As an engineer and a practicing farmer, how insperable are agriculture and engineering?
The backbone of agriculture is engineering. When you talk of mechanisation, processing, preservation, transportation even when you talk about irrigation, all these things are engineering processes. Therefore, I do not see a way you could separate engineering from agriculture, they are inseparable, they are two good friends. As a matter of fact, I will say they are brother and sister that were born at the same time. They are twins.
Talking about Oyo State which is one of the biggest states in Nigeria with arable land, being an indigene of the state, do you think the state is really exploring its potentials in agriculture?
No, we are not, we are not even scratching the ground when it comes to the potentials agriculture provides for this state. The land is fertile, the vegetation is right, the climate is wonderful but the government is confused. They do not know how to promote agriculture. Probably because of the fact that a lot of them have never had anything to do with agrculture and one thing I always say is that being a practitioner is different from someone that is advised to do something. So they probably do not know the problems agriculture portends and they do not know the potentials agriculture has in Oyo State. And when you talk about land, it is not going to be land in isolation, Like you asked in your first question, we have the manpower, we have the technology and the technical know-how, we have the engineering base here in Oyo State, we have rivers and streams crossing the whole of Oyo State. So, that is telling me that I can plant round the year when I have rivers and streams crisscrossing the whole state. In all the seven zones of Oyo State, there are rivers and streams, so there is nothing I cannot plant. About two months ago, I ate corn for the first time this year from farmers that plant maize by the riverside, so why can’t the state take advantage of that and plant maize along the length of the river Ogun and other so many rivers in the state? We are not just getting it right, agriculture alone can provide all the resources we need.
You are aspiring for the governorship seat in Oyo State, do you really have a blueprint for the development of agriculture if you are elected?
Yes, I do because I am a farmer myself, I have one of the biggest individual cocoa plantations in the state and I know the problem we are encountering, I know the challenges farmers are going through and I have proffered solutions to them in my blueprint to alleviate the problems of farmers and to help farmers make more resources from what they do and to help them with modern implements and the necessary things. At the same time, I am also conscious of the fact that we can not totally eradicate the small farmers because they have role to play. We could form them into cooperatives. The blueprint also contains how to go about successive farming, which means that the farming does not just come to an end due to your demise or by the fact that you are no longer interested. There should be somebody to take over the farming so that the farm will not become bushy. My blueprint also contains processing of these farm produce, logistics, purchasing of the farm produce. Where will the market come from? How am I going to help the farmers cultivating presently and not expecting any income until six months time, How am I going to help him meet up his basic monetary needs? These are the things in my blueprint. The farmers will smile just like others in any other sector of the economy.
It has been your opinion that no state in Nigeria, particularly Oyo State, should be poor due to the opportunities that are abound in agriculture. Can you please dwell more on this?
I have always been making reference to agriculture, agricultural programmes and revolution irrespectivre of oil money. Agriculture does not need big money, do you know a kongo of maize is less than a thousand naira? Do you know how much I can get from that? Do you know if I put a tractor on the farm and plough it do you know how much I am going pay? So you do not need so much to do agriculture, what you need is sincerity and dedication.
So, what you are saying now is that if Oyo State government is sincere and committed to agriculture, the economy of the state is going to be buoyant?
Sincere and know. You see they are two different things, you may be sincere and lack knowledge. So your sincerity will be getting zero, you may have that sincerity but you may be doing a wrong thing. You must have a deep knowledge of what you are doing, So what we are saying is that sincerity of that knowledge gives you results. Maybe they are sincere but they are doing it the wrong way or maybe they are doing it right but not sincere otherwise…. I know the result I am getting from my farm which is just five years old. So I can imagine if government wants to do that on a larger scale. Farmers need to be encouraged, I just told you one of the greatest challenges of farmers in Nigeria, a lot of people are interested in farming but between the time I put my seed in the the soil and the time it is of market value on the farm, what happens to my everyday activities? How do I feed my family? How do I live? Because if I plant maize today for instance, It is going to take me three months before I can make a dime from it. Between the 0-3 months how do I feed my family? So there is that gap that is discouraging farmers. The farmer will leave the farm and go and hustle outside to look for income and by the time he comes back, cattle have eaten up the farm.
The problem with our agriculture seems to be the fact that it is discussed in isolation of the vast value chain, What do you see to this?
I agree with you. You remember I mentioned processing, value chain, logistics and all that. You see, in other climes of the world it is even the end users that will drive the farm. It is the Nestle of this world that will be running after cocoa farmers so they are ready to give them all the inputs they need because they are waiting for their products to produce. They know that if the farmers do not produce, their machines will not work, their factory will close down. The British American Tobacco Company has a good template. BAT is like literarilly planting tobacco for the farmers, sending their children to school because they know that this is our life wire if anything happens to them then we do not have any business with those machines. So what I am saying is processing is key to planting, once you get the processing right, It is the end users that will be driving the farmers, They will be the ones encouraging them.
Talking about cocoa and maize, Do you really think we have end users that can drive the process on the farms?
We may have the right end users but they may not be at the right place, the discussions may not be right. If you have an end user for example may be too far away from where you are producing it may affect them. All the tobacco farmers are around Iseyin, Oyo North up to Kwara State.And those are where the tobacco industries are: Ibadan and Ilorin so they are monitoring and do not forget that they have to consider their own cost of production as well. So if we are talking about maize, the poultry farmers that depend on them should be driving them.
As a politician do you think there should be a policy by government to address this lopsidedness?
Yes. You see I belong to this school of thought that development should be policy-driven. Yes there could be free market but inside that free market, there should be some control, there should be some forces that will direct the position and direction of growth in such a way that will affect the whole populace. If you do not do it, there will not be any development. If development is lopsided, it affects the general well-being of the people of the country. That is exactly what is happening in Nigeria, the North-East is poor and now they are not allowing all of us to rest. Whether you like it or not it is affecting what I produce in the south here. Because part of what I produce is supposed to be consumed by them and if they are fighting I can not push things there. The person manufacturing plastic chairs cannot push his chairs there, so it is affecting us. So policies should be tinkered with. Like it is done in the banking industry and some other sectors like the aviation industry for example you will discover that some particular flights could only generate from a particular airport in the same country. It is intentional because they want to develop their country. In Europe for instance, there are some flights that could only originate from city airports. There are flights that will only originate from Manchester airport, if you say you are going to a particular country, they will tell you that you have to go to Manchester. Policies should be tinkered with, you cannot leave everything to free market because if you do that it is only the capitalists that will enjoy it but the world is not only for the capitalists or who takes care of the vulnerable? The vulnerable have to be removed from that class to the middle class. So if I do not help them, how would they move to the middle class? How would they add to the GDP of the nation? Otherwise people will be perpetually poor. There is this thing I always say, the rich must subsidise the poor.
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