The prognosis made by the UN agency, Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), in its 2018 forecast has insisted that hunger in Africa is basically accentuated by climate change, amongst so many other factors.
Under-nourishment, which increased between 21% in 2015 and 23% in 2016, is the key indicator of food insecurity. The report further observes that 224 million Africans, that is a number demographically more than the size of Nigeria, are now completely under-nourished. This climate argument has identified floods, droughts and crop failures as well as conflicts in places as Somalia, South Sudan and Central Africa to be responsible for food insecurity, although growth in agricultural output has tremendously boosted overall Africa’s economic development. However, using the FAO report as the basis of looking at the situation in Nigeria, where does the country stand with our penchant for taking everything for granted, and considering the very recent test case of government’s incompetent handling of petroleum scarcity?
Not that climate change is acutely hampering crop yields in Nigeria as in the case of what is found in other locations of Africa that was cited in the FAO report, no! Nigeria is comparatively less susceptible to perennial droughts commonly associated with communities in the Horn of Africa, and East and Southern Africa as well. But the country is faced with its own peculiar problems. There are indeed obvious threats that could easily trigger food insecurity beyond those the FAO identified, and these are legions if we should itemize them. Currently, such social recklessness as importation of food commodities to suffocate local produce, farmers and herders’ conflicts, cattle rustling, rural banditry, environmental pollution, demographic explosions, human pressures on arable land, corruption and even government policy summersaults, are some of the key factors that could negatively impact our agricultural output.
For sure, there is no part of Nigeria that is not blessed with abundant agricultural resources, which could upset the demands of the entire nation, including reserves. Agriculture commodity is so robust that the supply side can also serve as export material to other parts of Africa and beyond. Agriculture is one sector that the country could depend upon for its growth, development, industrialization and foreign exchange earnings if we so wish. The snag is however that nobody seems to be doing anything concrete to transform agriculture from its virtual state of neglect to a dependable means of our economic development. Peasant agricultural practices are still what sustain a significant proportion of our food intake in the country. Some of the government intervention measures over the years have proved to be disastrous to the sector. Operation Feed the Nation and Green Revolution programs declared by regimes in the past were for instance a total failure. Similarly, other measures that were designed and implemented after the earlier failures could not work. Subsistence agriculture and the way it was practiced still remains our mainstay since the pre-colonial and colonial periods.
And we are still ignorant of the potentials of agriculture to take Nigeria out of the woods. In case we don’t have this information, at the threshold of the 21st century, European Union did commission some European scholars to conduct a highly classified study, exploration, identification and recommendation of major food security zones of the world in the face of the threats of global population explosion, ecological disasters, climate change and the risks of wars. In the study, six zones were earmarked in different parts of the world based on their suitability and resilience as production sources of diverse agricultural products. Part of the criteria of the study was to establish the length of period upon which the areas can sustain their stability for uninterrupted supply of food. Guess what! Northern Nigeria is identified as one of the six zones to provide food security for the soaring human population of the world. But as I said above, as people of northern Nigeria we do not seem to understand the strategic importance of the land in which we are located or the economic potentials of the whole region within Nigeria’s unhealthy regime of geopolitical contestations, which is extended even beyond the shores of Nigeria.
To be a little bit more explicit, since the collapse of colonial political economy in Nigeria there has never been realistic and sustainable agricultural policies outside packages that were prepared abroad, handed down to us as Nigerian governments uncritically absorbed them. Yet again, we tried those foreign prescriptions recommended by the usual institutions of control of the Nigerian economy and sovereignty (IMF, World Bank, USAID etc.), but we do not appear to have leant any lesson from the futility of such reliance with the way we have become totally dependent on them. This is not just concerning agricultural sector, but also concerning all other measurable sectors and indicators of growth and development of the Nigerian society. As bad as the situation is, there wasn’t a comprehensive criticism of the implication of our total abandonment of local agricultural practices for foreign prescriptions.
Experts in our universities, agricultural research agencies and extension services are all in cahoots with externally packaged agendas in Nigeria. They have all joined the bandwagon in the service of the enemies of our homegrown national development priorities. They have all turned themselves into mere facilitators of the total takeover of our time tested indigenous agricultural practices in their researches and so called expert advice. In the name of sourcing high yielding varieties, they destroyed our local seeds that are resilient, that can withstand the vagaries of the weather, drought and pests. For more than 100 years now, most of our indigenous seedlings have been repatriated and put in strong rooms in the West. They are under lock and key in some seed banks in Western capitals. They are being carefully stored away as genetically mutated crops and chemically induced varieties, which are wholly dependent on delicate procedures as well as input from those that developed them, are handed over to us as replacement. Of course, there are other reasons why you and I will not understand this game of control with some degree of clarity.
Talking about chemical saturation of our new high yielding crops is not something new. This is a process that was started a couple of decades ago. As we are seeing everywhere, chemicals have effectively replaced all those crops that can survive without the use of pesticides. Right now, the biggest threat to food security in Nigeria is the one posed by biotechnology, genetics engineering and agro-chemical residues concentrated in hybrid crops that are touted as technological progress in agricultural production. Chemical production companies have since set out to take over agriculture on a global scale with all the attendant repercussions that entails for consumers as we witness rapid increases in rates of cancers. Companies like Monsanto, Hoechst, Ciba-Geigy and even oil companies are now making huge investments in genetically modified agriculture. Monsanto alone is vicariously taking over agricultural production in different countries of the world on behalf of the movers and shakers of neoliberal globalization.
It may as well be argued that technological mediation in our agriculture has no alternative due to the rapid expansion of human population, but the powers that be in industrialized nations apparently have some ulterior motives from the way they go about appropriating technological knowledge, exerting pressures and control mechanisms on our system of agricultural production and that of other developing countries. Our minister of agriculture Chief Audu Ogbeh may be abreast of the nuances and intricacies of this game, but he seems to be too swayed by the gimmicks involved. I staunchly believe Nigeria has all it takes to independently embark on improvement, transformation and modernization of its agricultural resources in a realistic manner without necessarily surrendering itself to the antics and debasement of the types of foreign controls we are witnessing today. All that it requires for us is the courage to do the needful.
Beyond the globalization trap, Nigerian government needs to rise to its responsibility of providing security to life and property. This is absolutely necessary in order to avert the calamities of potential food insecurity amidst the confusion trailing our communal relations. The repercussions of the combined forces of herders’ and farmers clashes, cattle rustling and rural banditry especially in northern Nigeria on agricultural production are slowly dawning upon us. This ugly development is definitely going to redound upon other sections of Nigeria that totally rely on the North for their food supply. We ought to know that a situation in which the security establishment is appearing to be complicit or nonchalant in the rapid deterioration of security in Nigeria must have far reaching consequences. One of which is beginning to rear itself in the way agriculture is hampered. As the saying goes, prevention is always better than cure.
