TO AVERT STARVATION, LET’S USE THIS LOAN WELL

The potential impact of the proposed agroindustrialisation and agricultural transformation are enormous, writes TOMMY ODEMWINGIE

I crave the indulgence of using my perspectives from a mixture of primeval recollections and largely indubitable career experiences to comment on the very LPSRUWDQW VXEMHFW RI SXWWLQJ DͿRUGDEOH food on the table for millions of Nigerians experiencing hunger and facing starvation.

I come from a farming community and a farming family. I witnessed how my father got fed up with faming in the late 1950s and instead enlisted in the labour force that cleared a sizable portion of the rain forests of Urhonigbe in the present Orhionmwon LGA of Edo State for the old Western Nigeria Development Company (WNDC) to establish arguably the biggest rubber estate in West Africa. The employ also took him to Ijebu-Ode (present Ogun State) and Araromi (Ondo). I suspect he was also involved in the paid labour that established the estates in Ewohimi (Edo) and UtagbaUno (Delta) before he returned, quite probably grudgingly, to the old profession.

His disenchantment with farming had to with its non-viability beyond feeding the family, with product wastage on farms due to transportation challenges and perishing in markets due to the dearth of storage facilities. But with the earnings from itinerant paid labour, he was able to rescue his aged widow mother from the pangs of virtual homelessness. But after the spell of economic gallivanting, he returned home, but now had to join forces with his wives to run a family food and drinks business that enabled him rise above his peers who hadn’t taken the risks that he took.

Meanwhile, my mother had no choice other than continue with farming and its drudgery, which she augmented with the family’s non-agrarian business. But she did see a glimmer of hope and grabbed it. It came with the food shortage occasioned by the civil war. Her elder sister alerted her to a cassava farm for sale, which she bought, harvesting and processing the product into garri, which was in hot demand in the rebelKHOG WHUULWRU\ DQG VKH PDGH VLJQLÀFDQW SURÀW 7KDW·V KRZ VKH ERXJKW D EUDQG new Raleigh bicycle (although she always bragged that “My husband bought it for me”!)

I need also say that my perspective on the subject of food security has been enriched by two years as media and public relations consultant to the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Ibadan’s Information Services Programme then headed by Dr. Stephen L. Lawani, who later worked for the World Bank in Washington. In addition to media capacity building to increase public awareness of the wonderful research being generated by the institute, I also generated content that readily found RXWOHWV LQ WKH GLͿHUHQW FKDQQHOV

As project documents go, the Special

Agro-Industrial Processing Zones (SAPZ) Programme that was launched by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, on behalf of Mr. President, on 24 October 2022, is an excellent piece of development intervention from the perspectives of agencies and institutions involved in its implementation. But cynics are wont to wonder what’s the big deal in projects documents that have all the elements of relevance, timeliness, copious details, lucidity, clarity and such other familiar assessment tools, or what cynics (there they go again?) would dismiss as a heap of cliché!

The only problem is that any document that doesn’t pander to any of these -- and, indeed, several other – assessment criteria too long to list here, lest this analysis ends up being an academic excursion that it’s being deliberately veered from would end up a monumental failure.

“Another loan?” That’s the predictable retort from cynics on the spectre of “incurring” another debt by a country DOUHDG\ EHLQJ VXͿRFDWHG LQ LW

Now, let me go back to some of my perspectives on development informed by my career experiences that qualify me to comment on this subject. In the early days of the regime of Ibrahim Babangida, when the man wanted to consolidate his popularity, he threw the issue of taking an IMF loan to the public to debate. I was, in addition to my duties as features editor of The Guardian, assigned the arduous task of selecting and editing the avalanche of contributions to the debate.

IMF was already a controversial (perhaps misunderstood) institution, anyway. Coupled with the negative connotation conjured by “loan”, “borrowing” (“borrowborrow” (to put it classic Nigerian parlance) and “debt”, the overwhelming verdict of Nigerians was, predictably, a resounding 12 WR WKH ,0) ORDQ RͿHU 7KH SUHIHUHQFH IRU Nigerians who had just survived scarcity of essential commodities (“Essenco”) was for belt-tightening. That’s how Nigeria, on the surface, rejected the loan, though, down the years, the nation would pile up debts to such of such magnitude that the Obasanjo administration made loan forgiveness a mission.

However, development economists don’t believe that taking loans is always necessarily a bad thing; rather, it is committing the funds to unviable ends and not respecting the conditionality attached to the borrowing that are bad, indeed that constitute a bad habit.

According to the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), “The loan is granted on blend terms, and shall be subject to interest on the principal amount outstanding and a service charge as determined by the Fund at the date of approval of the loan by the Executive Board. The interest rate and service charge GHWHUPLQHG ZLOO EH À[HG IRU WKH OLIH F\FOH RI the loan and payable semi-annually in the loan service payment currency, and shall have a maturity period of 25 years, including D JUDFH SHULRG RI ÀYH \HDUV VWDUWLQJ IURP WKH date of approval of the loan by the Executive Board. The principal of the loan granted on blend terms will be repaid in equal LQVWDOOPHQWV µ ,W OLVWV WKH FR ÀQDQFLHU V RI the programme as are African Development Bank (AfDB), Africa Growing Together Fund (AGTF), Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) and the Green Climate Fund (GCF).

The Nigeria Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zones (SAPZ) Program is a government-enabled and private sectorled initiative that seeks to mobilize private sector investment to develop value chains for selected strategic crops and livestock in the participating States. Nigeria will LPSOHPHQW WKH ÀUVW SKDVH RI WKH 6$3= SURJUDP ZLWK FR ÀQDQFLQJ IURP WKH $IULFDQ Development Bank, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB). The total amount mobilized for Phase 1 is $538.05 million - African Development Bank is providing $210 million; the IFAD together with the Green Climate Fund, $160 million; IsDB, $150.52 million; from the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) $2.01 million and $16.01 million from the Participating States.

At the launch and announcement of the Nigeria SAPZ to key stakeholders -- national and international partners, LQFOXGLQJ FR ÀQDQFLHUV GHYHORSPHQW partners, the private sector, farmers groups, national networks, the diaspora population and other actors -- of the programme on 24 October 2022, its leaders stated their objectives to include following:

who studied Rural Social Development at the University of Reading, UK, is a former features editor of the Guardian and one-time consultant to the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Ibadan, Nigeria. He is the initiator of Outgrow Hunger Nigeria campaign.