Farming as a death sentence

FOR obvious reasons, this is a terrible time for farmers across the country. Due to the failure of the Federal Government to rein them in, nomadic herders, a most vicious terrorist group, have been maiming and cutting down farmers in cold blood, riding roughshod over law-abiding citizens. And the more Nigerians cry out over their atrocities, the more the government plays the ostrich while fatuously mouthing food security. Recently, a resident of Jato-Aka, a community in the Kwande Local Government Area of Benue State, recounted how herders attacked the community for four consecutive days. According to him, about 20 people were killed in Jato-Aka and neighbouring communities while the terrorists also burnt down several houses, farms and farm produce. His agonising cry: “Fulani herdsmen have killed innocent members of my family in Jato-Aka and have left everyone homeless as we speak.”

In January, farmers at the Ebonyi State University (EBSU) farm in Abakaliki raised the alarm over incessant herder destruction of their farmlands. They lamented that herders grazing over 200 cows had stormed their farmlands and destroyed their vegetable and crop farms. According to one of the farmers, a widow, Mrs Elizabeth Nwachukwu, her crop and vegetable farms were destroyed beyond recognition last year. Again, recently, Afrobeats singer, Timaya, drew attention to the destruction of plants and farmlands by herders in Bayelsa State, urging the government to address the situation urgently. In Oyo State, as is typical of such developments across the country, news reports and law enforcement described the vicious attacks on farmers by terrorists as a clash, even when the outlaws had hacked down a farmer’s limbs. Typically, instead of going after the criminals, the police speak of settling “farmers-herders clashes.”

Against this backdrop of the criminalisation of farming by terrorists, the Federal Government’s recent statement that it had taken significant step towards achieving food security and economic growth as the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Mr. Wale Edun, presided over a high-level meeting on the operationalisation of the enhanced National Agricultural Growth Scheme (NAGS) in his office in Abuja looks like a cruel joke. According to the government, the initiative aims to strengthen food security, stabilise commodity prices, and support smallholder farmers nationwide. Reaffirming President Bola Tinubu’s commitment to macroeconomic stability and agricultural transformation, the minister highlighted Nigeria’s 3.84 percent economic growth, rising foreign reserves, and a stabilised exchange rate as positive indicators. He emphasised the need for efficient financing, mechanisation and strategic commodity storage to enhance productivity and ensure price stability. The story is that with funding support from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and a newly signed Mechanisation and Commercialisation Programme with Brazil, the scheme will provide essential inputs, machinery, and financial support to 200,000 farmers during the wet season and 50,000 during the dry season, focusing on key crops such as rice, maize, cassava, and sorghum.

The government also said it was addressing logistic hurdles in food distribution to strengthen supply chains and bolster strategic food reserves. It boasted that with the initiative, Nigeria is poised to become a leader in agricultural development and a model for sustainable food systems in Africa. But nothing can be further from the truth. How can Nigeria become Africa’s food hub with terrorists’ relentless attacks on farmers? With farmers cut down in cold blood on a daily basis across the country, how can any governmental project on agricultural development work? Or is it that those schemes are intended to exclude the country’s farmers who have become an endangered species?

The rainy season is here and governments across the land have been urging farmers to plant crops and enhance the country’s food security. We agree that Nigerians need to plant food, and plenty of it too.  But the country really should not be waiting for rain to plant food, and no less a personality than the Minister of Agriculture has made this clear. Obviously,  Nigeria has a lot to learn from other climes. From Europe to Asia and the Americas, countries are growing food through phenomenal means. Go to the United Arab Emirates. Go to Norway. Go to China. Go to Brazil. It is a no-brainer that Nigeria as the so-called giant of Africa needs to up its mechanised farming ante, with the states taking the lead. Nigeria practises irrigation farming but most of it is concentrated in the North. And even that is inadequate. It is a fact that on a general note, farmers in the country wait for the rainy season to begin to plant food. This is the reality despite the government’s highfalutin statements that make it sound like the country is poised to rival the world’s most developed countries in food production. Yes, Nigeria has the population and the resources to feed itself and other countries too. But it lacks the most crucial ingredient: purposeful leadership. That is why you hear the government waxing lyrical about its agricultural schemes while, across the land, farmers are literally getting butchered on a daily basis. Stories of communities protesting herder attacks are routine. And the government is supposed to be embarking on an agricultural revolution?

 Of course, the government knows what to do. Recognising the threat to farmers by terrorists, it offered military protection to some farmers in the North. The real solution is, of course, to decentralise the country’s security architecture and have state policing while setting up farmer protection squads. It is a fact that till date, no one knows the number of farmers that have been killed by the genocidal herders. However, in August 2023 during an opening address read on his behalf by the Deputy Speaker, Benjamin Kalu, at the stakeholders’ interactive session held by the House Ad-hoc Committee on the ‘Recurring Annual Clashes Between Farmers and Herders in Yamaltu/Deba Local Government Area of Gombe State and Neighbouring Local Government Areas, including other Regions of the Country with Similar Incidents’, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rt Hon. Tajudeen Abbas, hazarded a guess: 60,000 souls. Mr Speaker said the House resolved to take a critical look into the causes, nature, dimensions, actors, impact, and possible solution to the nagging national challenge, particularly because the “clashes which were hitherto seen as a regional or a confined conflict have taken a new dimension as it has expanded and grown into a wider conflict beyond the borders of many West African countries.” You see, in Nigeria, when a terrorist armed to the teeth chances upon farmers and beheads them while burning their villages, it is a “clash.”

To grow food all year round, states should have silos and grain reserves, etc, but that is really playing dumb. The big issue at the moment is farmer insecurity, which is already deterring youths interested in farming, with potentially calamitous consequences. If Nigeria under any government achieves agricultural revolution, even with the daily murderous attacks on farmers, it will be the first country in history to do so.

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