In light of food shortages in Nigeria and the hardship this is causing the people of the country, I will like to urge President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to reconsider his position on food importation into the country.
While this position is well meaning, based on his vision of a self sufficient Nigeria, I believe it is flawed in strategy of addressing the immediate needs while keeping track of future goals, hence a more pragmatic approach is required. An estimate is only as good as its variables, while I may not have full detail of the situation as the president and his advisers, I think there is no gainsaying the fact that food supply is insufficient in Nigeria The plans to fix the security challenges and ensure adequate food production is a medium to long term plan, it will not fix the problem in the meantime, the in between time of now and when the security gets better, farmers feel safe enough to farm and food starts to grow.
One might ask why is food so expensive in Nigeria? Multiple factors are responsible for cost of food, most especially inflation but there is also shortage of supply which is worsened by insecurity. Nigeria also has infrastructural challenges all these problems will take years to fix. Regardless of all these “Man must Wack”
A 2022 article on the economist describes poor infrastructure as “the grit that really gums up trade” in Africa. It says cost of logistic in Africa is 3 or 4 times higher than the world average. Nigeria has about 190,000 thousand kilometer of road for its 200,million people out of which only 65,000km are paved and they are not all in good conditions. Our train tracks mostly follow colonial paths that simply connected the mines to the ports. All these legacy issues cannot be fixed in one year, however Nigerians must eat everyday.
While it is a thing of pride to say we grow the food we eat, we must first eat the food in order to be able to grow food. I will say food security trumps food productivity. This is why the president should allow food to come into the country. We can allow food importation and still support our farmers at the same time. Both actions are not mutually exclusive. The president has said food importation enables rent seekers to perpetrate fraud, I will argue to the contrary that food protectionism enables domestic producers to limit competition, inflate prices thereby increasing their profit without adding value or volume. Why should a farmer who is making 1000 naira profit from selling 1 bag of rice now increase his production to 3 bags of rice if that excess supply will reduce his profit 300 naira per bag? He is already making more money from one bag under scarce conditions than he is making from 3 bags when supply is excess.
Countries that practice food protectionism do so because their cost of labour is high and they don’t want cheaper food from poor countries to overtake their market share. The situation is not the same in Nigeria, our labour is cheap, our demand is meager and our supply is short. If we want to counter horsing and price gouging we must encourage open market competition that takes away the incentives for such unscrupulous acts.
What we need to do is subsidize our farmers in multiple ways, the government can subsidize theirs transport cost in a verifiable manner using technologies, the government can subsidize their diesel cost, continue the subsidies on fertilizers, seedlings and other farm supplies while investing in better infrastructure like farm to market roads, railways, cargo air flight etc that will ensure food transportation is faster and cheaper and under best practices.
There is no economic, ethnic, religious, forex, political or agricultural justification for hunger. The average dietary consumption for an average Nigerian is grossly inadequate, children don’t have access to nutritious food, our power situation means we can’t preserve food hence wastages adds to the cost.
It is imperative that we let food come into country, subsidize our farmers and cover their losses should they record any. However, food is a must have we must do everything to relieve this pain in the immediate term. While aligning our strategies to achieve food sufficiency in the long term.
American is the largest producer of meat and also the second largest importer of meat after china. American is the largest producer of oil and its biggest importer. We can walk and chew gum, allow food importation while improving food productivity and continue our match towards infrastructural sufficiency.
AUTHOR: DR CHARLES MARINDOTI OLUDARE (NATIONAL CONVENER,SOCIAL REHABILITATION GRUPPE)
