This newsletter is like four days late, but I may have to stick to Friday rather than Monday. I’ll let you know what I decide.
And this one is a bit controversial, but not so much. I’ll love to hear your thoughts.
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Last week I enjoyed torturing my colleagues with praise for the rice pyramids launched in Abuja by the Federal Government. You’ve been bought over, one colleague joked. How can you praise this wastefulness? How do you justify this when the price of rice is about three-fold what it used to be just six years ago? What is wrong with you?
Their reaction echoed the vitriol online, most of it thrown at the directionless leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari. It’s easy to criticise Buhari, especially for the things he campaigned on - security, fighting corruption, and growing the economy - but it is intellectual dishonesty (or laziness) to assume everything about Nigeria is gloom and doom.
For example, local rice production has increased from two million tonnes in 2015 to nine million tonnes in 2021, according to one association of rice farmers. The Senate Committee on Agriculture puts the 2021 figure at five million metric tonnes, with about two million metric tonnes still being imported or smuggled illegally into the country. The point is that the local production of rice has grown.
The next question that comes to mind is, at what cost? According to the Bank of Agriculture (BOA), about N91.87 billion has been disbursed to ‘farmers’ through the Anchor Borrowers Scheme, a loan program designed and launched by Godwin Emefiele’s Central Bank in 2015. But of that money, only N14.68 billion has been repaid, leaving a deficit of N77.18 billion.
According to Alwan Hassan, acting managing director of the BOA, farmers were allowed to borrow from multiple banks under the scheme, and “insurance was not properly managed,” which meant the impact of natural disasters like flooding and drought had no mitigation mechanism. And, of course, insecurity in many parts of rural Nigeria has contributed to low yields as farmers scamper for their lives.
A less visible cost is the price Nigerians now have to pay for rice. According to data gleaned from the National Bureau of Statistics, the price of local rice has risen by at least 30% between 2017 and 2021. Although the national minimum wage has increased by 66% in that period, implementation of the new wages by governments at all levels remains questionable.
But, beyond the wastefulness and corruption inherent in the rice programs - and higher prices - is a rice revolution that the pyramids epitomise. In 2019, I visited Kebbi, one of the largest rice-producing states in Nigeria, and spoke to farmers who had benefitted from government schemes. We travelled under the wicked sun past fields of rice that stretched for miles, into the blue-tinged horizon. “Where you can see rice now”, one official said, “there was nothing there before.” I had been in the state in 2017, invited by a private company, to write about its giant rice mill. More mills have since opened across the country.
A lot of discussion still needs to be had on how to vastly improve the government’s agricultural subsidy programs, how to improve farming practices and growth per hectare, how to ensure less Nigerians go hungry every day, but it is disingenious to brush off the rice pyramids as unnecessary, regardless of the political aisle you belong to. It is a marker, a celebration of what has been achieved. And that’s what human beings do. We celebrate.
What I am celebrating is production. That Nigerians are producing. For an unindustrialised economy with up to 84 million hectares of arable land - with only 40% under cultivation - and millions of unemployed young people, not being able to meet rice consumption needs is a shame. That needs to change.