evil acts.

In Kenya, for example, they can control their forests. In India, they are known as the unseen heroes.

Do they exclusively use forest guards or they also deploy serious technology?

The forest guards are as serious as other military persons. They also use technology. They use drones, the GIS to identify potential flashpoints or crisis areas. So, if you arrest somebody, for example, today, or maybe you kidnap somebody and take him to the bush, you will find out that the forest guards know the terrain very well, and they will be able to attack it.

If that is done, I can assure you that it is the first step towards reducing the issue of insurgency in this country.  

But even towns and villages are not secure. The police don’t have the technology, neither does the military; what do you think could be done?

It is true, but I have told you quite clearly that these things are incubated in the forests. The towns cannot be safe because where this criminality is incubated is quite safe for the criminal, so he moves into the town and snatches you at gunpoint and takes you back to the forest.

Beyond the issue of policing the forests, many believe that many governors are not ready to address the root cause of this insecurity – the farmer-herder crisis. President Buhari tried to have RUGA; they changed the name almost three times but many eastern governors resisted it. Do you think Tinubu would crack this nut?

I am not within the security arrangement of the government; I am only within the agricultural arrangement.  What we have told you here is that there is the need to take care of the forests; that’s where the farmlands and the criminals are hiding. That is where our mineral resources are, that is where our trees are. If you take care of this vital component of our own country, I can tell you that it’s not going to be a problem.

I believe President Tinubu is ready to confront it, which is why the idea of forest police is coming in.

Do you think the concept of RUGA would have been the antidote? Are governors ready to embrace it?

I was very happy when the concept of RUGA was brought up. It came along with the concept of ranching – sedentary animal rearing. If we had received it with good intentions, gone back to our various states and tried to adapt it to our peculiar situation, it would have been better for us.

I was part of the advisory team of former Governor Lalong in Plateau State, and when this idea came, we were moving from one community to another to enlighten people on the importance of this.

We faced resistance, but the truth about it is that if we had keyed into that programme, it would have been better. We advocated the adoption of this initiative because on the Plateau, for example, there is no ethnic group that does not rear cattle.

The argument should have been what percentage of the intervention should go to the so-called indigenous people who want to rear livestock? What percentage should go to those who rear pigs? What percentage is supposed to be used to make sure that Fulani people stay in one place?  

Our concern on the Plateau was how a typical Berom man would leave his land and go to settle on that RUGA? It was not going to be possible.

So we said that those of them that reared livestock in their various communities understandably already have their lands, so why can’t we encourage them to settle?

When this argument was going on, the typical Plateau man was assuming that the RUGA issue was just meant to solve the problem of Fulani people.

Maybe because of the name, RUGA?

But RUGA is not even a Fulani name. However, it has been Hausanized and Fulanized or something of that nature.

But it has been around for a very long time; it’s an acronym.

Yes, all forms of nomenclature now came in because when my minister then, Audu Ogbeh, mentioned the fact that we wanted to build colonies, people said the Fulani were coming to colonise Plateau State. So, nomenclature became a problem, it was either RUGA or a colony. We were moving to solve the problem of understanding the language rather than studying the document to understand what was there.  

Since your duty is to research, can you provide another option instead of doing it at the national level; what can you advise? I saw some of your photos and videos somewhere, is it a water pond?

At the end of the year, the Minister of Agriculture, Sen Abubakar Kyari, decided to charge each of us to use his initiative to see how they could solve the problem within our area of operation.  

One of the areas we adopted was constructing solar-powered boreholes within a certain community, Burtali, as they were passing along.

Is Burtali a cattle route?

Yes. What we did in the ARCN was to make sure that we construct a watering trough so that as they were passing along they would be able to take water there. It’s provided by a solar-powered borehole.

Where did you do your own?

I did it in my community. I felt that they must have that understanding because my community formed part of the cattle route that comes right from Maiduguri, passing through Wawazange to Wase area. And it comes through Chip area, moving right up to Lafia, passing through my village.

Now, we have three of them spread along that route because for the Fulani man, his problem is not light or tarred roads, not even water to drink, but water for his animal to drink.

And whatever you do, they must move because you can’t grow grass that will feed 100 herds of cattle in a day. There’s no way you can go and harvest that grass to feed 100 animals a day.

We are maintaining 100 animals because the feed conversion rate of indigenous animals is not good. So they will eat and would not convert it into flesh. So you put as many of them as possible.  

But our artificial insemination programme is about to take off with the National Animal Production Research Institute this year; and once that is done, you would find out that we will be able to come up and begin to artificially inseminate most of these animals.

It is not going to be easy because we have tried and failed, but this time around, the executive director of the institute has been able to convince the ministry that we can do something in that direction.

We are hoping that we would be able to improve the genetic composition of our cattle so that we can convert them to real feed converters.

With all these efforts and the over 30 institutions under your agency to help achieve your mandate, why are we hungry in Nigeria?

There are words I may not be comfortable with, like saying that we are hungry.

Are we not hungry?

That language should be redefined to know whether we are hungry or we are food insecure. I want to believe that accessibility to food is more of a problem because when we say we are hungry, it means we have given up.

About a month ago when the president visited Lagos, he was passing through a market and people were heard shouting at him, saying, “We are hungry.”

Part of it may be politics. That’s why I prefer to use the phrase, inaccessibility to food rather than outright hunger. This is because if you say I am hungry, it looks to me as if you have given up on any effort to make sure that we correct the situation. That is why Mr President in his own right has decided to take on the subject matter in terms of food security. That’s why he made it his number one priority.

He has challenged the minister of agriculture, rural development and food security. He has changed the name of the ministry from Agriculture and Rural Development to Agriculture and Food Security.

That is to draw our attention to the fact that we cannot completely give up on food search. And the search for food starts with research institutes. We should be able to study the situation on ground and bring up viable options that will lead to more production of food so that Nigeria will be food secured. 

When you talk about food security, Nigerians and the world believe that action speaks louder than words. In the introductory part, I mentioned that N102billion out of the total N362bn was set aside to address the issue of food security; is that enough for a whole year?  

I don’t think we got the figures right. You are quoting what was budgeted for the National Agricultural Development Fund.

This, by Mr President’s idea, does not cover what is sent to the Agricultural Research Council. This does not cover what was sent to the ministry. It does not cover what was sent to the various departments and the Agricultural Research Institute. This is money that budgeted for NATFUND.

The NATFUND has a budgetary allocation because they need a take-off grant to be able to organise themselves, establish themselves and start to implement their mandate. But you know that NATFUND has an act, which made provision for how money will be sourced from agricultural activities into their coffers. So the NATFUND is just like TETFUND.

What about the entire budget of the ministry? I think we quoted this right- N362billion?

People love quoting figures in terms of percentages. They say education must have 26 per cent and food, 16 per cent. By the time you begin to calculate all those percentages in terms of all the sectors, you end up with more than 100 per cent.

The point is that there is nowhere in the whole of this world where you can have budgetary allocations that will satisfy the needs of each of the sectors.  

So, what we have now, by the detail that is coming from Mr President through the minister, Abubakar Kyari, and of course, his brother, Sabi, is that we must also go out and look for how we are going to augment our activities.

They have come up with a tripartite understanding among the Ministry of Water Resources, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Agriculture, that each institution under either education or water resources that has available land for us would go into cultivation and must make the land available so that we will go into cultivation.  

Now, it seems we were going back to the days of Operation Feed the Nation, so that each parcel of land we have, we must learn to move into it and try to bring up food from that place.

They have also decided to reorganise commodity associations like the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association, Rice Farmers Association of Nigeria (RFAN) etc. Mr President is trying to take them off politics so that they will not bring the issue of food security into political activities. That’s the more reason why, when he was declaring a state of emergency in terms of food security, he said he would revisit the commodity associations so that their mandate would now be to look at their members and bring up solutions on how these members will be satisfied to move into the farm and try to bring up food.

Some people may be taken aback when you say the tripartite arrangement was any available land, maybe within colleges of education, colleges of agriculture, institutions and all that. Is it that you people have given up on the vast arable land we have all over the country? Have you surrendered them to bandits?

No. Those lands are available for farmers. But those of us who run these institutions must go into farming. This is an incentive that will make everybody who operates within the agricultural sector to go into farming.

According to my minister, it is not enough for you to be a professor of agriculture without a parcel of land to farm. It is not enough for you to operate within the Agricultural Research Council and you don’t have a vast land. For example, you have the Federal College of Land Resources in Kuru and you leave the land there without farming.

The point here is that we must lay our hands on the land because it is only when we can produce enough food that we will be able to convince the young ones over there to go into farming.

I want you to say something about combating environmental issues because when you aggregate the whole problem, it revolves around that. Lake Chad has gone and all the river basins are not optimally being operated and all that.  

There are two things there. It involves finance, in terms of putting all the necessary ingredients in place for the afforestation programme and all the rest, like the green, green wall. We have beautiful policies, but where to get the finance and be able to put them is a problem. The second aspect of it has to do with enlightenment.

But sometimes you see the finances there, but before you know it, they have been swallowed by snakes.

Of course, we cannot rule out the fact that there is corruption, but we also need to look at its genesis.

For example, if I am looking for N10,000 to operate a certain facility and you brought N3,000 for me, the money is not going to do anything.  

But there is also provision for the human resource aspect of the operation. So the human resource in terms of the survey and consultancy swallows the N3,000 and then you don’t have the N7,000 to implement that project. The following year again, another one came. So you keep on budgeting less.

We have one characteristic we are trying to kill in the ARCN for us to feel that each aspect of your programme must be implemented, thereby spreading the money so thin that you don’t have it.

If you go to the Agricultural Research Council of Nigeria you would see what we are doing there. We concentrate each year on one project and finish it. And that is why when we start construction this year, we will finish it. Another year we will start and finish it.

We mounted our radio and television, and within six months, we were able to finish it. And we have started broadcasting because in our wisdom, we concentrate on the little. We continue to do little and little until we do everything.

Amidst all these predictions, 26million people are grappling with low-level food security; and there’s malnutrition for the children. Is it possible to combat them?

We can combat them as long as we enlighten our people on the right steps to take. Enlightenment is very necessary, and this is not only in the agricultural sector, it is in all. We have more food but how to process it is another aspect. This is an argument for another time.