Thread by @sarnchos

We gave up production of virtually everything in this country and became a nation of traders and importers. Banks were not lending to the productive sectors, and where they did lend, the interest rates were such that nobody could pay back. Agriculture was the first victim.

We reached a point where we were buying rice worth $5 million a day. Everything was being imported. Nigeria became a very sweet source of foreign exchange earnings for other countries. And it was all looking so rosy because oil revenue was being used to support importation;

and Nigerians felt happy. But a day was going to come, and it came finally, when oil revenues are no longer as big as they were. And the challenge of how to pay for these imported goods became a reality, and we had to take a decision

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If you want to continue shipping in other people’s products, how do you pay for those products? That is a question the Nigerian elite are not willing to ask. We became the biggest consumers of champagne, and a French champagne ambassador here said in your newspaper

that Nigeria was the biggest consumer in the world, that Nigerians love living. But we should ask ourselves: is that our priority? Red wine, white wine and champagne, are those things for a country whose people are poor? So, this was expected. And it has come.

And let me say this, nobody anywhere in Africa, and especially in Nigeria, can solve these problems created since 1986 when the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) was dumped on Africa.

Nobody can solve these problems in the next 30 years.

It will take a while, and in trying to solve them, we will create some pains at home, which our citizens may not be willing to accept. On rice production level, there were only 5 million farmers who were members of farmers’ associations when we came in, but today,

there are nearly 13 million rice farmers. The output of rice this year is almost 6 million metric tonnes, but our consumption is nearly 7.2 million tonnes.

Where have they placed India in poverty? How many of them have been to Delhi and seen families living on pavements? We do not desire that. How many have been in Venezuela, a country with a big oil reserve as Saudi Arabia? What is going on there now?

I also want to tell the Nigerian elite that there is a tendency to say ‘nothing good happens here.’ That is the worst form of lack of patriotism. You poison everybody’s mind by saying nothing good happens here, and the international community picks it.

In 2016, six months after I became the minister, I raised a warning that there could be trouble emanating from herders and farmers and that the problem would escalate if we did nothing. And I wrote a letter to every governor in the country, asking if they would allow us to create

ranches within their territories. Only 16 of them replied. Of the others, some said they were not interested and others did not respond at all. But I saw it coming. And people forget that a herdsman is also a farmer. If we are helping rice, cassava, beans and cocoa farmers,

we should also help the herders. But the attitude is ‘no, this is a private business. Why should the government be involved?’

The cassava farmer is a private farmer; he does not grow cassava for the ministry. Cocoa and rice farmers are not growing them for the government,

but we help them. The elite are like saying, “when it comes to cattle, don’t talk about them. Why cannot they build their own ranches?” Building ranches are not cheap. People forget that we all need beef and that Lagos consumes 7,000 cattle per day.

The cattle are grown somewhere else. The cattle are not the best; they are not properly grown and they walk too much. Some of them are infected, poorly fed, drink less water, and we produce the lowest quantity of milk, about one litre per cow daily.

When the states rejected the proposal, the next question is what do we do? We have 451 grazing reserves in our record as far back as 1960, and about a half of them were on the gazette. They are still there despite encroachments. Of what is left, we have over 4 million hectares

Of land mainly in the north. There are a few in the Southwest, precisely at Akunu in Ondo State, and in Isheyin in Oyo State. I have been there. The governor of Oyo State is not too keen, but the governor of Ondo State is interested.

Again, I am sorry to say this. It is seen as a Fulani thing, not as an economic activity. So, some of the attacks are not rational. The National Animal Production Research Institute (NAPRI) in Zaria is headed by a professor from the Southwest.

He would tell you that they have always imported some varieties of grasses from Congo & Europe to grow for cattle here, because not every grass is suitable to livestock; not every grass fed to livestock is nutritionally good. We need different grasses for growing the beef & milk

So, when we said that, there were attacks

One tragic thing in Nigeria is that whatever topic you bring up, there are some commentators who know next to nothing about the subject, but would be the first to criticize. I do not mean to be rude to them,

but how many of them know about livestock? Clergymen were on the air attacking from the pulpits. People say all kinds of things. But Saudi Arabia imports grass from South America to feed cattle because they cannot grow grass.

Qatar just brought 10,000 milk-producing cattle to their country because they have been isolated by their neighbours. They flew in the cattle and they are shipping in the grasses to feed them. I met a minister of Saudi Arabia in Germany, who said if we were serious about growing

grasses, they would buy from us.

They cannot grow the grass, and so they must buy. A cow eats up 10 kilogrammes of grass daily. Most of the attacks to our ideas are not based on logic. I keep some cattle, but I am not a Fulani. A son of the Minister of Health, Professor Isaac

Adewole, was here last week to see me. He has a ranch in Osun State, with 198 cattle. He has 18,000 chickens. He is not a Fulani. There are many Nigerians who keep cattle who are not Fulanis. But it is still talked that anything cattle business is Fulani. It is not.

And the rustlers, ironically, from the gangs they caught so far, were led by Fulani men; the drivers were Hausas, and the end buyers are sometimes Igbos

They work together. They steal the cattle, load them into the articulated vehicles and move southward in the night.

We have a plan to revive cocoa production in 2019 by bringing in special fertiliser ingredients to mix with local materials & by multiplying new seedlings

We're planning to add coffee. Wherever cocoa grows, coffee also grows. So its a major programme coming up in SW & SE in 2019

The boards were abolished in 1974 by the military government. But I have talked with some cocoa farmers. Some of them don’t like the idea

They said boards would shortchange them. But some people say we should go back to it. I will hold a national summit on this matter

I do not want to take a unilateral decision

We will invite people for a seminar to determine which way we should go, because a commodity board guarantees quality, and could direct the farmers on what to do on quality for export

Talking of cashew, we have a cashew association. I'm a cashew farmer

Today, Ogbomoso produces the finest cashew, because they have been trained how to do it. But there are traders who would even soak the nuts in water to increase the weight, but on getting to Vietnam they reject

Indiscipline and greed among Nigerians also cause some of these problems

We may grumble about a government, but most of us are one of the most unorganised peoples in the world

When it is done, whichever government is coming in will continue the matter

We need to get back an arrangement where the quality control, mobilisation, an increase in production and standardisation become the rule

Whoever does not fit in does not come in

Why don’t farmers ask their state governors about agriculture development?

There are state governors who are totally indifferent to the sector

Oyo has 22 dams

Ogun has about 12

Kano has 23. There is no dam in Kano that is not being used

Not one in the southwest is being used

Fertiliser has never been cheaper. It is now about N5,000 or N6000 per bag

It was N12,000 before now. We have 27 fertiliser blending plants

The only zone we don't have a plant is the SW & we are trying to encourage 2 plants to go there, because carrying fertiliser is difficult

We are now Africa’s largest producers of maize, even though a few people still want to import maize

We are the second largest producer of sorghum in the world after the U.S

We are the second largest producer of sesame after Ethiopia. We are the biggest exporter of zobo flowers

We're the largest producer of gum Arabic after Sudan

We are the biggest producer of yams in the world. 70 per cent of the world yam is produced in Nigeria

We are the largest producer of cassava. We still need to increase production of certain crops like soy beans, beans & maize

For maize, we are almost there, but when we start processing and doing value addition, we need to increase production

We have to cultivate more cassava to produce ethanol, which we can use as a supplement to petrol. We have to do more work on syrups and sweeteners from cassava.

We have to do industrial starch since we want to revive the textile industry

And in that sector, by the way, a new breed of cotton is here now that can give you three and a half tonnes of cotton per hectare instead of one tonne

This is the most profound exposition, nay exigesis, on Nigerian agriculture that I have ever read in my life.

Everything I've expressed about the subject is distilled here. And this interview was held last year!

I doff my hat for @AuduOgbeh
👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿

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