Last week, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu declared a state of emergency in Nigeria as a result of food shortages and surging prices. He announced a range of measures to address the crisis.
The president said that fertilizers and grains will “immediately” be released to farmers, and 500,000 hectares of farmland and river basins will be activated for year-round farming.
“We declared a state of emergency and unveiled a comprehensive intervention plan on food security, affordability, and sustainability, taking decisive action to tackle food inflation,” President Bola Tinubu said on Twitter.
According to the president, the goal of the intervention was to promote agriculture and increase job creation, pledging that “no one will be left behind” in his government’s efforts to ensure “affordable, plentiful food.”
Nigeria has seen a surge in the cost of food and transportation due to the president’s removal of fuel subsidies and sweeping exchange-rate reform since May.
Explaining the government’s new policy, the president’s spokesperson Dele Alake revealed that “savings from the fuel subsidy removal” would be directed at revamping the agricultural sector.
He also disclosed that a National Commodity Board will be established and charged with reviewing food prices and maintaining a “strategic food reserve that will be used as a price stabilization mechanism for critical grains and other food items.”
The cost of food in Nigeria had increased by 24.82% in May compared to the same time last year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
The declaration of state of emergency in the agricultural sector should be viewed as a major step in the implementation of President Tinubu’s Renewed Hope agenda which is centred around the need to “restore hope to Nigerians”.
And with Nigeria, hope springs eternal. Nigerians would continue to hope on something will happen even if it seems unlikely. We have been buffeted with the same message of holding on to hope, while sacrificing for better tomorrow. But it seems tomorrow never comes. Nigerians are facing untold harship since President Tinubu removed the fuel subsidy with no succour or palliative in place. He had asked Nigerians to be patient and persevere, promising a better outcome. This was exactly what our former leaders told us and, at the end, we were disappointed.
I am not dismissing out of hand Tinubu’s new agricultural policy particularly with the popular maxim that the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Sometimes we can only judge a policy as good or bad after it has been tried or used.
Almost every head of state or president had issued messages of hope and promises of prosperity to Nigerians especially after initiating policies and programmes many of which were either ill-conceived or poorly administered. We have been on this same path before. We had programmes like the Operation Feed the Nation (OFN), the Green Revolution, Back to the Farm policy and most recently Anchor Borrowers program, with their accompanying tales of monumental failures and minor successes.
Here, I will not dwell too much on the essence of the policy but rather explore the genesis of the country’s economic predicament which borders on our undesirable, retrogressive attitude and poor government policies.
On its face value, Tinubu’s Renewed Hope mantra emphasizes the need for Nigeria’s economic growth and development so that Nigerians will be able to build better lives for themselves and their families. It offers a message of hope and optimism and a roadmap for how Nigeria can overcome its challenges and build a better future for its citizens.
Retrospectively, how did we arrived at this junction which requires our patience and sacrifice for the nation to be back on its feet and surmount its enormous challenges?
We need to travel back in time to the early 1980s to really know the root cause of our predicament. Forty-two years ago, precisely on July 20,1980 the exchange rate was: $1 = 0.80k but as of today July 20, 2023, the exchange rate is: $1 = ₦791. Are we surprised? Well, we were far more productive in 1980 than we are today.
In 1980 the key reasons for economic growth was we were a net exporter of refined petroleum products. Today we import all our refined petroleum products.
Similarly, back in the 1980s we rode in locally assembled cars, buses and trucks. Peugeot cars in Kaduna and Volkswagen cars in Lagos. Leyland produced trucks and buses in Ibadan and ANAMCO in Enugu also produced buses and trucks.
In addition, Steyr were producing our agricultural tractors in Bauchi.
And it was not just Assembly, we were producing many of vehicle components as
Vono in Lagos produced the seats; Exide in Ibadan produced the batteries, not just for Nigeria but for the entire West Africa, also in Ibadan IsoGlass and TSG produced the windshields as well as Ferrodo produced the brake pads and discs.
Also in the early 80s, Dunlop were producing Tyres in Lagos, while Michelin Tyres were being produced in Port Harcourt. And I mean tyres produced from rubber plantations located in Ogun, Bendel and Rivers State.
At that same period, Nigerians were listening to Radio and watching television sets assembled in Ibadan by Sanyo, just as we were using refrigerators, freezers and airconditioners produced by Thermocool and Debo.
Nigerians were equally putting on clothes produced from the UNTL Textile Mills in Kaduna and Chellarams in Lagos. They were not from imported cotton but from cotton grown in Nigeria.
Our water was running through pipes produced by Kwalipipe in Kano and Duraplast in Lagos. Our electricity was flowing through cables produced by the Nigerian Wire and Cable, Ibadan; NOCACO in Kaduna and Kablemetal in Lagos and Port Harcourt. We had Bata and Lennards Stores producing the shoes we were putting on. The shoes were not from imported leather but from locally tanned leather in Kaduna.
We were mainly flying our Airways, (the Nigeria Airways), to most places in the world. The Nigeria Airways was about the biggest in Africa at the time.
Likewise, most of the foods we ate were grown or produced in Nigeria. We were producing all of these things and many more in the early 80s. Today, we import almost everything. Isn’t that alarming? There lies the source of the terrible exchange rate we are experiencing today and everyone has a critical role to play in reversing this very ugly trend.
Historically, the tragedy of Nigeria began in 1986 when we began the IMF-induced Structural Adjustment Programme {SAP}. The military government of Gen. Ibrahim Babangida was cajoled to believe that the Naira was overvalued thus the country needed to devalue its currency. The Naira, then, was almost at par with the Pounds Sterling and slightly stronger than the US Dollar. Working alongside some unpatriotic Nigerian Harvard-trained economists and zealots, Bretton Woods eggheads came to Nigeria and convinced the government to implement SAP which triggered the country’s economic downturn, marking the genesis of the hardship that we are all facing today. The Naira suddenly crashed to N12 to $1 then to N44 to $1 before the expiration of Babangida administration in 1993. Since then the Naira has been on a free fall
Between 1986 and 1989 the interest rates rose astronomically and cost of production became so high and unbearable for manufacturers. The economy took a purple hit and the Nigerian bubble busted. Overnight poverty and misery became the Nigerian story. The middle-class was emasculated. The harsh climate was so unbearable for local and foreign businesses including multinational corporations. The harsh conditions were heightened by epileptic power supply which crippled many businesses forcing a handful to shift base to other African countries. That period coincided with government’s failed attempt to privatise public corporations amid massive corruption, inefficiency and dwindling oil revenues occasioned by massive theft and bunkering.
Gradually, things began to grind to a halt. Factories were shut down, farms were abandoned. The country became a dumping ground for foreign goods and products as importation became the order of the day. We imported almost everything from milk and sugar to handkerchiefs, toothpicks and pencils.
We have been talking about these problems and more for ages. It is not enough for us to complain about this predicament and keep hoping for some miracles to happen. What we need now is a return back to our old productive ways and a change of attitude – not the jargons of a ‘Renewed Hope’.
