Deadline on rice importation is not achievable – AFAN

Dr Tunde Arosanyi is the technical adviser to All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN). In this interview, he spoke on why agriculture has failed and how Nigeria can attain self-sufficiency in rice production, and other sundry issues. Excerpts: Do you think 2015 deadline for stopping importation of rice is feasible? Nigeria has made many efforts […]

Dr Tunde Arosanyi is the technical adviser to All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN). In this interview, he spoke on why agriculture has failed and how Nigeria can attain self-sufficiency in rice production, and other sundry issues. Excerpts:
Do you think 2015 deadline for stopping importation of rice is feasible?
Nigeria has made many efforts over the years to be self-sustaining in rice production. I know that the former Minister of Agriculture, Akinwumi Adesina made many pronouncements but the truth of the matter was that there was much noise at policy level than implementation, because I believe we can encourage our big time investors. Rather than putting outright ban on rice importation to encourage us to produce locally, the same government gave duty waver on rice importation. So I saw a double standard in the rice policy and that is why even our projection on self-sustaining policy by 2015 would not be realistic.
So what do you think is responsible for agricultural policy not working in the country?
There are so many factors but essentially, those that are driving the policy should be able to stand and say for once let’s do the right thing irrespective of pressure, because pressure would always come from the multinational and individual billionaires that want to get rich and get fast turnover through importation.  Government must be able to tell them that if you want to import rice bring the money to produce rice locally through farming.
The last administration made emphasis on loan to farmers but the loan did not get down to the real farmers.
What do you think the present administration can do to change that?
Over the years, most of the loans earmarked for farmers never got to them because some of the conditions attached are very stringent that farmers can’t meet up. Now, I have been to about four farms in the last few days and most of these farms have not gotten support from the government. So what government needs is to actually have a data of all the farms in the country and be able to have a template to give input facility directly to those farms. Like the farms, I mentioned earlier, if you give them inputs, they cannot divert them. And if you give them loan either in form of input or tractors they will make use of it.