Nigeria’s food importation and implication for its agro-business

 The Federal Government of Nigeria on 8 July, 2024, declared a 150-day duty-free window of opportunity for importation of food commodities as it consolidated its efforts to tackle the unprecedented inflation which many Nigerians claimed had impoverished them. The government also expressed its readiness to collaborate with states to expand agriculture land cultivation across the country. Consequently, the government suspended duties, tariffs and taxes for the importation of certain food commodities through land and sea borders. Among other things, the government directive is expected to reduce demand for FOREX by food importers. In 2023, Nigerians spent $2.13 billion to import food items from foreign countries. The 150 days of duty-free imports would be valid for commodities like maize, husked brown rice, cowpeas (beans), and wheat.

The quarterly statistics of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) showed that Nigeria imported large amounts of food from foreign countries despite being touted as the food basket of Africa. The value of imports of agricultural goods in Quarter 3, 2023 stood at N643.68 billion. This showed an increase of 41.51 percent and 25.50 percent when compared to the value recorded in Quarter 2 of 2023 (N454.86 billion) and the corresponding quarter of 2022 (N512.91 billion) respectively. The high food import bill should be a concern for the government. The country has a large agricultural sector (agriculture being the largest employer of labour in a country with landmass of 923,768 km2), and there should be efforts to boost local production to reduce the dependence on food importation. However, factors such as inadequate infrastructure, insecurity, high operational risk, unattractive returns on agriculture, and climate change have hindered progress in the agricultural sector in Nigeria.

This is not the first time Nigeria will be importing foods to beef up local supply and Nigeria is among the top African food importers, that is, African countries which account for 50 percent of Africa’s total food imports. These countries include Egypt (15%); Algeria (9%); South Africa (7%); Morocco (7%) and Nigeria (7%). If we consider the population of Nigeria which is over 220 million to the population of Egypt (111 million), the ratio of food imported was not bad. But if we consider the fact that Nigeria is in the tropical region of Africa with arable land and agriculture-friendly rain yearly, one will be surprised at what is happening to the touted “food basket of Africa”! Nigeria has the potential to grow yam, maize, oil palm, cassava, rice, beans, wheat, potatoes (sweet and Irish), fish, livestock, fruits (like coconut, orange, pineapple, pawpaw, cashew, pears, mango, cucumber etc) and vegetables like onions, tomatoes, peppers, lettuce etc.

Before the discovery of crude oil in Oloibiri, Bayelsa State in January 1956, agriculture was the major source of Nigeria’s foreign exchange earnings through the exportation of cash crops such as rubber and palm oil from the south-south region; groundnut, cotton, hide and skin, beans and sesame seeds from the north; coal and palm oil from the east and cocoa, kola and timber from the west. Nigeria now spends $22 billion importing food every year. The government had earlier ruled out the importation of food as part of the strategies to address the high costs of foodstuffs and the economic hardship troubling the country in 2024, but the wide outcry of the public made this importation inescapable. According to figures from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), rice production has increased from an annual average of 7.1 million tonnes between 2013 and 2017 to 8.9 million tonnes in 2018. The country can still do more.

The Nigerian government is yet to put the nation on the right path of eradicating hunger by 2030 as stipulated by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). Food importation by nations is unsustainable. Anthony Bourdain’s quote on food which says: “Food is everything we are, it’s an extension of nationalist feeling, ethnic feeling, your personal history, your province, your region, your tribe, your grandma. It’s inseparable from those from get-go”, says it all. Food is part of the culture and economy of a people. When you import food, you take part of a people’s culture and impose part of other people’s culture into their life. The most useless people are those who eat the food that they don’t grow, wear the clothes that they don’t make and live in houses where the materials for making them are not produced by them. No wonder, Anthony Bourdain says: “I think food, culture, people and landscape are all absolutely inseparable”.

The government should grow the economy by investing more in mechanised agriculture. Though the federal government says it will partner state governors, Nigeria Armed Forces and support small-holding farmers to increase food production in Nigeria, the government ought to make agriculture a profitable venture by greatly investing in the production process. The first is to establish farm settlements across the country with as much as 1,000 hectares farmsteads in each holding, having three or two bedroom bungalows, tarred roads, potable water and electricity. Unemployed graduates in Nigeria are not willing to take agriculture as a vocation because agriculture is not “profitable” in their perception. Our rural areas lack basic facilities like security, motorable roads, electricity and drinking water. That is why all the young rural dwellers are in the cities earning their living as commercial motorcycle riders, while some prefer to roam the streets in search of elusive greener pasture. Government must attract these people back to the villages and reverse the urban drift.

It is a shame that we are losing tens of trillions of naira on food importation. If our agriculture system is properly organised and our farmers are supported to produce yam, maize, cassava, sweet potatoes, cocoyam, plantain, goat, cattle, fish and chicken, poverty in Nigeria will be reduced. It is disheartening to state that a company in America that pelletizes bitter kola (a tropical rainforest fruit) into tablets could not get enough supply of bitter kola from Nigeria. Plantain powder is preferred by diabetic patients because of the reduced carbohydrate and high content of iron. Supplying plantain to make the powder is a challenge. Cassava to make starch for the textile industry is scarce. The population of farmers in Nigeria is reducing yearly because of lack of support from the government and our local foods which used to be part of our culture are now disappearing from the staple food markets.

• business a.m. commits to publishing a diversity of views, opinions and comments. It, therefore, welcomes your reaction to this and any of our articles via email: comment@businessamlive.com