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If
the title of this piece sounds anachronistic, it is only because you are
familiar with the more popular expression, ‘the Ides of March’ - a term often used as a metaphor for impending doom. I
am not a soothsayer but if I were asked to say something, anything, to the
present government, I would say: Beware of the Ides of Rice! Why? The reason is
simple. As the global food crisis forces the prices of basic staples up around
the world, the federal government has, as usual, taken the easy way out by
arranging for the importation of N80b worth of rice to stem anticipated food
shortages. Of course, Nigeria
can afford to import anything: with oil prices soaring up to an unprecedented
$124USD per barrel what is a paltry N80b?
But
who says that the food crisis is just about rice? Of course not! It is about
adequate production of food; it is about adequate provision of irrigation processes and potable water;
it is about adequate provision of power for preservation and processing of even
the much that is produced; it is about motorable roads to facilitate evacuation
of farm produce, it is about effective leadership that anticipates crisis
(including food crisis) ahead of time and takes measures to cushion it’s impact
without creating a problem bigger than it is trying to solve.
For
many watchers of the polity, it is worrisome enough that after the billions of
naira in allocations to the agricultural sector and millions of dollars from international
agencies and foreign partners sunk into the so called food security programme,
the era of simplistic solutions to national challenges is still very much with
us. The idea that if any commodity is scarce then it must be imported to keep
the consumptive elites from experiencing any jolt to their pampered palates is
a warped one. During the administration of Shehu Shagari, a Presidential Task
Force on Rice was set up in 1980 to tackle a similar problem. The inevitable
disruption to local rice farming took many years to ameliorate. Such emergency
measures have also been routinely applied to cement, fuel and fertilizer
without any respite in sight. When shall we change this fire-brigade style of
confronting developmental challenges? Now rice is the latest bogeyman. Déjà vu?
Part
of Obasanjo’s Reform package was a Rice Forum held in September 2002 which
culminated in the setting up of the Presidential Initiative on Rice. The
overall objective of this initiative as contained in the policy document was
“to attain self-sufficiency in local production of rice in the short - term (by
year 2005) and to produce for export in the medium term (by year 2007)”. The
success or failure of this initiative can be judged from the latest faux pas.
For how long shall we
continue to revel in quick – fixes? Knee jerk solutions only provide short term
solutions: they do not provide medium term solutions much more long term
solutions. Looking at the disparity between policy formulations and
implementation in the agricultural sector, it should be obvious to government
that a human barricade exists between farmers and the packages intended to
galvanize them into greater productivity. And nothing will change until some of
the gluttonous middlemen who have ensconced themselves in that barricade are
weaned from the system. Such leeches include some bureaucrats among the
over-bloated civil service in the various ministries of agriculture at the
federal and state levels, the River Basin Development Authorities and various
research centres who are developing pot-bellies in cozy offices while a staple
food that be can be cropped in ninety days flat is being imported with N80b.
So much lip service is
being paid to agriculture in this country. What will N80b not do to raise the
production levels of states with high rice yielding antecedants like Enugu,
Imo, Benue, Adamawa, Ebonyi, Kaduna,
Niger and
Taraba? The Agricultural Development Projects (ADP) offices are littered with
equipment intended for but never released to farmers some of which have been
left to rust and rot. Still rice farmers have no access to tractors, inputs,
subsidy or credit.
Perhaps the government
does not know or has chosen not to know about the privation and neglect
suffered by rice farmers and rice producing communities in Nigeria.
For many rice producing communities, there is no potable water, no power
supply, no irrigation and no road to evacuate produce. The colossal neglect of
the rice producing community of Akeme Ohiauchu in Imo
State is typical in this
regard. Drinking water is a luxury. The Ibu Dam project embarked upon by the
Anambra - Imo River Basin Development Authority has remained a mirage since
it’s conception two decades ago with the result that the people have had to
resort to irrigation systems akin to the shadoof method of irrigation used 4000
years ago in ancient Mesopotamia. And the Okigwe – Arondizuogu – Uga – Nnewi
road through which the people evacuate their products is in such a terrible
state of disrepair that few vehicles ever risk driving on it’s atrocious
surface.
The present food crisis
even at this preliminary stage has exposed the contradictions in our
agricultural policies. At best, the term “food security” is being reduced to a
moniker for embellishing speeches and garnishing addresses. The farmer who is
the focus of all agricultural policies in Nigeria
is always conveniently confined to the background. Civil servants and
bureaucrats who are largely theorists and arm chair farmers with negligible
practical knowledge of the vagaries of farming superintend over the fate of
farmers – perpetually designing ingenious ways of frittering away resources
meant for enhancing productivity .
What is the wisdom in
importing N80b worth of rice when local rice farmers are crying for lack of sufficient
government impact? And much of that sum will probably go to Thailand
which prides itself as the “Rice Bowl of the World”. So our resources will be
devoted to boosting Thai rice farming when our own rice farmers are groveling
in the dust on account of systemic neglect? Is that even possible when major
rice-producing countries, recognising that their first responsibility is to
feed their own people, are placing restrictions on rice exports and planning to
form a cartel to squeeze bumbling giants like Nigeria
dry for every grain of rice?
Shortage of food is not a
matter that any government with a sense of history wants to treat with kid
gloves: the relationship between food shortages and popular revolt is as
well-known as the fact that a hungry man is an angry man. Already, countries
that have experienced severe riots over food shortages in recent times include Somalia,
Senegal, Bangladesh,
Egypt, Togo,
Cote d’Ivoire, Gabon
and Haiti.
To avoid a more dreadful scenario being reenacted here, we must beware of the
ides of rice.
uchebush@yahoo.com; 0805
1090 050
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Posted by Robot| 09.05.2008 23:05