Smuggled rice killing local cultivation

Nigeria’s Minister of Agriculture faces stiff challenges on the way to actualising self-sufficiency in food production in the country

FUNSHO BALOGUN

On 24 March, Akinwunmi Adesina, Nigeria’s Minister of Agriculture, was made even more aware of the difficult task he faces on the path to actualising his robust blueprint toward making the country self-sufficient in food production in the next few years. When inspecting cold storage facilities operated by some major fish importers in Lagos, the minister discovered a massive cold room filled with rancid frozen fish.

But for the minister’s intervention and the confiscation of the product valued at millions of naira, it would have been pushed into the market for consumption. In the past, importers of such unwholesome products had done brisk business, making huge profits from selling such frozen fish gotten at minimal cost abroad. And there are no indications yet of slimmer importation levels, despite the recently introduced policy on fish importation that now makes it a less attractive venture towards encouraging investments into local fish production. While Adesina’s order for the closure of the big cold room in Lagos and all other cold rooms found stocking expired fish across the country cannot be faulted, finding out all the facilities where the products are stocked will be an Herculean task.

The task is likely to be made even more difficult by some staff members of the Department of Fisheries under Adesina’s Ministry, and officials of other relevant agencies mandated to check quality that is said to have been compromised, aiding lax regulations.

This is apart from complaints that personnel will be over-stretched in the process of vast inspections required. Bayo Majiyagbe, a cold room operator in Ojodu area of Lagos, considers it a tall order, with too many odds in the way of thorough monitoring and inspection of every available cold storage facility. According to Majiyagbe, the questionable integrity of officials of the agencies charged with ensuring good quality of imported fish from foreign sources of importation is a major challenge.

“Because some NAFDAC officials are even sent abroad to ensure the fish imported by the dealers is of good quality, we wonder how some unwholesome products still manage to enter our markets,” Majiyagbe said. On another recent occasion, Adesina expressed his dissatisfaction with the easy passage of truckloads of smuggled rice through Nigerian borders, despite customs officials being stationed at the spots to curb such illegal operations. The minister fears that sustained, high level of smuggling may result in the 100 percent tarriff placed on imported rice failing to yield the desired result of discouraging massive importation towards encouraging substantial local production for domestic consumption and exportation.

Adesina puts the blame for the billions of naira the country keeps losing on the Nigeria Customs Service as rice importers appear to have subverted government’s policy by sustained smuggling of the produce into the country through the land borders. In a bid to significantly reduce the nation’s import dependency, the Federal Government raised tariff on imported brown and finished rice last year, and also facilitated the building of 13 new mills by private investors with a capacity of 240,000 metric tonnes. Government’s aim of halting the trend of importing about N365 billion worth of rice annually will not work with the borders still porous, and rice smuggling still thriving.

“The NCS must do its job of policing the borders. The rice being smuggled is not brought in by ghosts. The rice comes in trailers and in large quantities,” Adesina stated last month at a Senate committee briefing. Although the Nigerian government also earmarked significant sums for the processing of cassava flour, with a bulk of the fund (about $27.6 million or N4.2 billion) being managed by the Bank of Industry, BOI, wheat importation has also not decreased as expected. The cassava bread fund has failed to produce the 5,000 bakers that it should have helped to produce by now, according to the expected impact of the new fiscal policy measures drawn up to encourage millers and bakers to use high quality cassava flour.

Although the BOI has issued statements claiming that there are difficulties because the end users that were anticipated were not there as planned , the bakers on their part maintain that they have simply not been supplied any cassava flour from any source. However this magazine gathered that only a few big corporate bakers were contacted by government which granted them access to the scarce cassava flour. Although cassava processing equipment have been provided only in Jigawa, Taraba and Ogun states, they are yet to be made functional at full capacity. Many Nigerians also remain wary of the initiative, due to poor public enlightenement.

The thin budget of the agriculture ministry for 2014 has also been regarded as a very unambitious one by the Vice-Chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development, Gbenga Kaka. Kaka does not see how such a lean budget can accomodate the lofty agricultural projects that the Ministry intends to complete. In his view, the proposed total budget of N36.2 billion would not even be enough to back farming projects in two states if the ministry actually meant serious business.

“The entire budget, if we are to use it for farming in two states on roads or infrastructure, would not be enough, let alone for the whole country to rely on it,” Kaka said. A total of 347,000 rice farmers are to be supported by the sum, with funds earmarked to be expended on other important agricultural sectors also from the same slim budget. Government’s bid to grow domestic fish poduction, for instance, has been termed unserious by pundits who regard the misserly sum of N206.9 million made available for it in the budget as a joke. Nigeria spent about N1.3 trillion to import four food items last year. This includes roughly N1 billion per day on importing parboiled rice, N217 billion on importing sugar and N105 billion on fish. High demand for wheat flour also led to Nigeria’s wheat market being worth approximately $1 billion in U.S. exports in 2013.