By Dele Sobowale

“Nigerian economic statistics reveal a puzzling contrast between rapid economic growth and quite minimal welfare improvements for much of the population. Annual growth rates that averaged over seven percent in official data during the last decade place Nigeria among the fastest growing economies in the world”. World Bank Report.

The World Bank, most of the civilized world and some Nigerians might, indeed, be puzzled by the fact that one of the fastest growing economies in the world, in the last ten years, has failed woefully to make a dent on the welfare of most of the people. Honest Nigerian economists are not. Perhaps the place to start this piece is at the conclusion.

Nigeria’s, so called, fast growth is mostly phony – especially its reports to the world about its agricultural output growth. This is important because the report pointed out that the growth in the last ten years is concentrated in trade and agriculture.

If there is one Ministry, at Federal and state levels, which had been perpetually mired in unending fraud, it is the Ministries of Agriculture – nationwide. Because most of the activities involving the Ministry take place in rural areas, widely spread and unconnected, it has been easy for every Federal Minister and Commissioner of Agriculture to manipulate two pieces of data – the actual, as opposed to the reported, input data and the productivity reports.

For instance there is probably no state in the entire country, where the farmers had received the volume of inputs – equipment, seeds, fertilizers, herbicides etc – as Ministers, Commissioners, President and Governors announced. There is also no state in the nation where the real outputs are what governments report. Having announced bigger budget allocations to agriculture in any year, the Ministries of Agriculture are bound to report higher outputs of crops – or there would be hell to pay. So, they go ahead and falsify the figures.

The current Federal Minister of Agriculture, Dr Adewunmi, had been announcing “great strides” made under his watch. Higher productivity, more jobs had been created and the nation, according to him, is close to feeding exclusively on cassava bread and exporting rice.

The problem with that rosy picture is that when challenged openly to substantiate the claim there has been no response from the Minister. However, we have had reports from the Central Bank and the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, pointing to worsening food import bills and no cassava bread can be found anywhere except Aso Rock – and perhaps not even there.

I cannot vouch for the Presidency because I have never been invited to lunch despite a huge N1 billion “free lunch” budget. The Federal Ministry of Agriculture is not an exception when it comes to feeding Nigerians, not with food, but with empty and self-serving rhetoric.

One Commissioner, whose state was mostly under water last year, incredibly still told his people on a state radio programme that “the government has been able to provide abundant food for the people”. He has failed to answer calls to prove it.

So, the first answer to the World Bank’s puzzle is: don’t believe Nigerian government’s data on agriculture productivity growth. In fact, I had the opportunity in the late 1980s, as rice farmer and miller in Sokoto/Zamfara States, to watch Ministries of Agriculture officials at work.

It was a sad and sobering experience. Fertilisers never reached farmers on time; never were supplied at the stipulated prices and at harvest time the officials came and compiled figures which were at total variance with what those of us down at the farm knew were the actual figures. One of the theatres for this absurd drama was the Bakolori dam area, near Talata Mafara, which was established by the government of Alhaji Shehu Shagari.

When seeds and fertilizers finally arrive at almost the wrong time and inflated prices, the farmers still have the drivers of tractors and harrowers to please – with money naturally. Despite that they came when it suited them. Yet the “gods” to worship are not yet complete.

“Water is life”, wrote Thales, 640-546 BC, and nobody knows this better than the farmer. At damn sites nationwide, the real “gods” to worship are the engineers in charge of releasing water from the dams. Too little or too much is fatal to crops. The engineers know this and that shared knowledge is their power.

Failure to grease their palms with loads of cash can mean too much water or too little water. Either way farmers are doomed. Last year had been exceptionally problematic nationwide because suddenly nature seized control from the engineers and inundated large tracts of farmland.

Annual crops, those planted once a year, were particularly affected in many areas of Nigeria. Yet, our Ministries of Agriculture were still reporting “bumper harvests”. If so, why are the marketers of imported rice, noodles manufacturers and bakeries also reporting over 50% growth in demand?

Even a fool knows that unlike governments, Flour Mills, Honeywell, Dangote etc cannot exaggerate their sales – otherwise they will pay dearly to the FIRS for their lies. So, again, we have an answer to the World Bank puzzle – our agricultural output last year had been exaggerated by officials again.

Let us now return to the observation by the World Bank about seven per cent growth over a decade – because it has a meaning. Or, rather, it should have.