Kebbi: Nigeria’s recovery destination

For a first time visitor to Kebbi state, the tendency to underrate it on account of its infrastructure deficit and the simplicity of its people would most likely lead to a temptation to cascade its true potentials as Nigeria’s most important destination for economic recovery. Prior to the emergence of Muhammadu Buhari as President, Kebbi was just like any other far-Northern semi arid state, battling with leadership deficit, infrastructure decay, despondent citizenry and economic inequality. Unlike other peer states, Kebbi was hugely underdeveloped and underutilized. Yet, it is one of Nigeria’s most endowed states with boundless potentials and opportunities in both natural and manpower spheres. All that was required was for a forward-looking and politically iron willed leadership at both the federal and state levels to unlock those potentials.

Nigeria’s import bills have always been on the high side and were responsible for it’s over dependence on anything foreign, including staple food items like rice. Each year, billions of dollars are expended on the importation of rice to feed a nation that cannot do without it. Although this practice has always hugely depleted our foreign reserve, it still looked perfectly alright for an oil-producing country that was making money almost effortlessly. However, when oil prices began to plummet right at the onset of Buhari administration, an era of economic gloom and uncertainty forced a rethink. Then, the diversification potentials spread around the country became handy and a calculated resort to them, injection of required resources and the right leadership superintended the pleasant turnaround of the fortunes of the country. Kebbi is endowed with the fadama land, on one hand and a very resourceful manpower on the other to spearhead a national revival in order to internalize and domesticate our needs, save the country from the huge import bills and reorder our priorities. In this regard, we must elegize and commend the leadership qualities and foresight of both President Muhammadu Buhari and Governor Atiku Bagudu of Kebbi state for leading the country out of the quagmire of import dependence and for taking all the risky measures that were required to make the enterprise of local sourcing a success.

All the potentials that were tapped have been there all these years, but as emphasized earlier, the absence of the political will and the leadership acumen had stymied any recovery effort to set the country on the path to self sustenance and self dependence on food production in order to take off the burden of expending hard earned foreign reserves on items we can conveniently and wisely produce. Kebbi has 21 local government areas and other than two or three of them, the entire landscape is blessed with the natural endowments to support the cultivation of rice, wheat, cassava, sugarcane and sorghum among many others. Conversely, River Niger has stretched 170 kilometers into some ten local government areas of Kebbi while River Rima too has crisscrossed 150 Kilometers into nearly ten other local governments. This is aside some tributaries of River Zamfara and others. Add this to a preponderance and endless supply of energetic and resourceful manpower the state is blessed with and you will appreciate why the country should forever etch the names of Buhari and Bagudu in gold. All along, these potentials were there but were ignored by successive federal and state governments. As the nation reeled under the weight of over dependence on import, these potentials were wasting away, leaving one-acre subsistence farmers harvesting so little to support their families. Then enter the Buhari/ Bagudu rescue mission. The ambitious rice production program of the Buhari administration started in 2015 with about 70,000 eligible rice farmers selected by the Kebbi state government and just two years on, the country has cut its import bills by about eighty percent. Kebbi state accounts for 60% of this.

There are quite a number of positives in this ambitious rice production program. The first and most important is that in the next two years, Nigeria will become 100% self reliant in the rice production. Secondly, Kebbi alone, as once stated by its Commissioner of Agriculture Alhaji Mohammed Dandiga, has the land potentials to produce the entire rice requirement of the West African Sub region. Thirdly, this revival policy has generated thousands of jobs for Nigeria’s most vulnerable groups who, hitherto were on the brink of hopelessness, misery and squalor. If the untapped potentials of other states, particularly in the North are added to the quantum, Nigeria should, in the next couple of years, achieve its diversification goals from an oil based economy to agriculture and mineral resources based template to ward off the perennial threat of meltdowns and recession which have tied us down to the whims of the imperialists agenda. Niger state, with many dams located in various endowed locations, should be forcefully, if need be, brought into the rice production policy of the federal government. Resources should be injected after very careful assessment so that gradually, all the endowed states would be coopted into the larger and common objective of freeing this country from the ignominy of looking outwards to feed itself. The fight against insurgency in the Northeast should be redoubled because another large swath of fadama land suitable for rice production around Lake Chad have been lost to the unending insecurity there. The potentials there are simply unassailable. Ironically and for the records, virtually all the people responsible for farming and fishing activities on the shores of Lake Chad are indigenes of Kebbi state. The fact that rice mills are being established in Kebbi by private foreign and local investors in order to take advantage of the high production supports the need to exploit all the country’s potentials as added bait for more investors to rush in. At the last count, there are about five existing and two yet to be completed rice mills in various parts of Kebbi.

Sultan wrote this piece from Bayan Kara, Birnin Kebbi, Kebbi State