ABUJA – The Federal Government’s duty-free imports of essential food and crash in prices of foodstuff would jeopardise Nigeria’s food security.
Mr Joseph Unogwu, Country Director, Agricultural Development for Economic Growth Initiative (AgDEG), stated this on Sunday in an interview with newsmen in Markudi.
NAN reports that the Federal Government temporarily opened its borders for a 150-day window in July 2024, to allow duty-free imports of essential food items like rice, maize, and wheat.
Alhaji Abubakar Kyari, the Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, said the measure was implemented to combat rising food prices and alleviate the high cost of living for millions of Nigerians.
Sen. Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, Minister of State for Agriculture and Food Security, recently said that President Bola Tinubu again directed a committee to move swiftly and implement measures to further reduce food prices across the country.
Abdullahi said that the move was to ensure that no Nigerian went to bed on an empty stomach.
But Unogwu, in the interview with newsmen said that flooding the Nigerian market with imported food would destroy the local capacity to produce.
The AgDEG country director told newsmen that no nation would cede its food production to another country and remain secure in terms of food production.
According to him, if anything goes wrong internationally, Nigeria has a lot to lose.
Unogwu said without empowering local production but focusing on price reduction, Nigeria had become a dumping ground for countries that were supporting farmers to produce in larger quantities at minimal cost to the farmers.
He said that farmers were leaving their farms because of high production costs and the extremely low return on farm produce with no incentive from the government.
“We are crashing food prices. But what is the stopgap measure to encourage internal production? For now, there is nothing on the horizon.
“We’ve seen this across many communities. Farmers are scaling down. Farmers are abandoning their fields. So, what are we creating?
“More unemployment. We are destroying livelihoods in rural areas. Overall, this will put pressure on the Nigerian economy, pushing us towards import dependency.
“What does that mean? It will put pressure on the Naira. In fact, the Federal Government itself said about three weeks ago that Nigeria’s import bill is over $10 billion dollars, which is not sustainable for the economy.
“So what we are doing now is weakening the Naira, exposing the country to hunger and vulnerability, and putting rural communities at greater risks,” he said.
The country director emphasised that the policy, if not reversed, would also increase the number of people available for recruitment into insecurity.
Onogwu stressed that when farming families could no longer produce food or sustain themselves, they would resort to other means of survival.
“If the government had done something to ramp up internal production, then yes, we would say they are on the right track.
“But as professionals, what we see now is a very negative warning sign. The government seems to be focused only on food prices, rolling back the milestones Nigeria has achieved and taking us back to import dependency.
“If they roll out inputs to support agricultural activities, then the policy of crashing food prices could become viable.
“But if the government really wanted to address food insecurity in Nigeria, the first step would have been to identify the challenges facing smallholder farmers.
“Why is food expensive? One, insecurity is chasing people away from farms. Solve that first. Two, the high cost of inputs, caused by the devaluation of the Naira,” he further said.
He noted that it was an unhealthy situation for fertiliser to be selling at ₦50,000 per bag, while agrochemicals and seeds were expensive.
According to him, the recommendation of professionals is that the government can ntervene by subsidising production costs for smallholder farmers and guarantee a buyback of produce at reasonable prices. (NAN)
