‘Most of those government gives agric loans are briefcase farmers’

For how long have you been in the fish farming business?I started on 1st May 2009 so barely four and half years ago.We understand you have started exporting fish from your farm in commercial quantity to Ghana. How have you been transporting it – is it by road, sea or by air?We had an order […]

For how long have you been in the fish farming business?
I started on 1st May 2009 so barely four and half years ago.
We understand you have started exporting fish from your farm in commercial quantity to Ghana. How have you been transporting it – is it by road, sea or by air?
We had an order to take to Ghana but we have not been able to meet their requirement because of finance so we sell here, because the quantity they required we are not able to make it.
Nigeria is one of the major importers of fish at the same time your farm got an order to export. How do you reconcile this?
The issue of exporting is for us to get more value for the efforts we are making. The price here is very low compared to the rising cost of production. You have to look for avenues of making extra money. For example, here at the farm we sell fish for N500 per kilogram.
If I can smoke that fish and take it to neighbouring countries I may sell it for $10 (about N1,600) and above and that will give me better margin and even if I sell at N750 and you take the cost of transport which will be on the average of N50, I will still make better gain. That is the attraction for our considering exporting the fish.
You said one of your constraints in exporting fish is finance, what are you doing to address that?
We have been discussing with my bankers, on how to give me more money since the government-assisted programme doesn’t reach us. Personally I feel they don’t reach real farmers. Most of the people government gives agric loans to are briefcase farmers; people that visit offices of those in power. So, I have been discussing with my bankers and we have agreed on the ways to restructure the finance in such a way that the quantity needed can be produced within the period required. So far this is where we are.
As I have taken you round the farm, you saw for yourself that 13 ponds are empty. Under normal circumstance, those ponds are supposed to have fish but the money the bank is giving me is not adequate to run the whole 27 ponds we have. So, we put in the few we have to be able to pay the bank because the lending system in Nigeria for our type of business is short term.
I have been shouting loud and clear that for the farm to be sustainable they should give us a long term loan but unfortunately the banks here give short term loans. The best they can do for you is to give you money to pay in one year within two instilments and that is not good for fish farming. There are so many challenges that can destabilize the farm. But since our leaders have not given a lot of consideration to this type of farming, policies are yet to come out from the federal to state levels that will assist the farmer to encourage the banks to lend at low interest rate in a way that will simplify the condition that will encourage a farmer like me to grow bearing in mind all the risks.
So for this farm, the bank is generous enough they gave me N30 million but the amount can only take care of few of the ponds and you know I have to rush against time and where I have challenges like dam bust, weather situation and all these I just have to collapse some of the ponds in order to make the bank payments; otherwise they will say I am defaulting.
We have 23 ponds here and we have the capacity to erect more ponds. But you know the sizes of our ponds differ from most others you find in other farms. Ours are very big; they are about four times the size of a normal pond. I think the most important thing is our capacity to produce high quality fish and in large quantity with the necessary encouragement and the type of finance I want; a long term loan that I can use to produce fish worth N100 million to N200 million yearly. But the farm has to reach that stage and the only way I can do that is by having enough finance, that is why I am doing it gradually. You can see that only six ponds are having fish now. It is a very serious issue.
At the just concluded North East Economic Summit, the governors of the zone resolved to focus on agriculture and even promised to allocate 10 percent of their state budgets to the sector. How do you think this can be achieved?
Since I am not an active politician, I don’t know how they want to achieve that. But the most important thing is if they really want to assist they have to give the money to the real farmers and not to political farmers. I detest a situation whereby I have this big farm, I have the capability to produce large quantity of fish but because I have never received any visiting politician in my farm so I cannot access their money and yet they have been giving people that don’t grow fish money meant for enhancing fish production.
We have seen people coming here to request for receipts to go and claim money, posing as farmers. That doesn’t augur well for this country. I think the earlier our leaders understand that developing the sector is in their own interest the better because they will not continue to suppress us forever. They just have to empower people to be gainfully employed. If they don’t do that they are the ones that stand to lose because they are the ones that want to have excess money. This youthful restlessness would have gone if they encourage people like us who actually wanted an alternative to politics.
You can see that I have more than 25 people employed here; I wanted to close the farm this year because we have made huge losses because we didn’t get the required money to keep the farm functional. But the bankers said there is no need to close the farm because we have gone far. Let us restructure the finance in such a way that can assist.Politicians have to think of not only what they can take from the system. They should also think of what they should give to the system by developing the real sector because in the long run if we do everything right, we develop the real sector and we give them more money to loot since that is what they want.
Have you sought for a loan from the government?
I applied several times. I did under Dankwambo’s administration and Bank of Industry gave me N46 million after one year of application. But the conditions are just unattainable; I cannot meet them so because of that I had to withdraw. The condition is not feasible for a real farmer to meet.
What makes the conditions for a loan difficult?
They gave me 31 conditions and I fulfilled almost all of them; one of the conditions that I could not meet is they need a bank guarantee from my bankers and the commercial banks are not willing to give that. My bankers refused to give it. But that is not the problem; the problem is that when I signed this loan as a banker myself I knew that the loan is toxic. It is a loan that is bound to fail because they want me to be paying N2 million plus every month. If I have N2 million every month, I don’t have to go to any bank to grow my fish; I will just be using my money. You go to the bank because you need money that you feel can be utilized for a long term so that you can stabilize your farm, make all the necessary adjustments and corrections so that you can minimize losses. But a situation whereby the loan is short term, as I said one year at best, is critical for fish farming.
What other practical ways do you think this government can adopt to enhance local production of fish to export level and thereby address the issue of importation of fish which is not healthy for the economy?
Well, we have been saying it so many times in the papers, in interviews with press men that what they should do is to pump money into the real sector; fish, soya beans and groundnut farming and all other related farm produce that will enhance the quality of fish or food. When they do that they should set aside a lot of money for the fish farmers under simplified conditions because that is what the Europeans did to enhance their agricultural production. When they started developing their countries, they didn’t give tough conditions to their farmers. Of course some people will spend the money, they will not bring out the money but under strict supervision something must be done.
Unfortunately, as I said earlier, this money is not given to the real farmers. The money goes to political farmers. You will hear them giving billions of naira to farmers and yet we are still where we are. We still import rice, fish and so on. So where is the money going to? Who are they giving the money to? Like I am saying now, look at this farm, I don’t have any support from any government so far and I am one of the privileged people in this country because I worked up to the position of Deputy Director and Controller in the Central Bank before I retired at an early age.
Let government come up with a blue print on how best to develop the sector for the benefit of future generations. The officials should not go and stay in expensive hotels citing theories and stories on economic summit that will not add value to anything. They have finished the economic summit and what has come out of it? Nothing; it was just big men showcasing their dresses and fine tuning their grammar to please the presidency and the president so that he will think they are serious. Most of the people that were invited have never grown even one fish. They do not even know how fish is grown.
The government should try to identify the real farmers in each sector of agriculture and give them simplified conditions to access loans and monitor the farms even if it is at the expense of the farmers. The money government gives does not go to the real farmers and that is the real problem with farming in this country.
What is the implication of the possibility of a total ban on the importation of fish to Nigeria? Are Nigerian farmers capable of providing the fish required for local consumption?
It is a good idea if they will inject money into it in terms of production and the technical knowhow and value chain of fish. If I can smoke my fish under a very good hygienic environment and export it, I can get money by earning dollars for myself and the country by payment taxes both from the company and my staff. But where you do not do that and you ban fish import, you are just causing inflation because people must eat. But if you ban importation without developing the sector you are just causing inflation that you cannot control and that will cripple the sector.
When poor people who don’t have opportunity cannot go to government for anything and they cannot eat, that can lead to revolution. What I am saying in essence is that you do not ban when you are not sure of effective local production; no enough financial and technical support to the farmers, no checks and balances. The most ideal thing to do is to fine tune production by giving farmers all the necessary support to enhance production. Banning without developing local production is a disaster. If people are employed they will not indulge in all this problem of insecurity we are facing.
The government should be sincere to the people and where they have difficulties they should let us know. The real farmers must be given money to invest in agriculture.
In a nutshell, what I am saying is the money involved in all this looting and stealing going on should be invested in agriculture as that will also create employment for the people.
It is very important for government to realize there can never be any meaningful development in the agricultural sector so long as banks and financial institutions will continue to give farmers 31 conditions to fulfill before they qualify for loan. Remember, majority of our farmers have not gone to school to even understand why they must pass through some difficulties before they qualify for loans that they will end up refunding. Most of the farmers cannot even have small lending and you are telling them to give you bank guarantee; where will he get the bank guarantee from when most of the banks are not interested in farming?