By Dele Sobowale

“The time is a quarter to midnight.” Dr Walter Borlough, the father of the Green Revolution.

NOTE: This column was written in 2013 when President Jonathan was persuaded by Dr Adesina, then Minister of Agriculture that we were almost self-sufficient in rice production. That lie exploded in everybody’s face as fraudulent waivers had to be granted to rice importers to hide the fact that the Jonathan administration’s rice policy was a failure and how it is going to worsen the food shortage in 2015 and 2016. PMB has a problem on his hands. Please read on.

Buhari

One of the biggest problems Presidents and Prime Ministers face, virtually all the time, is who to believe among their Ministers and Advisers – especially those who are recruited from international organisations.

President Ibrahim Babangida had nothing less than four Nigerian economists who had  worked for the World Bank before coming on board to help midwife the Structural Adjustment Programme, SAP, which was later to give his administration the bad name it has failed to shed till today.

SAP was introduced in 1986; and by 1987 claims about the gains of SAP were being made by all those who sold IBB that poison pill. But by 1990, a bewildered military President, who could see clearly that all was not well with the Nigerian economy; that the gains of SAP were becoming increasingly elusive; asked publicly. “Why is it that economic policies which work well elsewhere don’t work in Nigeria?”

I was a Senior Lecturer/Consultant at the Nigerian Institute of Management, NIM, not chartered at the time, and my answer to IBB in my Monday column in Vanguard, almost twenty four years ago, remains as valid today with regard to SURE-P, as well as the Rice Policy being pursued under Jonathan. Like IBB, Jonathan is not an economist. I don’t blame a President for anything outside his area of competence – except when he fails to listen to dissenting voices outside his administration.

By 1990, Nigeria was not the only country undergoing structural adjustment. The oil boom, which started after the 1973 Yum Kippur war between Israel and the Arab countries, resulting in oil embargo and skyrocketing crude prices, had substantially run its course. Most of the oil producing countries, like Nigeria, were not highly industrialised nations; so the windfall they made from escalating crude oil prices had led to global hyperinflation.

The boomerang effect was the rapid rise in the prices of manufactured goods from the developed countries. On the eve of our own SAP, a Peugeot 504 S/R/AC, could be purchased officially for N15,000 and unofficially for not more than N17,000. I should know, I bought one six days from the announcement of SAP for N14,468. I sold it, ten years and 560,000 kilometres after for N99,000.

And, the buyer considered it a gift because by then a new model was going for N2.7 million. The question is: how did we get there? The answer is: too many officials of governments, especially Ministers, were not telling the Head of Sate the truth. Unfortunately for us, one of the lessons of history is that people never learn from history.

People who lived among us; who, at one time, joined us in complaining that Presidents don’t listen to people outside their group of advisers, on reaching office, repeat exactly the same mistakes. It was not as if IBB had no dissenters to the introduction and execution of SAP, he just trusted his advisers totally – until it was too late. Millions of lives were unnecessarily ruined on account of Nigeria’s brand of SAP.

Why have I gone all the way back to IBB’s administration to draw the example? Because, Babangida also introduced two food policies during his regime – the Sugar Policy and the Rice Policy – just as Jonathan had done. The first, we were told would make us self-sufficient in sugar production and the second in rice production by the year 2000. On account of the rice policy, I left the brewery and headed for Sokoto to engage in rice farming, buying, milling and marketing.

One cardinal aspect of the rice policy, at the time, was the introduction of high tariff to discourage imports and the promise of incentives – including low interest loans, development of several varieties of rice which were best suited for our different ecological zones and assistance with human resources development. Then, as now, the entire policy programme was accompanied by unprecedented hype by some of the most gifted con men who ever wore designer suits to government office.

It did not take long before those of us who invested heavily in that government’s promise to realise we had been “robbed”. First, the high tariff introduced did not stop a single bag of Thailand rice from entering Nigeria. A whole generation of Customs men and women became enormously rich by encouraging or undertaking rice smuggling themselves.

On one night in December 1989, I watched helplessly as over fifty trailer loads of rice entered Nigeria through Ilela into the Sokoto and Kebbi markets. As if that was not betrayal enough, the government soon “discovered” that Nigerian rice producers could not satisfy the aggregate demand in the country.

So, an exclusive import licence was issued to one company – that launched one of the greatest personal fortunes in the world today because the same company soon received exclusive sugar import licence as well. So the dreams of self-sufficiency in rice and sugar production died in the hands of the government which started them.

Today, another experiment with self-sufficiency in rice production is underway. Like its predecessors, it has been associated with more fiction than fact and like the farmer who planted fifty tubers of yam, while claiming to have sown two hundred, will, after eating fifty yams, eat lies for the rest of the year. Now, what are the truths being suppressed by official falsehood promoted by the Minister of Agriculture, Dr Adesina?

First, Nigeria does not now grow enough rice to be self-sufficient. In fact, we are so far from adequate supply, we still import close to 85 percent of our rice needs. The rest comes from imports and mostly, now, from smuggled rice. Neighbouring African countries are experiencing a boom in landing fees collected from ships laden with rice bound for Nigeria. Another generation of Customs staff is now becoming rich on account of official self-delusion.

The options are very clear. If we stop smuggling (a mission impossible) large scale scarcity will result and famine will follow because we don’t produce enough of any substitute to fill the gap. If we fail to stop smuggling, the latest attempt will end like the first – after struggling and losing their shirts and underwear, the investors will close shop and we will be back to Thailand.

Incidentally, the development of several varieties of rice is a sword cutting two ways. Positively, it increased the potential acreage which can be brought under cultivation nationwide. The problem comes with parboiling and milling. Most mills can handle, very well, one or two varieties of paddy rice and not at the same time for optimum results.

Unfortunately, the aggregate national yield of any variety of rice is so small, millers are forced to mix varieties – a wasteful approach to milling rice. That is why local rice is more expensive than imported rice; even if the exporting countries are not subsidizing their farmers and millers.

With nationwide drought in 2014 a distinct possibility, production of food in general at anywhere near the levels of the past three years will pose a challenge. Food prices will climb and making rice more expensive will result in unintended consequences – widespread famine.