We have fabricated thrashers, others to enhance agric production – NCAM boss

What is your assessment of the current agricultural reforms of the Federal Government? We must tell ourselves the truth. I have travelled far and wide in the course of doing my job. Let’s take Malaysia for instance. Malaysia never had oil palm. They came here in the 60s and picked oil palm from Nigeria. They […]

What is your assessment of the current agricultural reforms of the Federal Government?
We must tell ourselves the truth. I have travelled far and wide in the course of doing my job. Let’s take Malaysia for instance. Malaysia never had oil palm. They came here in the 60s and picked oil palm from Nigeria. They researched on oil palm and made a success out of oil palm, they are exporting oil palm products in billions of dollars today. They are a major producer, a major exporter. Nigeria has had leaders all along, what did they do with oil palm? Rather than build on oil palm, things went down until the current minister came. We must tell ourselves the truth. Look at the agricultural trend, in the 60s and 70s, we were at par in terms of economy with Brazil, Malaysia, Singapore, we were even better than India. I just came back from Thailand and I was amazed at what I saw. These countries are not as good as Nigeria in terms of economy. What has happened? All these countries have overtaken Nigeria in terms of agricultural development. If our past leaders did the right thing, would these countries have overtaken Nigeria? Our amiable president wanted the best for Nigeria and appointed technocrats in his cabinet; he shunned the appointment of largely politicians because this trend over the years has failed us.
If you look at the agricultural landscape, things are being transformed, things are changing. We are now looking at agriculture from the perspective of largely public private partnership. Coming to mechanisation, we had a cycle of supply and dump of tractors. Government would buy tractors, supply tractors, no proper arrangements were done in terms of repairs and maintenance, and no proper arrangements about the spare parts. Tractors were imported without due recourse to viability, their ability to last for the length of time tractors are supposed to last. The last time I went to the US, I found a tractor that was 35 years old, working in the field in the US. Here, you buy a tractor, within six months it breaks down due to certain factors. One, they may not meet the requirements, there is no servicing part, there is no maintenance culture and that vicious cycle of supply and dump continues.
My minister, Dr. Akinwumi Adeshina came and said this must stop. First of all, government has no business in tractors supply. It would only create an environment for the private sector to operate in tractor supply and tractor management and that was the birth of the Agricultural Equipment Hiring Enterprise Scheme which is now being implemented. As you could see in my centre, action is already on. The tractor supplies are coming in with a definite plan which would involve the bank, the private sector operators and the suppliers, all working as a team to make sure that proper tractors are supplied. They are run under scheme, a tractor hiring scheme by the private sector, not the government and that the banks manage this arrangement, not government and you would see that with this arrangement, things would work perfectly. Already, the tractor hiring scheme is on and very soon, the selected private sector operators under this arrangement would move to the local governments, the farmers.
What’s the level of involvement of NCAM in this scheme?
NCAM is acting as one of the depots for the tractors meant for the South-West so that by the time we now get them and proper papers are signed, the private sector operators would come in and take their consignments from NCAM. The only involvement we have is to make sure people are properly trained to handle tractor hiring services. The beneficiaries eventually are the farmers so that they can have tractor services within their location. In fact the plan is that this programme will devolve to all the local governments of the federation.
Can you give an insight into this programme of tractor assemblage and fabrication being championed by the centre?
The moment we came on stream, we decided that we would look at issues that would enable this country move forward, to the next level of equipment consumption to equipment manufacturing. That is the way other countries went and that’s the way they have recorded a lot of successes. Now, a private sector equipment developer contacted us and said they wanted to partner with us in the production of Nigerian made tractor. We started with Triketor, that’s a three-wheel tractor. So when they brought the design, we tested and it wasn’t that good. So we advised them that we should work together to come up with the design that would meet the requirements which Nigerians could make use of. We did about three prototypes which we continued to test. And luckily in 2013 when the minister came to commission the Agricultural Equipment Commercialisation Scheme, we demonstrated the prototypes to him and told him what we plan to do and being the man he is, he quickly asked me to put up a proposal which would enable us go to the next stage. The moment he approved it, funds were released and we started work.
Essentially, what we wanted to do was to produce 10 units of the tractor you saw which would be tested in all the geo-political zones of the country to confirm the efficacies and stability to the different conditions in different parts of the country. We are manufacturing, we are not assembling.
How many types of machines do you have and how do you get them?
We have two kinds of machines. One is the one that we design and produce, the other are the machines we produce through reverse engineering. Like we get machines, we strip them and modify them to suit our local conditions. So we have done a lot in that area. We have machines that thrash different crops – maize, rice, soybeans, millet, cowpea and so many others. We have developed all forms of machines.
 The challenge that we had was to move these machines to the farmers. We had developed these machines and they were sitting in our shelves. The farmers were yearning for these machines without the vehicle to move these machines to the farmers. So we initiated the Equipment Commercialisation programme and the thrust of this programme was to produce a good number of those machines for the states depending on their crops specialisation. So we fabricated over 400 machines for all the 36 states of the country and Abuja. Those are the machines that the minister came and launched. We wrote them four times to come and pick up the machines.
We don’t believe that things should be free; the era of government giving things free is gone. Government must not give things free, that is why we have problem because when you give things free, we don’t appreciate them. So we now said that because it is a programme to move developed machines from research to the farmers, we would give them 25 per cent Growth Enhancement Support (GES) and 15 per cent research support because it is a research product. We are further giving a subsidy of 15 per cent, making 40 per cent. So all those machines were to be given to the states at 40 per cent subsidy just to get to the farmers and the essence was for the farmers to see these machines work in their localities. Unfortunately, we are frustrated by most of the states. Only six states came and picked their machines. The rest refused to. So we are now trying to reappraise the programme, re-strategise and move these machines through the value chains – different value chains in most of the states. Already, we have written a letter to the ministry for us to re-strategize and that is already receiving attention.
What are the other components of the hiring scheme apart from tractors?
Within that scheme, there would be processing machines, production machines, it is a whole gamut of agricultural machines and they would all be deployed in the states. We don’t expect farmers to start buying thrashers. No, because the thrasher we have can cover the project of about 5 to 10 hectares in a day.
You don’t because of a one-day operation you go and buy a thrasher. That’s the essence of the hiring scheme and the federal government is keyed towards making sure that these machines are parts of the Equipment Hiring Scheme. They’ve already asked us to do 100 thrashers which would go into the scheme and the 400 that I said the states refused to pick are also going into the scheme and we are going to produce more machines.