Nigeria can compete with India, Thailand in rice production – Abubakar

How did you come about this rice mill?Whenever somebody is thinking of development he chooses which aspect of life he wants to follow. As a business man before I joined politics, I always thought about how I can impact on my people and the society in general. I have travelled to different places; I have […]

How did you come about this rice mill?
Whenever somebody is thinking of development he chooses which aspect of life he wants to follow. As a business man before I joined politics, I always thought about how I can impact on my people and the society in general.
I have travelled to different places; I have been to India, Thailand, and I have seen how they grow their rice that we have been buying for more than 50 years. So, I started thinking on how I can delve into the area and that was how we started. I started it with a rice mill here in Kano. Because I learnt the rice we have here is the same with the ones in the countries I visited.
When did you start?
Actually I started building this place around 2008, but it was officially commissioned in 2011. It was commissioned by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi and many other important dignitaries.
What is the capacity of this mill?
Presently it is 75,000 metric tonnes per annum rice mill.
What were the challenges when you started the mill?
So many challenges; for example, securing the land and building it, infrastructure, electricity and water. It may interest you to know that we have a water treatment plant close to us, but when we received the bill for connecting the water we could not pay. So, we have to go and drill our own boreholes. We have about five industrial boreholes here because we use about 200,000 litres of water per day. So, these are part of the challenges. We have 1 million litres water treatment plants in the factory. Then after building the factory, the biggest challenge is how to run the factory, you know it is capital intensive. We need to buy from the farmers, process it and sell, that is how you circulate the money.
The very challenging issue is that the paddy comes once in a year; after the harvesting season you cannot buy it as much as you could, so you need a lot of money at a particular time of the year. That is the most challenging aspect of it.
How many tonnes of paddy do you buy from farmers annually?
If you are talking about sufficient quantity, you have to buy about 75,000 metric tonnes but you cannot get it for now. When we started, to get even 10,000 tonnes was challenging, but now we can buy up to 20,000 tonnes every year and it comes with a price also. When we started, the running cost came from the CBN, we had to see them and the Ministry of Agriculture with our initiative on this commercial agriculture for loan. That was how we were able to secure N500 million to start with; to buy paddy rice, process and sell. We got this through the help of Fidelity Bank, so we have to thank them for that, because when we started, we approached many banks but they all refused to grant us credit facility.
Your rice mill is located in Kura, a town famous for the cultivation of rice, one is surprised to hear that you are finding it difficult to get paddy. Why?
 In fact, even the 25,000 metric tonnes we are buying, we are not getting it from this area because of the challenges; price and activities of middlemen. We are getting most of our paddy from Adamawa and Taraba states because it is cheaper and the activities of middlemen there are not like in this place.
The preference of Nigerians for foreign rice is negatively affecting our GDP. Is it that the rice you people are producing locally is substandard?
That is why we are competing with them; some people are even saying our rice is better than the imported rice. Because our rice is produced, processed in the same year, not like imported rice that in most cases are about five years or so old. Then, because we are handicapped we have no choice than to patronize it, but now people have choices.
It may interest you to know that most of the big men in the country now prefer our locally milled rice to the imported rice.
Is the foreign rice cheaper than yours?
No, ours is just N8,000 but of course, foreign product can be cheaper than ours if it is smuggled into the country. As it is now, the main challenge is smuggling. The government has increased tariff and levy in order to encourage local millers but due to the smuggling we can’t achieve that.
How do you market your rice?
Before I come to the marketing, let me tell you why I said we can compete with India and Thailand. Presently, we have a Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, who is so much interested in our field of paddy farming. Before this minister came on board, we hardly produce one million tonnes of paddy all over the country.
Not only that, the quality of paddy we were producing at that time was far below standard. With the help of this minister, within three years, he has transformed the sector so much that today we can produce two to three million tonnes of paddy every year and the quality of the grain has changed drastically.
Now we have so many varieties and the quality of farming and yield has also changed. So, we have to give special thanks to this minister of agriculture and we hope he will continue in this line. Let me tell you, if we will have this effort sustained at least for another four years, we will have no business importing rice into this country.
What is your turnover annually?
Our turnover for last year was about N4 billion.
How about your profit?
No, I will not talk about that.
What is your staff strength?
We have about 260 staff; among them we have five expatriates who are Indians.
What are your future plans?
Our plan is to start our own farming activity. As I am talking to you now, we have requested a piece of land from Hadejia Jama’are River Basin Development Authority (HJRDA) under the Ministry of Water Resources and we have discussed with partners from India to start our farming activity. We want to start with 5,000 hectares of land. All arrangements have been concluded, they are just waiting for us to secure the land so that we can start farming. Our future plan is to produce our own paddy, process it and sell.
Do we have the capacity to meet our rice requirement in this country?
If there is dedication we can do it because we have the capacity; what are the capacities? We have the land, we have the manpower, we have millions of youths roaming the streets, these are the people that are supposed to go back to the farm to produce the rice. And the water is there, so you don’t need anything more than that to produce rice.
What are the challenges that you are facing now?
The general challenge is that of electricity; that is energy. We are buying diesel of N60,000 to N70,000 daily. That is, we are spending about N9 million every month on diesel, basically this is the common challenge.
So why did you quit politics for farming?
Because I want to feed you. (Laughter)