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LCCI urges Buhari to focus on agriculture

By on April 9, 2015

The Agric Group of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry has highlighted the need for the incoming government to focus on the review and implementation of existing agricultural policies in order to boost local food production and enhance food security.

The group noted on Tuesday that lack of implementation had been the bane of “good agricultural policies” formulated by successive governments.

The Chairman, Agric Group, LCCI and Managing Director, Bama Farms Limited, Mr. Wale Oyekoya, said at a press briefing in Lagos, “Our fact-finding shows that our government has made serious efforts at making good agricultural policies through schemes, programmes and institutions, but has not been able to implement or backed them up with adequate budgetary allocation and financing, coupled with corruption in the execution of the formidable policies.”

He listed policies such as the Agricultural Transformation Agenda, Nigerian Incentive-based Risk-sharing in Agriculture, Commercial Agriculture Credit Scheme, Agricultural Credit Guarantee Scheme Fund Act, Agricultural Development Trust Fund Credit, Guarantee Fund Credit, Agricultural Produce Finance and Multi Channels Agricultural Financing Scheme, among others, as some of the good policies.

“But the same government has failed woefully in implementing all these laudable policies. Propaganda and corruption have taken the stage of our policies, and farmers suffered the consequence,” Oyekoya said.

He added that a lot of funds, including loans and grants, such as the N200bn CACS scheme in 2007, $3bn by USAID in January 2013, World Bank’s $300,000 should have made the country self-sufficient in food production rather than depending on importation, adding that a big chunk of the money was embezzled.

Oyekoya said, “Our commercial banks need to be restructured and mandated to fund real farmers and not political farmers. No farmers can survive on the current commercial interest rate of 26 per cent. The agriculture sector accounted for less than one per cent of the portfolio of banks.

“Nigeria still spends about N1bn daily to import rice into the country and depleting our foreign reserves. Yearly, we import foods worth over N450bn; foods that can be produced in Nigeria by local farmers if the business environment is conducive. All these food items can be abundantly produced in Nigeria, but corruption, selfish interest of our leaders and propaganda have crippled the sector.”

According to him, farmers are closing up their farms because of inconsistent government policies, policy somersault, lack of funds, high cost of feed materials and poor infrastructure.

He said foreign investors would automatically come into the country if the environment was conducive.

“The Nigerian government has over the years formulated good agricultural and financial policies meant to encourage food production but such policies have been found inefficient and ineffective since the intended results were not realised,” Oyekoya said.

The LCCI group recommended that at least 10 per cent of the country’s annual budget should be devoted to agriculture and the review of subsisting schemes and reforms to make them more supportive of farm output.

Others include to encourage family farming and capacity-building; encourage local production; ban the importation of foods that can be produced locally; tighten the nation’s porous borders; tackle corruption; facilitate access to funds with single-digit interest rate and less cumbersome requirements; access to farm lands; provision of modern farm equipment to farmers to boost production, processing and value chains; and consistent local content policy.

“For there to be adequate food in the country, private sector participants, individuals, co-operatives, clubs and others should invest in agriculture. This will not only ensure adequate food supply in the country, but will also create jobs for our unemployed youths, make our society peaceful and secure, and also export our farm produce to earn foreign exchange,” Oyekoya added.

 

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