Yobe govt provided expired fertilizer to farmers – Minister

There is an allegation that you got involved in the sale of fertilizer to farmers in Yobe State, even claiming that you were the one that provided the fertilizer sold to farmers in the state under the GES arrangement. The state government became uncomfortable and has even withdrawn from GES. What exactly happened?Well, the federal […]

There is an allegation that you got involved in the sale of fertilizer to farmers in Yobe State, even claiming that you were the one that provided the fertilizer sold to farmers in the state under the GES arrangement. The state government became uncomfortable and has even withdrawn from GES. What exactly happened?
Well, the federal government has already deregulated the issue of fertilizer distribution. In the past, federal government imports fertilizer and distributes them directly. But that system had a lot of problems. So, government disengaged and allowed private importers and blenders to produce their own fertilizer. The federal government also, via my own ministry gave a guarantee and I signed that guarantee of N30 billion to support fertilizer distributors all over the country.
These are private people to access credit from the Nigerian banking system so that when the importers import the fertilizer and the blenders blend their fertilizers, those distributors can now obtain this credit from the banks, guaranteed by the federal Ministry of Finance and buy these fertilizers and distribute to farmers. So, this is the new system. The federal government has no business distributing fertilizer. The fertilizer distribution is supposed to be left for private people and the federal Ministry of Finance has provided a guarantee of N30 billion so that anybody who wants to engage in fertilizer or any agro-input distribution can make use of that guarantee and get credit from the Nigerian banks, buy the fertilizer from the importers and distribute.
There is no condition that the distributor has to sell the fertilizer in such a way that whoever buys the fertilizer has to get discount, no! The federal government policy provides subsidy to small farmers. Federal government promised to give subsidy to small farmers and some state governments also added their own 25 percent.
There are state governments that opted out even from the beginning. Zamfara did not take part. So, how will a farmer get this federal government 25 percent subsidy and whatever subsidy his state government would like to give? To do that, the federal government did a census of farmers. Forms were distributed. In Yobe State, only 50,000 registration forms were distributed to farmers. I know that we have over 200,000 farmers in the state. So many farmers could not be registered because the state government did not give them the forms to register. Because it is a federal government project and Mr President who introduced the system during the tenure of his administration planned to capture and assist all farmers in the country irrespective of where they come from.
So, I used my good offices and got more forms for Yobe State and distributed them in the state irrespective of political affiliations. My concern was to get farmers from Yobe State enrolled in the register. As at today, we have over 88,000 farmers that registered from the state and the registration exercise is ongoing. Federal government intends to register all smallholder farmers in the country for the GES.   
GES is a federal government scheme for all small holder farmers. You are a PDP chieftain and a minister from an ANPP controlled state. Was there attempt to politicize the registration of farmers in the state?
These people are farmers. They are not members of PDP or members of ANPP. They are farmers living in Yobe State, simple! So, if you want to sell your fertilizer in such a way that the small holder farmers can enjoy the federal government discount, then you cannot sell the fertilizer unless in the presence of the federal officials. Otherwise, you can take your fertilizer to the open market and sell to anyone that wishes to buy. The federal government GES policy is for small farmers. If you have a big farmer that wants to buy 300 bags, then the distributor can sell to that farmer but the federal government will not provide subsidy.
So, what happened in Yobe State during the sale of fertilizer for 2012 farming season in the state?
Last year, because we knew that Yobe State government would not like to come along with us, we only gave the federal government subsidy for those that bought from us. The Federal Director of Agriculture in the state was with us when we sold our fertilizer to farmers in the state. We were told that it was good we wait and flag off the distribution on the same day with the state government because they also had their consignment. We agreed even though there was no obligation on us to wait for Yobe State government before we start selling our fertilizer. When we were selling our own we observed that the queue was swelling as people abandoned the fertilizer that the state government was selling to join our own because the state government was selling expired fertilizer to them. We actually supplied the best fertilizer in Nigeria.
We bought our fertilizer last year from Barbados which is the second biggest importer of fertilizer to this country. Everybody bought our own then and nobody bought that of the state government because they brought bad product. This year, we were approached by some officials of the state government that they want us to bring our good quality fertilizer so that they can give farmers the 25 percent state government subsidy, and we agreed.
That is why the state government gave us its stores to store our fertilizer. If there is no agreement between us and Yobe State government, they will not allow us to use their stores to keep our fertilizer. Yobe is our state, the governor and commissioners are ours. So we agreed and brought in 250 truck loads of fertilizer. That is even a small thing because we supplied Taraba State 450 truck loads of fertilizer.  That was by the company owned by my youth leader.
In Taraba, the farmers enjoyed both federal and state government subsidy. In Yobe, they told us to wait for the state governor to flag off both sales. While we were waiting, I saw them on a three hours paid television programme with a truck load of fertilizer selling to farmers in the state.
When the governor heard that we brought 250 truck loads of fertilizer to the state, he said he could only give subsidy for 45 trucks. To us, that was a disappointment because we took large consignment of fertilizer to the state believing that the government will team up with us to help the farmers provide them with enough fertilizer but they refused to cooperate. We later discovered that the state government wrote to the federal Ministry of Agriculture that they were opting out of the GES arrangement.