Earlyface

Agriculture Revolution - the Ogun Example. Wednesday, 13th February, 2013 was another red-letter day in the history of Ogun State. It was the beginning of another epoch, when the state turned a new page in its quest to raise the standard of living of its people.

As the Yoruba saying goes, T'ebibakuroninuise, isebuse(once a man can afford three square meals daily, he can claim to have conquered poverty).

If anyone had forecast as at 1960 when agriculture accounted for 92.7 per cent of our foreign earnings that a time would come when food would become a major problem in Nigeria, he would have been advised to go for a psychiatric test. In the same vein, if a prophet had predicted as at 1980 when 1 US dollar was less than 1 naira and a pound sterling exchanged for about a naira that a time would come in Nigeria when a dollar would exchange for 150 naira and a pound for 250 naira, or that the time was near in Nigeria when those at home would live on abroad, importing everything, including chewing sticks and bottle water, he would literally have been tied to the stake, stoned to death or sent to the guillotine for summary execution.

But the reality of our situation now stares everyone in the face. Prices of foodstuffs keep on skyrocketing thus increasing the cost of living and lowering the standard of living of the majority of Nigerians.

At least, it is not contestable that we spend N1billion daily on importation of rice from the strategic reserves of India and Thailand... I had thought Thailand was even far below us in the 60s while India was our contemporary, just like Brazil and Malaysia. In the same strain, over N50billion is being spent annually to import frozen fish even though we have the capacity to produce enough to meet our needs.

We cannot pretend not to have missed it at a particular point in time.It is generally agreed that the economic managers of the oil era should have expended the petro-dollars on mechanized farming and in opening up the rural areas through provision of roads, railway, electricity, potable water, etc.

It is not disputable that investment should have been made in agro-processing industries so that the value chain offered by mechanized agriculture (tillage, harvesting, marketing, storage, sales),especially in the area of employment, should have been fully exploited.

Nigeria
Remembering Chinua Achebe
Chinua was a dear friend. We first met more than forty years ago when he asked for my support with his literary journal.