How govt, local farmers can fight recession —Etsu Nupe

The Etsu Nupe, His Royal Highness, Alhaji Yahaya Abubakar, in this interview with Adelowo Oladipo, bares his mind on the concerns of rural farmers in the North in the face their contribution to food security nationwide and other issues of national interest.

Considering the contribution of the North to Nigeria’s food production, what is your take on the current recession?

Well, the present economic recession is not peculiar to Nigeria; it is a global thing. In our case, we need to go back to the drawing board and look inwards to actually resolve this situation. Let us think of doing something about our economy. Government is making efforts to do something through intervention projects and programmes, and people should try and utilise the opportunity of such intervention programmes seriously and key into it. Intervention funds should not be diverted for selfish purposes. We should be objective, true to self and contribute our quota to developing the economy.

Multinationals have a presence in the state but it would seem there aren’t many established processing plants in the state. What is your take on that?

Well, it is left to them, having produced the quantities they can and think of how they process it. We think that the processing arrangement should also be located in this area so that our people will benefit. And when it comes to marketing, they can take it out to sell.

Before the advent of this administration, the Dangote group expressed its intention to invest heavily in the agricultural sector of the economy, by way of establishing both rice and sugarcane factories in the state. They requested for about 50,000 hectares of land. How far has this gone?

Well, that one has been going on for quite some time now and there have been some developments. The latest we heard was that the 50,000 hectares was meant for rice and sugarcane and to produce sugar. However, now they said they want to phase it out. The phase one will be rice and later on, they will go into sugarcane farming and they are asking for 16,000 hectares of land to be made available to them and then later on, they can now progress to the 50,000 hectares of land they are looking for.  It is now left for them to organise themselves regarding the quantities they will produce and how they will process it.

We also expect that the processing machines should be located in this area so that our people can benefit from both sides. When it comes to marketing, they can take it outside to sell.

The latest we have heard about Alhaji Aliko Dangote’s plan to invest in Agriculture in Niger State, with the view to go into the production of rice and sugar in Bida, Niger State, was that it would be in phases. Phase one would focus on rice then they would go into sugarcane. And they are asking for 16,000 hectares. Later on, they can now progress to the 50,000 hectares.

How are you guarding against the activities of land speculators, who operate under the guise of setting out for farming, to ask for large hectares of farmland?

When you are asking for land for industrialisation or developmental efforts, you should also be very careful with the process of industrialisation or developmental efforts. In view of this, government policy must be well explained or well arranged, so that there will not be a gap for some subversive elements to penetrate. Therefore, the policy must be very articulated and well monitored so that the people do not take unnecessary advantage of it. Even if individuals have money to acquire land, we do not want a situation whereby we sell land to anybody in large quantity. What we are operating now is on lease basis.

If you need like, say, 10,000 hectares of land, it will be leased to you and we are talking of a lease period of 5 or 10 years, and for a period of time. After the five or ten year period, the lease arrangement would be reviewed again because there are so many disadvantages to this long term leasing, whereby some people will collect money and, after a few years, when they pass away, their children would claim they did not know anything about that arrangement and, as a result, there would be fight.

So, even the company with which the lease arrangement was made would not enjoy this lease arrangement, because it is either people come and they do not know anything about the lease arrangement and they want their own share of the land. So, in order to avoid such a problem in the nearest future, we are now avoiding long term leasing. We now do it on a short term basis, which is subject to review.

How would you react to the reports that some persons were going round some rural  communities in your domain and across the state to buy farm produce in large quantities with the view to either destroy such or hoard them in order to cause food scarcity in the country?

Actually, we received a lot of information and complaints from our people and also fears about what was referred to as massive purchase of grains, especially rice, in our areas. And then we heard that these people came to buy with ulterior motives, probably to make easy money, with the current situation. Although, we still know that there are some who come to buy these food crops genuinely, we still believe that because of the time or the need to make fast money, people with negative intentions come to patronise such markets. So, in such situations we have to take appropriate precautions and also tell our people to take precaution – that is the farmers as well as the marketers – so as to be able to assuage the people’s fears.

We have warned our people to be very much aware so that they do not sell out, especially with the tendency for them to get excited about the amount of money offered for the produce. Instead of buying a bag of rice at maybe N10,000, the buyers are ready to pay maybe N12,000 or N15,000, and our people will be very much eager to sell.

So, we warned them that selling these grains without necessary precautions could be detrimental to their own living conditions because shortly after that, or in the long run, there would be no food on ground to sell or to eat. We have told them of the need to be careful and remember the days afterwards.

Through the committee of the Bank of Agriculture that came before us now to pass this message to the state government, steps should be taken by government to also buy the grains and other produce on behalf of the people and to also store in the silos. By storing these foodstuffs, when the time comes, the government can now flood the market with the grains, instead of allowing the hoarders to take advantage of the food scarcity by selling at exorbitant rates to the people. That way, the hoarding of food items would be discouraged and government would take control of the market