At last, the Federal Government has decided to deal decisively with a neighbouring country through which some nefarious elements have been sabotaging Nigeria’s economy by smuggling rice into Nigeria, thus thwarting our country’s efforts to achieve self-sufficiency in rice production.
A concerned and exasperated Minister for Agriculture, Chief Audu Ogbeh, who noted that rice smuggling to Nigeria will thwart efforts of Nigeria to achieve self sufficiency in rice production, told the nation recently that the Federal Government will close its land border with a neighbouring country to halt the smuggling of rice into the country through that country’s land border with Nigeria.
The minister did not reveal the identity of the neighbouring country, but said that the nation in question had been extensively used in the past for illegal movement of foreign rice into Nigeria, a development that had impacted on the economy adversely.
The Public Relations Officer for the Nigeria Customs Service, Mr Joseph Attah, said Nigeria’s border with the neighbouring country would be shut because that country was serving as a conduit for the smuggling of imported rice into Nigeria.
According to him, “once the border is closed, that is total blockade, and you don’t have any other reason to penetrate Nigeria,” he said, adding that if there is a need to get any of the other sister security agencies in the country to join in the enforcement, they will be willing to join the Customs service in the national enforcement.
Ogbeh also revealed that the Federal Government had reduced rice importation by 95 per cent and increased the number of rice farmers from five million to 30 million within a period of two years. Today, many states in the country are growers of rice. Key rice growing states today are Anambra, Ebonyi, Kebbi, Kano, Jigawa, Niger and Kogi States, among others.
It is heart-warming that the minister understands that food security is national security and that it must be well stated and protected to ensure that no country hampers the security of the nation.
We have seen how Donald Trump has been fighting hard to close the trade deficit between United States and many other countries. He said it has become an issue of national security for him to ensure that the US achieves positive balance of trade with other countries, particularly China, European countries and others.
We need to copy this good model. Never again must we allow neighbouring countries to take advantage of Nigeria such that they will thwart policies meant to sustain our economy.
With more than 30 million Nigerians engaged in rice production, the government must make sure that nothing short-changes the country’s local production of rice and other agricultural products. The same policy should be extended to the petroleum products which we import to the country at great cost and are daily being smuggled out of the country to other neighbouring countries at a huge cost to this nation.
Meanwhile, it is pleasing that only 5 percent of the country’s rice needs is currently imported. It goes to show that if given the right leadership and how to do it, Nigerians will follow it up. Therefore, the government must further widen rice production to more states to ensure that come 2019 planting and harvesting season, the country achieves self sufficiency in rice production. From that point we must drive production of rice up so that we can export it to other countries too and keep our farmers at work.
The same thing goes for the production of wheat. Bread is a common food in Nigeria. In fact, Nigeria is a major wheat importing country and spends huge billions of dollars every year to import wheat from the United State, Canada and Europe. We now know that some varieties of wheat can actually thrive locally here.
We know that the North East and North West of the country can produce some varieties of wheat, while another variety can be grown in other parts of the country. The National Cereal Research Institute would need to be mandated to follow up on this and ensure mass production of wheat in the country.
Providing food for 200 million population is not an easy task. It requires a lot of strategic planning and execution. Bearing in mind that implementation is the undoing of most government policies in this country, the government must make sure that implementation of any agricultural policy does not fail the nation
again.
Going forward, the government must know that agricultural mechanisation using tractor, large farms and fertilisers is the answer to increasing food production in the country. In fact, if well planned and if large scale farmers are involved in the production of food, there is the likelihood that less than 10 percent of the country’s population can produce all the nation’s food needs.
