No need for this task force
Apparently acting in response to the spike in prices of food items especially after the last harvest season, the Federal Executive Council (FEC) last week set up a Food Task Force to examine ways of addressing the problem. The mandate of the Task Force included the resolution of wastages from farm harvests as well as articulating ways and means of guaranteeing food security for the country. According to the Information Minister Alhaji Lai Mohamed, the purview of the body specifically is to identify the actual causes of the price hike despite availability of the commodities in the country. Its mission therefore is to recommend strategies for terminating the unwholesome syndrome.
In the first place, the concern of the government over the rise in prices of food items is welcome as the situation constitutes a most disturbing development for Nigerians especially at this time of significant challenges on the economic front. The additional burden of rising food prices remains nightmarish to say the least. Besides, the spike in prices is most worrisome as it manifested even with respect to staple food items that serve as the mainstay of the people’s welfare.
However, setting up a Task Force at the level of the FEC constitutes an unnecessary dramatization that is akin to barking up the wrong tree. Hardly will the Task Force achieve any extraordinary break-through, that is if it will not end up as an unnecessary distraction. As is trite knowledge, food prices, especially of staples, are marketdriven, being the result of interplay of demand and supply circumstances in a free market economy as it is in Nigeria. Hence in the face of the unusual rise of prices of food items, the immediate culprit of interest remains the interplay of market forces.
In the matter under consideration there are specific, easily discernible factors whose leverage on the economy translates into spike in food prices. A typical one is the recent drop in the international price of oil and the attendant fall in foreign exchange earnings for the food import dependent Nigerian economy. With the attendant drop in foreign exchange earnings, the country’s food imports dropped leading to an increased demand for locally produced alternatives. The foregoing factor induced a demand push inflationary cycle, which was not resolved even by the bumper harvest at the end of last year. Another factor is the increased prices of petroleum products which translated into higher transportation costs for the agricultural produce merchant.
Given the apparent nature of these factors, establishment of a Food Task Force at the level of FEC amounts to an overkill. It also suggests a failure of the country’s agriculture development policy framework. Historically the very problems which are the purview of the Task Force are also the same issues which the country’s agriculture development strategies have purportedly been addressing over the years. It is a shame that after so many years and committing so much resources, the problem of poor management of farm gate harvest wastages of food is still one of the yet to be resolved problems of the country. The real question remains that if after a bumper harvest food prices fail to drop, what happens in off-harvest season?
This where the intervention of the National Assembly is required to provide robust oversight, with respect to ensuring that planning targets in agricultural development are attained as and when due. Food security is one area that the country must get its act together, if it must avoid food shortages which it can hardly afford. The need for immediate review of the agriculture policy articulation and implementation, pursuant to availing this country a regime of self-sufficiency in food, feeds and fibre cannot be over emphasised.