Nigeria’s chances of achieving food self-sufficiency is brightening by the day as farmers now have improved access to timely, affordable and high-quality fertiliser in commercial quantity. This is courtesy of the implementation of the Presidential Fertiliser Initiative and other strategic policies on the revitalisation of fertiliser blending plants. But, stakeholders in the agricultural sector believe the sustainability of policy is key to the restoration of Nigeria as West Africa’s food basket. Assistant Editor CHIKODI OKEREOCHA reports.
It is probably the most proactive, result-driven step taken to ward off likely food crisis. Even before experts projected that Nigeria’s population will hit 400 million by 2050, making it the third most populous country in the world, the Federal Government is articulating a number of policy initiatives aimed at meeting the nation’s food requirement and hopefully, ending the food importation regime.
The Presidential Fertiliser Initiative (PFI), the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme (ABP), the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) and the Agriculture Promotion Policy (APP) are some of policies initiated to achieve self-sufficiency in food production and consumption, and ultimately, reposition Nigeria as a food basket in the sub-region.
The revolution in the agricultural sector began in December 2016 when the Federal Government set up the PFI as part of efforts to deliver commercially-significant quantities of affordable and high-quality fertiliser at the right time to farmer.
A year and five months down the line, the fertiliser blending industry is gradually bouncing back. As at the last count, 11 fertiliser blending plants have been revitalised following the implementation of the initiative.
Drawing attention to the feat, Information, Culture &Tourism Minister Lai Mohammed said the PFI delivered 10 million 50kg bags (500, 000MT) of Nitrogen, Phosphorous and Potassium (NPK) 20:10:10 to fertiliser for the wet season in 2017.
The icing on the cake for farmers was the fact that the fertiliser came at a pocket-friendly price of N5, 500.
Mohammed said the N5, 500 per 50kg bag price tag represented a 40 per cent reduction from the price of N9, 000 in 2016. He said that more than six million bags of fertiliser have been sold to farmers at the subsidised rate.
Prior to the PFI, the government was subsidising ever bag of imported fertiliser to the tune of N6, 000.
The price slash was the fulfilment of a promise by Agriculture & Rural Development Minister Audu Ogbe, who assured that a bag of fertiliser would be sold for below N6, 000 following an agreement between the Federal Government Morocco on supplies.ý
“We signed an agreement with the Moroccan Government. We went to Morocco and had a good agreement for phosphate imports.ý With phosphate importation, we will put fertiliser on the market for less than N6, 000,” Ogbe said, in Kano, in 2017.
Nigeria, Morocco fertiliser deal was game changer
The Nation learnt that the changing fortunes of the fertiliser blending industry and by extension, the agricultural sector, where the government is pushing to achieve self-sufficiency in food production and consumption, was largely as a result of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) it signed with Morocco in 2016 to produce fertiliser locally.”
The deal with the Moroccan government was for the supply of phosphate to ensure the production of one million tons of fertliser locally. The agreement was anchored by the FEPSAN and OCP, a state-owned company in Morocco. It is a world leader in phosphate and its derivatives.
The MoU signed King Mohammed VI of Morocco visited Nigeria, also sought to promote the use of agricultural inputs, including access to adequate fertilisers as a major lever for improving agricultural productivity and farmers’ income.
Before the MoU, the blending capacity of the Nigerian fertiliser industry was put at four million tons of NPK annually and two million tons of production capacity for Urea, with capacity to employ over 250, 000 people in both direct and indirect jobs across the country.
But, with less than 10 per cent of these production capacities being utilised, the government opted for the MoU, the areas of collaboration which included securing a supply of quality fertilisers by bringing in the raw materials required for production in line with the crops and soils adaptability.
The collaboration also aimed at strengthening the local blending capabilities by leveraging on technical know-how and engineering skills, as well as stimulating product innovation and development through the deployment of the Moroccan expertise in scientific production of recommended formulae adaptable to the Nigerian soil.
It also sought to strengthen the capacity to ensure a timely supply of quality fertiliser in adequate quantities and in a cost-effective manner to rural areas as well as an efficient supply chain and improvement of logistics management.
Others areas of collaboration included warehousing and transportation services and the strengthening of the nation’s agricultural extension services system.
The intervention is said to have increased local production of the input, ramping it up from a mere 500, 000 metric tonnes before 2015 to 2.22 million MT.
On the gains of the deal, Mohammed said the PFI saved the government N60 billion in would-be subsidies last year.
The minister put the foreign exchange (forex) savings for the period at $150 million, attributing it to the substitution of imported inputs of NPK with locally-sourced inputs.
Limestone and Urea were sourced locally, phosphate was imported from Morocco. The locally-sourced inputs were triggered the revival of 11 moribund fertiliser blending plants.
The 11 revitalised blending plants, according to Mohammed, have a combined capacity of over two million metric tonnes. He informed that 12 more blending plants would be revived to bring the number to 23 this year.
The minister added that PFI targets the delivery of 20 million 50kg bags (about one million MT) this year. It is twice the figure for 2017.
Rolling out the multiplier effects of the reactivation of the fertiliser blending plants, Mohammed said that the noticeable upsurge in patronage was due to the movement of raw materials and finished goods.
He also said the bag-making sector of the economy has received a boost, with over 10 million packaging bags produced exclusively for PFI. About 60,000 direct jobs have also been created, while several indirect jobs have been churned out.
In Ogbe’s view, about six million jobs have been created in the agricultural sector within two years.
Presenting his ministry’s scorecard and target for the year in Abuja, Ogbe said the six million jobs were created both on and off farms as a result of the huge increase in local rice production.
He said: “We are exporting more than we are importing now and most of our exports are agro-products. We are growing in agriculture and from the middle of this year, whoever chooses to eat Thailand rice is welcomed to pay duties. We shall impose duties on it because we consider it a wasteful luxury and something this country can’t afford.”
Assuring that the government will not compromise on the quality and control of produce for export and local consumption, the minister added that fertiliser blending would be improved to accommodate micro nutrients in the agro-products.
The journey from scarcity
The non-availability of affordable fertiliser remained the challenge to Nigeria’s quest for increased productivity in the agricultural sector for a very long time. The dearth of this critical input was a disincentive to farmers’ efforts to contribute to economic diversification through small, medium and large scale agriculture.
The activities of black marketers compounded the woes. Adding to that were the powerful middlemen, who ensured that the critical farming input ever reached the farmers from the government. They were in charge of the fertiliser distribution chain for decades and they blocked the end-users’ access to subsidised inputs, particularly fertiliser.
Investigation showed that fertiliser, which could have lifted the farmers’ effort at contributing to food security, job and wealth creation, were brazenly sold in the open market or smuggled into neighbouring West African countries where they sold at exorbitant prices.
The fertiliser racketeering was hurting efforts at leveraging large-scale agric to achieve food self-sufficiency.
To President Muhammadu Buhari, who has set a next year target to end food importation, the situation was disturbing. But, his administration’s was determined to change the narrative.
Eyeing the export market
Encouraged by the revitalisation of the fertiliser industry, Nigeria now has her eyes set on claiming a substantial share of the global fertliser market, staring from the West African sub-region where it plans to reclaim her position as food basket.
Excited by the bright prospects in the fertiliser industry, the Chairman of FEPSAN, Mr. Thomas Etuh, said Nigeria will begin to export fertiliser in the next two years.
According to him, Nigeria is already selling fertiliser to Benin Republic, Chad, Cameroon and Niger Republic, saying that the development will restore Nigeria’s position as the food basket of the West African sub-region.
Etuh, who spoke in Abuja, recently, commended Buhari for initiating the PFI, noting that it has helped farmers access to critical agricultural input at affordable prices.
He said this has reduced farmers’ overheads, boost yield and encourage more players to invest in the agricultural value chain.
Etuh recalled that before the PFI, Nigeria had 32 fertiliser blending plants most of which were moribund, explaining that out of the 33 plants, five were functional.
The five were producing at 10 per cent capacity because of the emphasis on importation.
The FEPSAN expressed optimism on the resuscitation of the fertiliser industry and that Nigeria will play a more dominant role in the region and indeed, the global industry, on government’s ability to sustain the current gains of the PFI.
Noting that the journey towards food security may have started with the huge impact of the PFI programme, he called on the government to sustain the current political will that has made it possible for the initiative to become a huge success.
Pan-African investor Alhaji Aliko Dangote is no less excited by the prospects of Nigeria becoming Africa’s largest exporter of fertiliser.
Like Etuh and other key industry operators, Dangote admitted that things have changed in the agricultural sector.
Speaking on April 30, after Buhari’s meeting with a group of agricultural business firms in the United States (U.S.), Dangote expressed optimism that Nigeria will soon become the biggest exporter of fertiliser in the continent.
Food production ramps up
According to Etuh, the volume of food production of staples like rice and maize has increased in the last two years. He traced the development to the affordability and availability of fertiliser.
The FEPSAN chairman got it right. There has been an exponential growth in local rice production, as the government has banned rice importation.
Within two years, rice importation from Thailand fell from 644,131 MT in September 2015 to 20, 000 MT in September last year, representing more than 90 per cent drop.
Nigeria’s paddy rice production has also seen significant growth in the past three years – from four million MT to seven million MT.
The government plans to achieve self-sufficiency in paddy rice production by 2020, even as the country’s rice import bill, which hitherto stood at $1.65 billion annually, has dropped by over 90 per cent.
Confirming the quantum leap in local rice production, the Rice Processors Association of Nigeria (RIPAN) said that the number of rice farmers rose to more than 11 million from five million in 2015.
The changing fortunes of the sector are also evident from the investment and job creation perspectives as RIPAN’s put the investment portfolio in the local economy in excess of N300 billion. Upcoming investments have been projected to hit N250 billion soon.
The new investments are expected to add 5, 000 jobs and additional 1,775,000 MT of integrated rice milling capacity. They will also save $300 million in foreign exchange from import substitution through local processing.
Nigeria’s current rice consumption is put at approximately six million MT last year, up from the 2.5 million MT it produced in 2015.
The EGRP, ABP impact
A multi-pronged policy response is needed for the government to achieve its food self-sufficiency target. Apart from the PFI, the Federal Government also launched the ERGP in April 2017. The medium-term
plan, charts a course for the economy over a four-year period – 2017–2020.
The vision of the ERGP is to restore economic growth, invest in Nigerians and to build a globally competitive economy.
It has a target to achieve these by focusing on five execution priorities: stabilising the macroeconomic environment; achieving agriculture and food security, ensuring energy efficiency (especially in power and petroleum products); improving transportation infrastructure; and driving industrialisation primarily through Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).
The ERGP is expected to return the economy to sustainable, inclusive and diversified growth and to transform the country from an import-dependent to a producing economy; a country that grows what it eats and consumes what it produces.
The ERGP prioritises food security and aims to achieve self-sufficiency in tomato paste, rice and wheat, by 2017, 2018, and 2019/2020 respectively.
It projects that the value of agricultural production would increase by 31 per cent to N21 trillion in 2020.
Before introducing the EGRP, the government, through the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), unveiled the ABP on November 17, 2015. Its aim was aimed to provide farm inputs, in cash and kind, to smallholder farmers to boost local production of commodities, including rice, stabilize inputs supply to agro-processors and address the country’s negative balance of payments on food.
The ABP, combined with a newly developed soil map designed to aid fertiliser application, is said to have substantially raised local production of grains in 2016, with yields improving from two tonnes per hectare to as much as seven tonnes per hectare in some states.
It also produced a model agricultural collaboration between Lagos and Kebbi states.
Experts say that in the last five years, Nigeria’s share of global food consumption hovered around 3.4 per cent, the highest amongst African countries. They also projected that by 2050, the population will be 400 million, which would make it the third most populous country in the world.
Noting that food consumption is expected to grow by at least four per cent per annum – its historical average, they advised on the urgent need to increase production to meet the country’s food requirement and achieve self-sufficiency.
The import the wise counsel appears is not lost on the mangers of the nation’s economy. The mangers have come up with proactive policies, aimed at increasing production and value addition across key agricultural food products.
That the initiatives have started yielding fruits notwithstanding, the consensus is that the government must demonstrate more political will to sustain the policies.
By: Chikodi Okereocha
The Nation News
