That presidential order on food imports

It may not rank as President Buhari’s most applauded Sallah holiday message so far but I think it would come as controversially close as they come. We are talking about his order to the CBN to stop foreign exchange funding for food imports. In the manner of a presidential order, I suppose this would be with immediate effect. Instead of spending the forex on food, according to the presidential spokesman, Garba Shehu, it would be “conserved and utilised strictly for diversification of the economy, and not for encouraging more dependence on foreign food import bills.”

Bad times are about to roll in for food import merchants. Sorry. But not so fast. Nigeria’s food import has been a source of national embarrassment since crude oil displaced agriculture as the main source of our foreign exchange earnings. We are food import dependent. It is dangerous because a country that cannot feed itself has a tenuous claim on true independence. Of the country’s 90 million hectares of land, a full 82 million hectares are arable but only 30 hectares are under cultivation from season to season. A national shame.

Our extensive arable land is perhaps the most generous of nature’s many gift to the country. Yet the nation is unable to feed itself. We lead other African countries in both rice production and consumption. In the last few years, rice production has taken a leap but we still produce less than we consume. It is not the natural order of things that South Korea with 13 per cent arable land could produce more rice than it needs and export the surplus to feed Nigeria, the giant of Africa and the largest economy on the continent. Our current annual food import bill is put at a handsome eleven billion US dollars. A fraction saved from that and ploughed into infrastructural development would be really transformative, not to say revolutionary. Is this about to change soon? It should not be foolish to nurse that hope, if some policies introduced in the last eight years are sustained to yield the desired results.

The Goodluck Jonathan and the Buhari administrations have done much more than pay lip service to our agricultural development. Their policies are aimed diversifying our economic base so we could put nature’s uncommon gift to the country to good and proper and sensible use. In 2011, Jonathan launched the Agricultural Transformation Agenda under the federal ministry of agriculture and rural development. It had two great objectives, namely, to promote agriculture as a major business and to lift it from its historical peasantry and make it a key driver in our national economic development. One of its innovations was the e-wallet. Under this system the ministry of agriculture delivered subsidised electronic vouchers to the peasant farmers through their mobile phones. They then used them to buy fertilisers and other inputs directly from agro-merchants. It eliminated the middle man in the fertiliser distribution business, a major source of corruption and abuse by government officials and their agro-merchant compradors. It frustrated peasant farmers. It also ruined government policies aimed at assisting the peasant farmers to be more productive.

The Buhari administration appears to be maintaining that momentum with its five policy initiatives aimed at a total transformation of the country’s agricultural development. They are the Anchor Borrowers Programme, the Presidential Fertiliser Initiative, the Youth Lab, the Presidential Economic Diversification Initiative and the Food Security Council. Each of these initiatives is aimed at addressing particular challenges in this very vital sector. Government records show that so far under the Anchor Borrowers Programme, more than $150 million has been disbursed to some 250,000 small-scale rice, wheat, cotton, soybeans, maize and cassava farmers who have put 300,000 hectares under cultivation. We are on the move, obviously.

Still, if the presidential directive comes under roasting, it would be for two good reasons. One, if it takes off with immediate effect, the country might shoot itself in the foot. We do not produce enough of the food we import. We have been told of a giant leap in rice production but we do not yet see enough of it to buy and eat. Food production does not obey presidential orders because it is a process, not a magical transformation on the big man’s say so.

Two, the policy should have been the collective decision of the Executive Council of the Federation after a serious and meticulous examination of the pros and cons. If this were so, wise counsel would have recommended a phased ban on food imports on sectorial basis over a given period of time. This takes into consideration the rate of our annual production of particular food items. Their sustained improved production would advise their eventually ban.

The president acted rather hastily because he too is frustrated by our continued food import dependence. He is right to feel that a drastic action such as this would force us to look inwards, curb our appetite for American long grain rice and Argentine rump steak. But good intentions are good only when they take realities into consideration. There are too many serious challenges in our agricultural development at the moment that should advise caution in how we approach in order not to worsen the problems. None of them would simply yield to presidential orders. We need to systematically tackle these challenges to gradually transform our agriculture and make us self-sufficient in food production, not as in yesterday but as in the day after tomorrow.

I fear that the presidential order would do one great harm to his good intentions. It would drive us into the waiting arms of smugglers and we would pay much more for rice and other food imports. We would be in for hard times – and the smugglers would be laughing even more loudly to the banks. This would neither help our local food production nor help the country conserve its foreign exchange. We would lose at both ends.

Without prejudice to the presidential wisdom, I would suggest an urgent review of this presidential order by the council when the federal cabinet is formally constituted. Forty-three heads would be better than one, I think. I do not see the directive achieving its objective consistent with the agricultural initiatives of the Buhari administration, given its conception in haste. It would amount to a self-sabotage.